A disjointed vision of kissing her, wrapping her up in his arms as he possessed her.
Claimed her.
The mountain shook as she landed hard on the slope below him. She slammed her paws into it, sharp dark violet talons sinking straight into the rock as she clawed her way up the steep incline at speed.
Coming straight at him.
She snapped and snarled, flashing white fangs each as long as his arms.
Bleu held his ground, his years as a soldier combining with his primal instincts to tell him that she didn’t mean him any harm.
She meant to drive him away.
It wasn’t going to happen.
He had come here to speak with her, and he was going to do just that.
“Return the sword,” he said in the dragon tongue and rose onto his feet, moving slowly so he didn’t spook her.
She growled and lunged at him, snapped her jaws together just inches from his face, close enough that his portal flickered over his armour, survival instinct bringing it to the fore without him even thinking about using it.
He exhaled slowly, calming himself again.
She snarled, her reptilian jowls rippling with the odd sound, her fangs mere feet from him and filling his vision. She inched closer and the fierce points of her teeth parted enough that she could easily snap them closed over him before he could escape.
But she didn’t.
She remained there, growling so loud that it was deafening. Still trying to scare him away. Not serious about fighting him. Why?
In this form, she could easily crush him. She could eat him whole. It didn’t make any sense, but he would roll with it. He didn’t mind being right and coming away from their meeting with his life.
As casually as he could manage given the proximity of her fangs, he leaned his right hip against the boulder and issued a mental command to his armour. The slats covering his face shifted back, sliding under each other until they had cleared his cheeks and his helmet deconstructed itself, the dragon-like horns shrinking and scales rippling down to join the rest of his armour.
The female edged back, enormous eyes following the transformation. Her elliptical pupils narrowed and she canted her head to one side a fraction of a degree before she jerked it back straight and growled at him again. He had the impression he had just been blamed for something.
Distracting her?
If it would distract her enough to get her to shift into her mortal form, he would strip naked.
His body got the wrong idea about that, blood rushing south. He gritted his teeth and focused on her and his mission. She was just a mission to him. His head didn’t seem to be listening to him, because it started throwing flashbacks of his dreams at him, hot and sweaty visions of them tangled together, naked and lost in passion.
Bleu closed his eyes, blew out his breath as he sought some balance again, reciting his mission orders and the reason he was here to purge the images from his rebellious mind.
Or was that his heart?
It would be typical of the damned thing to slip its leash now, when it was imperative that he remained detached and in control.
He opened his eyes, settling them straight on hers, the source of his problem and his damned objective in this mission. She jerked back and flashed fangs at him, snarling low in her throat.
She didn’t like it when he pinned blame on her.
Well, it was her fault for distracting him with nothing more than her presence.
Her sweet proximity.
It was playing havoc with him.
He barely resisted the urge to fold his arms across his chest, catching himself at the last second. He was here to speak with her and adopting a threatening pose was a sure-fire way of stopping that from happening. She had to feel in control.
Her eyes followed his right hand as he lifted it and touched the left side of his throat, the scales of his armour cool beneath his fingertips. The scars on it tingled, a reminder of what she could do in her mortal form when she felt cornered. He didn’t want to imagine what she might do if she felt cornered when in her dragon one.
Her eyes narrowed and she backed off, even glanced away from him. Guilty? Did she feel bad about what she had done?
He stared at her, letting that sink in, studying her and seeing in her behaviour that she did feel guilty. It strengthened his hope that he had the wrong dragon, because if she had slaughtered thousands of elves as the kingdom believed, she wouldn’t have felt a damn thing about clawing one and leaving him scarred.
“If you return the sword and come with me, there is a chance I can convince my prince to be lenient on you,” he said in her tongue and wrestled with the urge to say more, to somehow make her come with him and leave this valley of death behind her.
And gods, it had nothing to do with fulfilling his damned mission.
She shifted back right before his eyes, transforming into a female who robbed him of his breath, had stolen it the first time he had set eyes on her and every time after that. Silky hair fell to just below her shoulders, deep violet at its roots but pure snow white where it brushed her chest. He curled his fingers into fists, fighting the desire that surged through him and his need to drop his gaze to her bare body and take in every perfect inch of her.
Sweet gods, she was perfect.
Despite his efforts and keeping his eyes locked on her face, carnal hunger flooded him. His ears flared back against the sides of his head and his vision sharpened, a response to the desire now rushing through him like a tidal wave, obliterating all sensible thought, destroying everything in its path until his entire body came alive with the need to have her. His fangs lengthened and he itched with a need to reach out, grab her slender wrist and pull her into his arms.
He needed to kiss her until she melted against him, moaning his name as he burned her resistance away.
No good could come of that.
Bleu slowly clawed back his sanity and closed his eyes, shutting her out as he tried to piece himself back together and remember his place.
And hers.
Until she had proven that she hadn’t stolen the sword, she was his enemy and he had to bring her to justice for her crimes.
It was his mission. His purpose.
He opened his eyes and stared at her, finding her still watching him, her violet-to-white gaze steady. So why couldn’t he bring himself to fight her and take her into custody?
Why the hell was he bent on being diplomatic when he had always sucked at diplomacy? He had been born to find peace through battle, not through words. He wasn’t Loren.
Her eyes narrowed on him, ran down the length of him and set his body on fire again. Gods damn her. He wanted to growl whenever she looked at him like that, had to fight to restrain himself when all he ached to do was step into her, draw her flush against the body she was checking out, and show her just what his armour concealed, pressing every hard inch of him into her.
He bit out a curse in the elf tongue instead and reeled that hunger in, and cursed every mated male he knew while he was at it. Suddenly, he pitied the poor bastards. When he had watched them fawning over their fated one, acting like pricks, he had thought them ridiculous, lacking strength and self-control.
He had been convinced they had allowed the pull of their mate to overcome them.
He was painfully aware now that it hadn’t been the case.
There was no fighting this.
There was only clawing together enough control to keep himself sane and stop himself from acting on every primal instinct that screamed at him to take his female into his arms and bend her to his will.
Clothes moulded over her body, violet leather covering her long legs and a creamy-white corset covering her torso, and matching pale bands closing over her forearms. The hunger he felt abated enough that he could think straight again, and part of him wanted to thank her for having the decency to put him out of his misery by covering herself.
Bleu stared at her, taking her in, recalling all their p
ast meetings and how she had looked then, and comparing it to how she appeared now. At the back of his mind, the sane part of him constantly chanted that she was the enemy of his people, the target of his mission. He should be seizing her now, while he had the chance, and forcing her to return the sword.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t fight her.
He never had been able to do it. Not from the day he had met her. Not even when she had lashed out and clawed him.
He couldn’t raise a hand to her in violence.
Not when every fibre of him beat with a need to lift that hand and brush it across her pale cheek as he asked her the question he really desired to voice—was she unwell?
Darkness arced beneath her striking eyes and her skin was deathly pale, ashen almost, and she was thinner than he recalled, ravaged by either a sickness of the body or the mind.
Was his female ill?
The thought that she might be, that she might be taken from him, almost struck him down.
Bleu started to lift his hand. Her eyes dropped to it and she bared her teeth at him. He stilled.
“Will you do as I ask?” he said, denying his burning need to know what had happened to her. He could find that out if he convinced her to bring him the sword and they left the valley together.
“No.” Her voice was pure light even though she bit the word out in a harsh tone. It washed over his soul like rays of sunlight chasing over a hillside meadow, bathing it in warmth. Stupid instincts. He shut them down. She scowled at him. “Leave.”
Bleu shook his head. “Is it true that your brother is the one responsible for stealing the sword and massacring my kin?”
Her violet-to-white eyes widened.
Her pulse accelerated in his ears.
“Leave,” she said, but this time her voice trembled and he could sense the fear running through her.
She wasn’t afraid of him.
She feared her brother, just as the dragons in the village did.
“You must leave,” she snapped and moved closer, her eyes gaining a desperate and wild edge as they darted between his. “Leave.”
“No. If you are not the one responsible… you have my word that I will speak with my prince on your behalf if you return the sword. I will see to it that the one who is responsible is brought to justice and your name is cleared.” He couldn’t stop himself from edging closer, the need to be near her seizing hold of him as he felt her fear increasing.
He needed to soothe her.
She glanced back over her shoulder, her heart pounding in his ears now.
“Leave!” Her eyes were glassy when she looked back at him, her breath coming faster, soft pants that caused her chest to heave against the white leather corset. Her fear rose, swamping her delicate scent with the bitter note of it, and she whispered, “Too late.”
Too late?
A roar rolled over the valley, rumbling around the black sky like thunder, and wind beat against him, causing the female to sway forwards, her hair whipping around her face.
A huge violet and white dragon landed hard behind her, shaking the ground, and reared up onto its hind legs.
Bleu leaped into action, launching himself towards the female, muscles burning as he reached for her, filled with a need to pull her out of harm’s way and shield her.
A flicker of guilt crossed her incredible eyes, a brief flash of sorrow, and then her right hand came out of nowhere, the back of it catching him across his face. The world flew by in slow motion as he stared at her, mind numbed by one single question.
Was she on her brother’s side?
Bleu’s spine hit a boulder and he grunted as his arms flew out at his sides and his legs kept going, the impact bending his body like a bow being drawn back.
His head spun, senses swirling together and breaking apart, and he could only breathe as he struggled to piece himself back together.
When his faculties were functioning again, the pain dulling to a fierce throbbing, he looked back at the female.
The dragon loomed behind her.
Not hurting her.
The look in its eyes warned that it wanted to hurt him.
It snarled and lunged at him, and the female stepped into its path without hesitation, whirling so her back was to Bleu, and raised her hand. Bleu opened his mouth to scream at her to run and those words fled his lips as the dragon stopped dead, its beaked snout pressed against her outstretched palm, and its massive teeth bared on a growl.
Words swam in his head, spoken in her soft voice, the ringing in his ears making them impossible to decipher.
The dragon eased back.
Bleu could only stare.
She had just saved his life, which, as Sable would have said, was the biggest mind fuck of them all.
He pulled himself up into a sitting position, his aching back pressed against the rock, and tried to make sense of everything that had just happened. She had saved him. She had risked her life to spare his.
He wasn’t sure he should be thanking her when she looked back at him though, her violet-to-white eyes dull and cold, devoid of any light.
He had the sinking feeling he should be praying to his gods to save him from whatever horror awaited him.
CHAPTER 17
Taryn couldn’t shake the heat that rippled through her whenever the elf gazed at her. It had always been this way, from the moment she had met him. Whenever his eyes settled on her, she was intensely aware of him. She felt it even now as she faced her brother. A shockwave of fire blasted through her, burning her up inside, making her yearn to look back at the elf male.
Her gaze turned hazy as that feeling flowed through her and she barely noticed her brother shifting back into his mortal form and clothing himself. He was nothing more than a blur of purple and cream against a fuzzy black backdrop. All of her focus was on the elf male, and on controlling the dangerous feelings rising inside her.
She felt possessive of the male and it was becoming impossible to deny the desire to cross the short span of uneven black ground to him, haul him onto his feet and kiss him, staking a claim on him.
She cursed her species and her gender, aware that it was her dragon instincts that were pushing for control over her. Instincts that would not only land her in trouble, but the elf too if she allowed them to seize command. Females of her kind always had trouble denying their desires, feeling them more keenly than the male of her species. Normally those males were all too happy to satisfy any female who came to them, sating their needs with no strings attached.
They couldn’t satisfy this hunger for her though.
No one but the male at her back could scratch this itch and she was sure he wouldn’t want to help her with it, and she couldn’t allow the thought that he might to sway her. She had to remain strong, in control, even when it felt impossible.
Desire ran strong in female dragon blood, but the possessive brand of desire a female dragon felt for her fated one was a powerful force of nature so potent that their history books were filled with accounts of females igniting wars, fighting legions of warriors, just to get to their mate.
Gods help her. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to deny that sort of need.
Tenak moved towards her and she shook as she kept her booted feet pinned to the spot, resisting the sudden urge to step into his path and stop him from reaching her fated male. She turned as her brother passed her and wanted to close her eyes, wasn’t sure she was strong enough to watch what he was about to do.
What she had requested he do.
A growl rumbled through her as he stopped before the elf male, and every muscle in her body tensed to a painful degree as Tenak grabbed the elf by his throat and hauled him onto his feet. She silently bared her fangs at her brother’s back as he shoved the elf forwards, slamming his back into the boulder, and her male grunted in pain.
Pain that tore through her and had her stepping forwards, her breaths coming faster as she fought the instinct that whispered at her to prot
ect her fated male.
Tenak muttered black things about elves in the dragon tongue as he tightened his grip on the male’s throat.
The whispering became a roar in her mind and her heart as the elf’s purple eyes slid her way, a flicker of awareness in them. She willed him not to fight her brother, to relax and let the darkness take him gently into its arms. His eyes slowly grew wild. In a sudden burst of movement, he scrabbled against the boulder, wriggling and managing to seize hold of Tenak’s bare forearms. Panic flooded the male’s handsome face and she had to force herself to keep looking at him, aware that her brother would know if she looked away. She couldn’t appear partial to the elf. If her brother thought she had feelings for him, he would kill the male to eliminate any competition for her affection.
It hurt to deny the powerful instinct to protect the elf and watch her brother hurting him though.
The elf’s eyes dulled and his struggles slowed, his fingers slipping from her brother’s wrists as he tried to grasp them, each futile attempt taking more effort than the last, until his hands fell limp at his sides.
Gods, she couldn’t watch anymore.
“Brother,” she whispered softly when he showed no sign of releasing the male. “It is done.”
Now, she would subtly manipulate her brother’s actions so he would incarcerate the elf, and then she would find a way to free him from her brother’s claws.
Tenak didn’t release the male.
He raised those claws to strike him down and she launched forwards, unable to stop herself from intervening, and caught his wrist, holding him fast even when he growled at her.
“The male might have valuable information for us,” she said in a gentle voice, one she had perfected during her time with her brother. He responded best when she was tender with him. It seemed to help him temper the madness that infected him, drawing him back to her. Her grip on his wrist tightened and she eased him back, away from the elf. His other hand remained locked around the male’s throat. She placed her hand on that one, covering it, hoping the action would help convince him to loosen his hold, and looked up into his eyes. “I recognise the male. He is a commander from their warrior legions. We have crossed paths before.”
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