Bleu nodded. “We have a location where we might find her. I will go ahead and scout the valley, and—”
“What?” All three males spoke in unison, cutting him off.
He knew that he sounded as if he had lost his mind. The sensible course of action was to take everyone with him as backup, and he didn’t exactly look as if he was up for the task of a solo mission when his throat was still black and blue from an encounter with another dragon, but he had to go alone.
Bleu held his hand up to silence them before they could unleash the barrage of objections he could see coming from a league away.
“Is this because of what the mortal female told us about the female dragon’s brother being the one responsible?” Leif said anyway, obviously intent on ignoring at least one command today to get himself on even footing with Dacian and Fynn, knowing Bleu would have to let it slide.
He nodded. “It is, and as commander of the legions, I have to scout the valley and see if that intel is correct. It won’t confirm whether or not the female is innocent, or that the two of them aren’t working together, but it is information that requires investigation.”
“Then we should go with you. It will be quicker for four to scout the valley.” Dacian stood, unfurling his six-seven frame and standing tall, every muscle on his bare chest flexing as he clenched his fists at his sides.
“And more obvious,” Bleu countered. “It is easier for one lone male to move around the valley undetected. I will go alone. Do not worry, Dacian. I will not engage the enemy.”
Dacian grumbled something under his breath and looked close to either huffing or voicing another objection. Bleu couldn’t tell which it would be, but he appreciated the male’s concern and knew it had nothing to do with the threat of potentially missing out on a fight and everything to do with how dangerous it was for Bleu to go alone. Dacian wanted to be there to protect him and have his back.
“Leif.” He turned to the slighter male. “Report to Prince Loren what we have discovered.”
Leif looked as if he wanted to protest but held his tongue and nodded.
Bleu looked at each of them in turn. “Make preparations and continue investigating the dragon realm as a team, in case the dragon has moved on and the valley is a dead end. I will return soon.”
He waited for all three males to press their right hands to their chests before focusing on the dragon realm and willing his teleport. The colourful light traced over his body and the darkness welcomed him, a brief rush of cold before it dissipated to reveal a black valley stretching before him.
He settled his gaze on the small village at the centre of it far below him, and then looked beyond the settlement to the mountains that loomed there, rising into the grim grey sky. Wind battered him, warmed by the lands to his right, where the Devil’s domain spewed lava that caused an orange haze above the peaks of the cragged mountains.
His eyes remained locked on the range directly in front of him, across the valley from the mountain where he stood. Beyond those sharp peaks was the valley Anais had spoken of, one where he might find the dragon he had been hunting for seven centuries.
Had he been chasing the wrong dragon all this time?
Bleu drew down a deep breath, held it for a second and exhaled slowly. He hated lying to his team, battering the trust they shared, but he hadn’t had a choice. They would never have consented to his plan if they had been here with him and had realised what he had in mind.
Not merely scouting the valley.
He meant to speak with the female dragon.
He felt certain that he could talk with her without her attacking him. Insanity, but every instinct he possessed roared that he could, drowning out the doubts that constantly whispered that she had attacked him before.
He’d had her backed into a corner that time.
She had been speaking with him, calm and collected, and then he had advanced on her and she had felt threatened, lashing out to defend herself.
This time, he would let her feel in control, that she had all the power and he wasn’t a threat to her. He would keep his distance as he should have three centuries ago.
He would make her feel safe.
He would make her speak with him and tell him the truth.
A truth he needed to know, because he was tired of denying the one he knew deep in his soul.
It was time they both stopped running.
CHAPTER 15
Taryn didn’t even have the energy to yawn. She sat on the end of her double bed, hands curled over the edge of the mattress next to her thighs, her eyes fixed on the black wall opposite her. Vision hazy.
It was all she could do to breathe.
Every bone in her body felt heavy, as if someone had poured lead into her marrow. Her mind ached, her heart throbbed, the weariness trickling through her veins like sludge that clogged her up and pulled her down, until she was drowning in it.
Gods.
The dragon she had loved was gone and the one wearing his skin was a stranger to her.
That feeling had been growing inside her for the past few days and it had seized hold of her heart, sinking poisoned talons into the soft vulnerable flesh.
Loke was right.
Her brother was gone. His lust for power had corrupted him, the darkness seducing him with an obsession with possessing all the realms in Hell, clouding his vision and making him view them as the ultimate treasure a dragon could hold.
It was madness.
She tensed as a harrowed scream echoed around the castle, chilling her blood. Her fingers twitched and then she was rubbing her arms before she could stop herself, trying to scrub off the guilt and the fear. Those terrified cries were her fault.
She had caught Tenak chasing a fae male across the valley yesterday morning, toying with him by letting him break a short distance ahead of him before swooping on him, knocking him to the black earth. It had been too cruel and she hadn’t been able to stand by and watch the hope reigniting in the poor creature as he found his feet and began running, only to be shattered all over again when Tenak pounced on him.
She was too familiar with such feelings.
How many times had she experienced the same fleeting burst of hope, like a warm light touching her soul and chasing the darkness back for a few short minutes or hours before that darkness crashed back over it and destroyed the light?
Too many times, and each had been more painful than the last, stripping another piece of her soul away.
She had stopped her brother, but he had demanded a reason for her intervention and she had blurted the first thing that had come to her.
She had told him to place the male in the cells instead so they might have some entertainment and she could watch one of his kind suffer as she had.
Gods, she had meant to spare the male more pain, finding a way to allow him to escape, but Tenak had found a startling new way of passing his time, one that had kept her shut in her room, afraid of leaving it, trapped by her memories and fear of what she might see.
It would break her. She knew that much.
Tenak had discovered a lust for torture, now spent most of his time down there in the dungeon inflicting terrible pain on the fae male and the others he had captured.
She shuddered, unable to stop the chill from wracking her tired body when she recalled watching her brother from the window as he had left and when he had returned. He had become so addicted to slowly destroying his captives that he had taken to leaving the valley entirely, flying leagues to find new prey.
So far, the cells contained a siren female, a nymph male, and a shifter male of some sort.
Others had come and gone, killed by Tenak’s overzealous attempts to make them suffer.
For her.
Her stomach rebelled and she clutched it.
Dear gods, she couldn’t think about it, but it filled her mind, flooding it with the memory of him knocking softly on her door to ask whether she was unwell.
She had made the mistake of o
pening her door to him, and now she couldn’t think about him without seeing him as he had been in that moment, standing proud with blood coating his bare chest and leather trousers, a grin curving his lips as he told her that he made them suffer for her sake.
She retched but nothing came up, her empty stomach churning with acid. She hadn’t eaten in a day at least, too heartsick to find her appetite.
Another scream pierced the still air, female this time.
She had to fly.
Taryn pushed onto her feet and her legs wobbled beneath her sudden weight but she locked her knees and remained upright. A second shriek came and she rushed to the door of her room and pushed it open. She marched down the corridor, haunted by the wails of agony coming from far below. They chased her and her steps gained pace, until she was running blind, tears filling her eyes.
She needed to fly.
Tenak expected her in the drawing room in less than an hour but she had time to fly before she had to listen to his sick and twisted plans for the inhabitants of this realm and pretend that they pleased her when all she wanted to do was plunge a dagger into her brother’s blackened heart.
Ahead of her, the thick doors of the fortress were closed for once, as if Tenak wanted to make sure none of his prizes escaped, including her.
She hit those doors at a dead run, barging them open and knocking one side off its hinges. Splinters pierced her shoulder and upper arm, but she didn’t feel the pain as she shifted, her scales pushing the fragments of wood from her flesh. She beat her wings the second they were free and launched into the air, filled with a frantic need to feel the wind on her face and soar high above the world, so high that she couldn’t see the horrors it contained.
The cruelty and madness.
She would fly so high that all she would know was peace at last and Hell would look beautiful again.
Taryn beat her wings and soared upwards, her heart steadying as she gained height and left the castle behind her, no longer feeling as if she was being chased.
She breathed deep and spread her wings, focused on the feel of the wind on their white membranes and the subtle shifts in the air currents. She tipped her head and chest up and caught one thermal, used it to lazily circle higher in the air, until the world below dropped away and silence reigned.
The lands of the dragons and the Devil stretched far below her, the villages only specks on the black ground. In the distance, far from the Devil’s realm, at the opposite side of Hell, the elf realm was hazy gold, a beacon that called to her.
Was he there?
Waiting for her?
Searching for her?
She glided across the width of the valley and swooped lower, the sensation of peace growing stronger, flowing through her and calming her. It even restored some of her strength. She let it roll over her and savoured it, embraced and nurtured it, afraid it would go away too soon when she wanted the feeling to stay.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so at peace.
So unafraid.
Flying had never made her feel this way before. It had only ever satisfied her urge to feel free, the compulsion to fly and spread her wings, and know that she was no longer shackled and enslaved.
What was different today?
She banked left, swooping towards the black citadel where it rose out of the mountain, and shooting past it, turning at the last second to evade a collision with it. The sense of peace flickered for a heartbeat, wavering like a candle in the wind as she neared the castle and gaining strength again as she flew away from it.
It continued to grow as she beat her wings and headed towards the dragon realm, easing away her fear and imbuing her with strength.
Odd.
She studied the sensation, unable to make sense of it. It ran deep, as deep as her blood or maybe deeper still, and it was strangely familiar, as if she had experienced it before. Maybe she had. Being around her brother had made her feel safe and calm when she had been younger. Was that the sensation she was recalling?
She hadn’t felt that way in many centuries though, and for some reason, it didn’t seem like the right answer.
She scanned the horizon, convinced and afraid that Loke had foolishly tracked her down. He had always made her feel safe and he knew where she had gone because he had been the one to give her Tenak’s location.
Her sharp gaze caught on movement and darted there.
Her breath left her in a dizzying rush and she almost forgot to keep beating her wings.
Her heart plunged as if she had and was falling.
The feeling she had been having suddenly made terrifying sense.
The small black-clad figure on the mountainside slowly lifted their head, revealing a gap in their ornate black helmet, little more than an open strip across their eyes.
Eyes that seemed to pierce her soul and set her blood on fire as they locked on her.
The elf male.
CHAPTER 16
Bleu traversed the rocky black ground, watching his footing as he moved silently and swiftly between boulders, switching his vantage point to get a different view of the valley. It looked quiet. He hunkered down behind an outcrop of rock and scanned the valley basin, picking out enormous bones and gnarled black trees. No sign of life though.
He quickly glanced over the entire valley, from the mountain ranges that reached along it on the left and right, to the far end. Satisfied that no one could see him, he set his gaze on a fissure in a mountain on the right side, one halfway along the length of the valley, and teleported there. He landed silently and immediately crouched behind another boulder, keeping still as he scoured the valley from the new angle.
His gaze caught on a citadel far to his right, at the end of the valley furthest from the dragon realm. Black jagged spires rose from the mountain, as if someone had carved it out of the great peak.
The female had to be there. With the sword?
And the brother?
One dragon was dangerous enough, easily able to kill him. Two didn’t bear thinking about.
His pointed ears twitched as a cry echoed from the castle, muffled by the layers of rock but loud enough to reach him. His armoured claws tensed against the boulder and he had to dig them in to keep himself in place and stop himself from teleporting straight to the castle, obeying the primal part of him that roared that it was his mate screaming.
Bleu breathed deep, hoping to settle the powerful urge and stop it from happening again. Impossible. Now that he had admitted that the female dragon was his ki’ara, casting aside the conditioning that had made him forget her, the instincts as her male were awakening.
Gods, he couldn’t let them control him. He had to remain objective about everything, including the female. If he allowed his instincts to rule him, he might walk right into a trap or march straight to his death.
Or worse.
He might allow her to use the sword to destroy half of Hell.
He wouldn’t be the first male duped into committing atrocious acts by his fated female, blinded by his primal instincts, controlled by them and an overwhelming need to please her at any cost.
He closed his eyes and bent his head, focused on his breathing and recited his mission in his mind, until it cleared and the female was nothing more than an objective again. He would speak with her, somehow, and if she were a threat to the realm and everyone in it, he would eliminate her as ordered.
Bleu leaned his right side against the black boulder, his armour allowing him to blend in to his surroundings in the low light. The slats covering the lower half of his face caused his warm breath to bounce back at him and his horned helmet trapped heat. He ached to remove his helmet but blending in to the landscape to avoid detection was more important than how hot and sweaty it made him.
How stifling it was as he tried to breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
Fuck, what was he doing?
He looked across the dead valley to the castle, felt that question right to the pit o
f his soul. What had possessed him to come here alone and made him believe that he could speak with the female?
She was his mate, but she was his mission first and foremost. He couldn’t allow his instincts as her fated male to corrupt him or sway him from that mission. They were only instincts. He felt nothing for her, not a single drop of emotion. She was a mission.
A shadow loomed out of the gloom, a flash of white and violet, and his breath caught in the back of his bruised throat as he tipped his head back and watched the dragon rush straight overhead.
Enormous wings beat the hot air, sending it thundering down the mountainside and stirring an avalanche of dust that swept past him. He didn’t notice it as he watched the dragon, unable to take his eyes off it.
Off her.
Those primal instincts fired, told him that the beast flying away from him, swaying at an angle in the air as she spread her wings wide and skimmed the side of the mountain range, following it back towards the castle, was his mate.
His ki’ara.
And, holy fuck, she stole his breath away.
His gaze followed her as she banked around, her long tail curving to assist her in the turn and white wings lazily beating the air, making it look as if flying was an effortless task. Her white horns almost brushed the violet scales of her neck as she twisted her head, tipped it back at the same time as she flapped her wings, and his heart gave a hard thump as she barely missed the castle’s spires.
She turned, swooped lower and then rose higher on a single beat of her wings, heading towards his end of the valley. Her head barely moved as she looked around, large eyes taking everything in. Her talons flexed and she tucked her front legs up as she gained height, pulling them close to her white chest.
He lost himself in watching her. Majestic. Beautiful. He had never seen those two qualities in dragons, not as many in Hell did, but he saw them in her.
Huge violet eyes dropped.
Landed right on him.
The thought that it was impossible she had seen him against the black rock when his armour covered all but his eyes didn’t even have time to form in his mind before strange heat flooded him followed by a surge of images, pulled straight from his dreams of her.
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