He shifted back, wanting to fulfil the desire to go to her, to stand at her side where she needed him in this, her darkest and most challenging hour. The shift was quick to come, but the pain that tore through him as he transformed, his flesh splitting open where his scales had been wounded, stripped what little strength he had gathered and all he could do was lay on the ground and watch, breathing through the agony as Taryn faced off against her brother.
Her grip on the sword tightened.
“I stopped being your sister the day you stopped being my brother,” she bit out and flashed sharp teeth at Tenak. “But you made yourself my sworn enemy when you chose to attack my mate.”
Tenak’s eyes leaped to Bleu and then back to her.
Taryn snarled, “You brought this fate upon yourself.”
Her brother’s eyes shot wide.
Taryn swept the blade to her other side and then slashed upwards, and a brilliant arc of pure white-blue light erupted from it, flying through the air towards her brother. Tenak didn’t have a chance to loose a cry, didn’t have a chance to even open his mouth or move a muscle. The beam reached him in the space of a heartbeat and engulfed him. His shadow hovered in the light for a second before it disintegrated and the arc streaked across the land beyond him, leaving a deep scar in the earth.
Leaving nothing behind.
Taryn stood motionless, her eyes locked on the point where her brother had been, her pain ricocheting around inside Bleu together with his own, hers burning so fiercely that it eclipsed his.
Long seconds passed, and slowly her face morphed from darkness through to anguish and onwards towards relief.
The sword dropped from her hand, struck the earth point first and wavered there as she turned away from it and from the dark scar across the valley.
The relief that he had felt in her disappeared when her violet-to-white eyes landed on him, and tears filled them as she ran towards him, her beautiful expression relaying all of her love for him together with the link that would tie them together forever.
She sank to her knees beside him, her heart thundering in his ears, her lips moving soundlessly as she checked him over. Her dark eyebrows furrowed as her gaze flickered between his and his body. He mustered enough strength to send a mental command to his armour, and the small black scales rippled over his body. Pain shot through him in their wake and he grunted and clenched his teeth against it.
The tears on Taryn’s lashes spilled over, slipping down her cheeks and cutting through the dirt and blood.
She frowned at him, and he knew that later when they were alone, she was going to give him Hell for what he had done, but all that mattered right now was how good it felt to have her fussing over him, her hands on his body and her heart calling out to him through their bond, telling him everything she felt.
All the love that filled her heart.
“Why?” she croaked.
Bleu slowly raised his right hand, tensed his muscles to stop it from shaking, and brushed her hair behind her ear, curling his fingers around it and savouring how she leaned into his touch, seeking more from him.
“Because you were hurting,” he whispered. “I had to do something. I couldn’t let you hurt like that.”
She closed her eyes, turned her face towards his hand and brushed her lips across his palm.
“And now I am still hurting… the sight of you fighting… you falling… the thought that you might get yourself killed just to protect me…” She sighed and looked back at him, caressed his brow and admonished him with her eyes. “I am stronger than you think, Bleu. You do not have to fight my battles.”
He closed his eyes and relaxed against the cool grass, using the connection their touch formed to ease his pain with the knowledge that she was safe and it was over. When he opened his eyes again, hers were no longer chastising him. They shone with affection, mixed with worry, drifting over his body and pinpointing all of his injuries even though his armour concealed them from her eyes. She could feel them echoing on her body just as he could feel hers.
He never had been able to hide anything from her.
Never wanted to if he was honest.
“I’m your mate, Little Dragon. I will always want to protect you.” He sighed and cupped her cheek, and she looked back into his eyes, hers soft with understanding. It ran both ways. He wanted to protect her, and she wanted to protect him. An endless circle. As infinite as their love for each other. “I will always do whatever I have to in order to take away your pain and stop you from hurting.”
He sensed the lands around them emptying, Tenak’s side quick to teleport or fly away as it became clear they had lost this battle. His side had emerged the victors.
Because of Taryn.
Her courage had done more than won the war.
It had saved all of Hell.
His brave, strong and beautiful little dragon.
“And I will always do whatever I have to in order to protect you, and to take away your pain and stop you from hurting,” she said in the dragon tongue and raised her hand towards her face.
He growled low in his throat as she caught her hair and swept it over her shoulder, pinning it to the back of her head, revealing the smooth column of her neck.
Taryn placed her other arm beneath him, raised him up and cradled him to her. He swiped his tongue over her throat, shuddered at the same time as she did, and closed his eyes as he sank his fangs into her. She moaned low in his ear, one that trembled and sent another shiver through him, had his body shooting hard in an instant despite his injuries. He gave a soft pull on her blood and shuddered all over again as her blood hit his tongue and he swallowed a mouthful.
It slid down his throat like warm ambrosia and spread fiery tendrils through him, ones that seemed to dull the pain wherever they touched.
He had seen the effects of a mate’s blood when Loren had been injured and had fed from Olivia, but he hadn’t realised how strongly it would affect him. Bleu sank against her, taking sips of her blood, his strength slowly returning until he had enough to wrap his arms around her and hold her to him.
She smoothed her hands over his back, her touch comforting.
Beneath his armour, he felt the shallower wounds knitting together and the deeper ones beginning to heal as Taryn’s blood flowed through him, restoring his strength and sending his healing abilities into overdrive.
She moaned against his ear, a strained one that she had tried to keep quiet but had slipped free, and tensed. Her embarrassment flowed through him and he wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to be ashamed that she enjoyed the feel of his fangs in her throat.
Only his senses came back online at that very moment and it struck him that it wasn’t shame that had made her tense and stifle her little groan of pleasure.
It was the audience they had gained.
He could feel Loren and Vail nearby, King Thorne and Sable with them, and at more of a distance was Queen Melia and Isla, and the entire army.
Most of them watching him feeding from Taryn.
He reluctantly withdrew his fangs and lifted his head, shot Loren a black look that he hoped conveyed how annoyed he was that his prince had chosen to hold court to the rest of the army just feet from him when he had been sharing a private moment with his mate.
Vail’s lips curled into a wicked smile but at least he had the decency to turn his back. Loren just kept staring.
Waiting, Bleu realised, for Taryn to emerge so he could thank her.
His prince had damned awful timing.
His presence was only made more annoying when Loren held up a small teardrop glass vial with a leaf-shaped lid and raised his eyebrows as he waggled it. Medicine. Bleu curled his lip in disgust, wanted to refuse his prince’s silent order and tell him he would be fine with just Taryn’s blood, but in the end heaved a sigh instead and accepted his fate and the imminent blast of pain he was about to experience.
Because he knew Taryn would feel better, brighter, if he was healed. So he
would bear the pain.
Just this once.
For her.
Bleu eased her back and gave her a look that he hoped told her to go along with Loren’s plan to thank her. They would be alone again soon. Just the two of them. The way it should be.
The way he needed it to be.
He pulled his legs up to his chest as she stood, concealing the evidence of his desire, and caught the small vial Loren tossed to him. He popped the lid off with his thumb, steeled himself and then knocked the liquid back. Fire blazed through him and he gritted his teeth against the white-hot pain that felt as if it was ripping him apart in order to put him back together, refusing to let everyone around him hear him scream in agony.
Taryn touched his knee, her caress comforting and soothing him as the pain began to ebb away, leaving him struggling to catch his breath. Her hand slipped from his knee and he looked up at her as she awkwardly received a handshake from Loren, and the cheers of the entire army gathered before her. Embarrassment blasted through their bond as she stood beside Loren, all eyes on her, but hurt began to creep back in, pain that had Bleu finding his feet and going to her.
He caught her arm and pulled her away from the spotlight, looked over his shoulder at his princes as he walked with her across the valley. Vail nodded, tugged the black blade from the earth and presented it to Loren. Loren took it and nodded at Bleu, the look in his violet eyes telling him to take all the time they needed, and then he disappeared, leaving only a pulsing shimmering outline of him behind.
The entire battlefield emptied, everyone teleporting back to the garrison.
There would be a celebration, but Bleu didn’t feel like rejoicing, not when the price of this victory had been high.
He turned to Taryn and pulled her into his arms, enfolding her in them and holding her against his chest. He sent a mental command to his armour, clearing it from his chest and arms but leaving it covering his legs, wanting her to be comfortable as she rested against him. She trembled, her pain rising again, fiercely burning in her heart. The salty tang of tears filled the air as that pain got the better of her and he sighed as he held her to him in silence, uncaring of time as it trickled past. He stroked her back, wishing there was something he could do to ease her pain as she sobbed in his arms, grieving for her brother. The sky was black by the time she emerged and swiped her palms across her cheeks to rub away her tears.
He had hoped to spare her this pain, but in the end he had probably only added to it by getting himself wounded in the process.
Bleu eased back and sighed as he brushed his thumbs across her cheeks beneath her eyes, capturing the last of her tears. She drew in a deep shuddering breath, exhaled it hard and raised her eyes to his.
This wouldn’t be the last time she cried over her brother and what she had done, but he would be there to hold her whenever she grieved, to tell her how much he loved her and that in time her pain would fade until she had forgotten it and her brother was only a memory.
He would always be there for her.
She fingered his chest, brushing their tips across a pink round fang mark on his right pectoral that one of the dragons had left on him.
“Damn you for being so noble and throwing yourself into my fight,” she said but there was no trace of anger in her words, only love and fear. He had frightened her. It hadn’t been his intention, but he had. He never wanted to frighten her again, not when it clearly hurt her.
“I just wanted to protect you,” he whispered, his eyes holding hers, drinking in all the love they showed. Her love for him. It was deep and endless, and gods, it was beautiful. Everything he had ever dreamed and so much more. “I didn’t want you to suffer and I can feel that you are.”
She lowered her eyes to his chest.
“I cannot deny that. Killing Tenak… I feel as if I am bleeding inside… but I do not feel empty as I had expected.” She raised her gaze back to meet his and carefully laid her palms on his chest, warming him. “Because my connection with you is there within me, filling me with warmth and light… flooding me with your love.”
Bleu lowered his head and caught her lips in a soft kiss, one designed to tell her just how deeply that love ran and that it was endless, a torrent that would never stop flowing.
He sighed as he broke away from her lips, held her face in his palms and breathed her in, still struggling to believe that she was finally his even when he could feel and smell her, could see her and hear her words of love ringing in his mind, and still taste her blood on his tongue.
Blood that she had given him to heal, despite her own wounds.
He closed his eyes and focused on their link, delved into it and flowed into her, sought the deepest of her wounds and seized them. He gritted his teeth and grunted as pain erupted on his body where those wounds were on hers, strongest on his thigh, and she gasped.
Broke free of his hold, severing his connection and halting the process.
She huffed. “I did not give you my blood so you could take my wounds… they are mine to heal.”
Bleu opened his eyes and rolled his right shoulder in a shrug, refusing to apologise for what he had tried to do. She had eased his pain by giving her blood to him, and he had only wanted to ease hers. Besides, the medicine had healed him and he was strong enough to take on some of her wounds for her. It was either that or make her take the medicine herself, and he had caught the look in her eyes when he had been fighting the pain after taking it, the one that had said there was no way in Hell she was going to subject herself to it.
Maybe if he gave her blood, it would help her heal. He wasn’t sure how dragons worked in that respect.
His gaze drifted down to the puncture marks on her neck. Crimson welled in them, beads that trembled on the brink of falling, and he groaned as he realised that he had been so concerned with everyone watching them that he had forgotten to seal them.
He lifted his eyes to hers, held his hand out to her and waited.
Taryn touched her neck, her fingers came away bloodstained, and her eyes darkened as she stared at it.
Not with anger or pain.
With desire.
She placed her hand into his, allowed him to pull her flush against him and tipped her head back as he wrapped his lips around the wound on her throat. She moaned as he gave a shallow pull, her hands jumping up to clutch his shoulders and her fingers digging into his muscles.
Bleu groaned against her neck, the need he had been fighting for what felt like forever now spiralling back out of control as her sweet taste flooded his mouth and the connection between them grew even stronger.
“You need to rest and heal,” she said in a voice thick with desire that told him resting and healing wasn’t the only thing on her mind involving a bed.
“I’m healed, I swear… but I will rest later if it will alleviate your worry… right now I just need you,” he whispered against her flesh and licked the wounds, shuddered as heat shot through him. “You need me too.”
She didn’t deny that. Just moaned in his ear and melted against him, her pain fading into nothingness as desire roared to the foreground, need they had denied too long.
“I do… but…” She sounded breathless already, panting softly as he tongued her neck and lowered his hands to her backside. “You must rest.”
He knew that he should, that he was hardly in any position to be considering the things running through his mind, images of him and Taryn naked and tangled together. His body was healed but he was still weak. He tried to rein them in.
Taryn didn’t help matters.
“Perhaps we could rest together.”
Dear gods.
He wouldn’t be doing any resting if she shared a sickbed with him, that was for sure. He growled and kissed her throat, following the line of it up to her ear, and she moaned when he sucked the lobe between his lips.
“Or we could rest later,” she cried and clutched him, claws pressing into his shoulders. “Do not stop doing that.”
�
�I don’t intend to,” he husked into her ear and she shivered against him, a little moan escaping her. “I intend to keep doing this forever.”
She stilled in his arms, leaned back and searched his face in the low light.
“Forever?”
He nodded and righted her, and smoothed his hand across her cheek as he sensed the trickle of fear that went through her, the need for reassurance and to hear him say it all over again. Although desire reigned, pain still lingered in her heart, born of losing someone she loved, and that hurt clawed at her whether she felt it or not, placed doubt in her head that he would do all in his power to extinguish.
“I told you, Taryn. I love you and I’m yours, and I will always be yours. Nothing will ever change that.”
“Always,” she echoed, a distant edge to her soft voice. “I like the sound of that.”
Not as much as he did.
She leaned in close, tiptoed and brushed her lips across his. “I will love you forever… for always… for all eternity, Bleu… and I will always be yours… and nothing will ever change that.”
Nothing.
He liked that word almost as much as the words ‘always’ and ‘forever’.
Nothing would stand between them. Nothing would keep them apart. Nothing would change their feelings.
They would always be together. They would always love each other.
They would always look forwards.
He dropped his head and kissed his mate, losing himself in her as he always would, losing track of time as they stood together on the battlefield where they had slayed their pasts to set free their future.
A future that began as his lips danced with hers and she held him tight, and their love flowed through their bond, completing each other.
The clock in Valestrum struck the hour, bells ringing twelve times in the distance, and filled him with warmth as he held Taryn closer, his heart close to bursting as something dawned on him.
Yesterday had been the end of their past, a time that would fade into memory, put to rest for eternity.
Today was the start of their forever.
The End
Possessed by a Dark Warrior Page 44