He would eliminate this threat to Anais and she would finally be safe.
He went to launch his fist at the male with every drop of strength he had in his body, a hunger to strike the elf down in order to protect his mate driving him and filling him with a dark craving for violence and bloodshed.
Anais grabbed his arm and he turned on her with a snarl.
And stopped dead as he caught sight of himself in the mirror beyond the black bar.
His eyes glowed bright blue, shining vividly in the low light, and his nails were like talons, his hand raised to grab her shoulder and push her to safety.
It was his vision.
A shiver went through him, as cold as ice but burning like fire, and he couldn’t breathe as it all fell into place.
He had seen that image now staring back at him. A male lifting a hand to her, his talons poised to strike her down.
He had seen himself.
He was the one who would ultimately cause her death.
That was the reason he had seen her die in his cave. Why he had seen her die in this room.
That was the reason he couldn’t see the person who did it, because he didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to kill her, but he would.
And he didn’t know what to do.
It wasn’t that he would kill her right now, but that it would happen at some point, and the sickening heavy feeling inside his chest told him that he knew when that point would be.
The need to claim her as his mate burned in his blood and she wasn’t strong enough to survive mating with a dragon.
And he wasn’t strong enough to deny his need to do it.
“Loke, what’s wrong?” she whispered.
He released her and staggered backwards, shaking his head as he stared at her through wide eyes, sick to his stomach as his heart shattered in his chest.
“I have to leave… now… I have to go.” Loke looked from her to the elf male, the one who apparently wanted to help him get back home.
There was a knowing look in the male’s violet eyes. Those eyes seemed to see straight through him, leaving no part of him untouched. The elf prince knew what was happening, even if Anais couldn’t see it.
“We can go,” she said.
Loke’s eyes leaped back to her and the pain in his chest only grew worse as he realised that she wanted to return to Hell with him. He had been wrong. She wanted to be with him. Gods, the fates were cruel. All he wanted was Anais, but he could never trust himself with her.
He shook his head and her face fell, her hurt swift to race through him and worsen his own agony.
He kept backing away from her, even when all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and swear he would find a way they could be together. He couldn’t risk it. The need to claim her as his mate was already strong and he had already come close to initiating a bonding several times. If he took her back with him, if he stayed with her, it was only a matter of time before he lost his mind to the need to mate and ended up killing her.
“The vision,” he whispered when her blue eyes implored him to explain why he was hurting her and distancing himself. “I just saw it again.”
She took a step towards him and held her right hand out to him, her need for him to take it shining in her eyes and lacing her feelings. Gods, he wanted to give her what she needed, but he couldn’t.
It was killing him.
He shook his head again and fear touched with pain and sorrow crossed her face.
She took another harder step towards him. “It’s just a vision.”
He held his hands up and she stopped. “It was not a vision this time. It was the vision made real. I saw what I had witnessed in my dreams. I saw myself.”
She began to shake her head and her fair eyebrows furrowed.
“What are you saying?” she snapped, her voice thick with emotion that told him she knew exactly what he was saying but she didn’t want to believe it.
He didn’t want to believe it either, not even when all the evidence pointed to it being true.
“It is me. I am the one who will kill you.”
The silence in the room grew heavy with tension and he could feel everyone’s eyes on him but he didn’t take his off Anais.
“No.” She folded her arms across her chest and frowned at him. “I won’t believe that.”
He wished he could say the same thing with as much conviction as she had, but it wasn’t about believing. It was the truth. It was fact. Nothing could change it.
“I have to go, Little Amazon,” he whispered and clenched his fists at his sides to stop himself from reaching out to her and clinging to her as he wanted to. “I need to do this. I must protect you. It was always about protecting you… saving you. I did not think it would come down to protecting you from myself though.”
“We can work it out.” She took another step towards him, her eyebrows furrowing again and tears swimming in her eyes as her pain grew stronger, beginning to eclipse his own. Gods, he didn’t want to hurt her. When she looked at him like that, he wanted to pull her into his embrace and take all her pain away. She shook her head. “Don’t do this, Loke. We can figure out a way around it or to make it not happen.”
“I cannot… will not place you in danger. I have to leave you.” His voice hitched as his throat closed and the aching in his heart grew fiercer, ripping him apart from the inside. Six thousand years of life and now he felt as if he was dying, all because a little mortal female had made him truly feel alive for the first time. The thought of existing without her destroyed him, but he would do it if it meant knowing that she was safe. He coughed to clear his throat but his words still came out hoarse and strained, raspy with emotion. “Please do not make this any harder than it already is for me.”
She kept shaking her head, the pain in her eyes colliding with fire, anger that he could feel in her and he deserved. He was hurting her, and it made him feel like a bastard, but if he had to wound her in order to drive her away and save her life, he would do it.
“You’re my mate,” she said it so resolutely that he halted, his feet frozen in place by her announcement and the steely look in her blue eyes that challenged him to deny it.
He couldn’t.
Not when every fibre of his being was constantly screaming that she was his and he needed to mate with her to bind them together for eternity.
“You are my mate,” he whispered and held his hand up when she went to speak. “I know it deep in my blood… but I also know what that means. Mating is dangerous for dragons. It is not unheard of for a male to accidentally kill their female during the bonding process. We lose control and are consumed by our instincts.”
He started backing away from her again, maintaining the distance between them as she strode towards him.
“I will not put you through that, Anais,” he said, his voice loud in the silent room. “I will not be responsible for your death.”
His voice cracked on the last word and he couldn’t take it anymore. He threw a look at the elf prince and the male barely nodded, accepting his silent plea for help.
Loke looked back at Anais, drinking in the sight of her and putting her beauty to memory. A memory that he would carry with him always and use as a balm for his broken heart in the cold centuries that lay ahead of him.
He allowed her to finally close the distance between them, tears lining his eyes as he kept them on hers. Her pain mingled with his and his heart broke all over again as she halted in front of him and they balanced on the brink of snapping the slender thread that tied their souls together.
His little Amazon.
He had found the true meaning of life in her, a life filled with incredible beauty and emotion, with purpose and warmth. All of it shared with another. His soul mate. His one fated female.
He didn’t want to give all that up.
He held her gaze and whispered to her in the dragon tongue, “You are my eternal mate… and I wish with all of my heart that things could be different for us
. I wish I did not have to give you up, because I am in love with you, and I always will be. There will never be another female for me. There will only be you. Forever.”
He raised a trembling hand and touched her cheek, using the pad of his thumb to brush away a tear that had fallen. It killed him. He wanted to kiss her one last time, but he feared it would break him completely.
Loke settled his fingers against her face and found the strength deep within him. He was willing to risk it in order to take this one last memory of her with him.
One he would cherish forever.
His lips would never touch another.
He had been made for her, and he would always stay true to her.
He dipped his head and kissed her, and it utterly destroyed him, ripping him to shreds and leaving him trembling, his lips shaking against hers as he fell apart.
He needed her in his arms and he needed to never let her go.
He reached for her and the elf prince caught his wrist, spun him away from her and darkness swallowed him.
The black valley of the dragons stretched below him, cold wind buffeting him as he stood on the mountainside with the elf at his side.
It seemed so cold and empty now.
“It was a courageous thing you did to let her go.” The elf prince released him and Loke shut down the part of him that wanted to beg the male to take him back, because his home wasn’t here. His home was wherever Anais was. The male looked at him and sighed. “But courage is not always the answer. You love her and she loves you.”
He didn’t want to hear that. He turned away from the black-haired male but the elf didn’t leave.
“She gave part of herself to heal you and bring you back in touch with nature through my connection to it. That was the reason you were able to live in that world without it killing you.” The male’s voice was low and quiet, but Loke felt as if he had shouted each word as they hit him and he realised the danger she had placed herself in for his sake. “She sacrificed a fragment of her life force to save you.”
Loke closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He knew what the elf was telling him, and he knew that Anais had no clue about what the male had done. He didn’t think that the elf would have explained every little detail. The male had been meddling. He had known Anais’s feelings for him, and his for her, and he had known what would happen if she gave part of herself.
He had known it would bind them together.
No matter how far apart they were, Loke would always feel her. He pressed a hand to his bare chest and sensed a faint glimmer of hurt and her despair through the connection that linked him to her. She would always be a part of him, and he a part of her. They would never be apart.
They would never stop wanting each other.
The elf had cursed them to drift through their lives feeling as if part of them was missing.
Loke hung his head and his bare shoulders heaved as he sighed. “What would you have me do? A dragon mating is too dangerous. She would not survive it.”
“I know of dragons.” The prince came around in front of him on the ledge, his back to the dark scenery stretching around them. He suited this forbidding place more than his verdant kingdom, his black armour making him look as if he had been made to live in the darkness of this land. His fangs flashed between his lips as he spoke. “I know of the great strength of your species and how that part of you makes you dangerous… but I also know that you love her. Love is a powerful force in itself. Love makes you want to protect her and keep her safe, enough to sacrifice what you had. Perhaps love can give you the strength to find a way to hold back the most dangerous part of yourself.”
“Perhaps it could, but it would be a fool’s venture to even risk it.” Loke looked away from the prince, settling his gaze on the distant mountains in the direction of his cave.
A cave that would forever remind him of Anais.
“I am no fool, Elf, and I will not risk Anais like that.” He flicked a glance back at the male.
The prince blew out his breath, an exasperated edge to his handsome face and violet eyes.
“I will leave that for you to decide… but consider the alternative. The next five decades or so aching for the female you left behind, and the next five millennia filled with regret.” The prince weathered Loke’s glare and the warning growl that curled from his lips. “I would speak with you soon about dragons… one in particular we are hunting. A dragon who attacked my realm and stole something precious from me.”
Loke nodded, his heart pounding for a different reason as he sent a prayer to his gods that Taryn was safe.
“Think about what I said.” The elf disappeared before he could respond, leaving Loke high on the mountain.
Gods, he had never felt so alone.
His heart clung to the strained connection between him and Anais, and the need to see her again was already unbearable. He wasn’t sure how he was going to last the next fifty years without her, let alone the next five thousand.
But he had to do it.
It was the only way to protect her and stop him from killing her.
Or was it?
CHAPTER 26
Anais stood on the flat rooftop of the old elegant sandstone building that had been her home for almost a decade but no longer felt like it. She felt out of place among the hunters that called it home now, even when the heads of the organisation had given her leave to remain as part of it, at least until there had been a full investigation into what had happened the night Loke had escaped. Those in Archangel who had been her friends now looked at her with suspicious eyes—the same way they looked at Sable whenever her back was turned. It was as if they had betrayed Archangel and those hunters by falling in love with their fated mates, when that wasn’t the case at all.
Both she and Sable still burned with a desire to help the humans and non-humans who wanted to live in peace with each other.
In fact, her desire to help both sides in their fight against the immortals who meant them harm had grown stronger than ever.
Her gaze scanned the rooftops of London stretching around her, taking in the panorama of a thousand warm lights puncturing the inky darkness and throwing a glow up into the air.
She wanted to hold back the darkness just as those lights did.
She had taken to coming to the roof every night after she had finished her work. She liked the silence and welcomed the cool crisp air and being alone with her thoughts. Those thoughts always ran along the same lines.
It had been five days since he had left her in Underworld with her heart in pieces and that heart still ached whenever she thought about him. She knew that he had left her in order to protect her, but that didn’t mean it had hurt her any less. It didn’t make it easier for her to handle and she wasn’t sure she would ever overcome the pain he had caused her. It seemed to live like a constant thing within her, refusing to ease even in the slightest. She carried her pain wherever she went—into meetings, into battle, and onto this rooftop.
Sometimes, she swore the pain wasn’t hers, not entirely anyway.
Sometimes, she swore she could feel Loke’s presence.
Her eyes tracked a plane as it cut low across the clear sky, lights flashing as it headed straight towards London Heathrow.
Loke might have placed a barrier between them that was difficult for her to overcome, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up on him. She knew from Sable that when an immortal found their fated one that they were compelled to mate with them and seal their bond, but she wished it didn’t have to be that way if that was the only reason Loke had left her. The thought of never seeing him again hurt too much for her to bear.
She stared off into the distant darkness. London looked so bleak and cold to her now, a desolate place.
Because Loke was gone.
She hadn’t realised how much light and warmth he had brought into her life until he had teleported out of it.
“I thought I’d find you here.” Sable’s voice cut through the quie
t hum of the night and Anais looked over her shoulder at the black-haired huntress. She blended into the darkness with her black t-shirt, leather trousers and knee-high boots. “Still moping?”
Anais scowled at her. “I’m not moping.”
“I bet he’s doing the same.” Sable halted beside her and looked off into the distance. “It’s typical of men from his world. They don’t have a bloody clue how strong Archangel huntresses are. Thorne was the same. He treated me as if I was some precious little princess who couldn’t fend for herself.”
“What did you do to change his mind?” Anais wanted to know, because she had seen Thorne when he had been like that, and she had also witnessed Thorne as a demon who showed Sable a hefty amount of respect and near-constantly praised her strength.
“I made it clear that I was a strong, independent woman who wasn’t afraid to unleash some whoop-ass on him if he dared to belittle me.” Sable placed her right hand on Anais’s shoulder and squeezed it as she smiled brightly. “We can find a way to make Loke pay for being so bloody annoyingly chivalrous. Don’t worry. You know where Loren dropped him?”
Anais sighed. “He’s probably gone back to his cave.”
Sable’s smile widened. “You know, he’s probably the first man I’ve met who can actually say he really has a man-cave.”
Anais almost smiled. She might have if in that moment she hadn’t experienced a sudden sensation of being empty, as if a piece of her was missing. The unsettling sensation eased and she frowned as she wondered what was wrong with her. Was it just the result of missing Loke and talking about him?
“Just say the word and Thorne will give you a lift. Contact me on my mobile if you need me.” Sable released her and began walking back towards the stairs.
“Where are you going?” She had thought Sable was done with her work for the night but the huntress seemed to have other plans.
Sable looked back at her, an edge of darkness in her golden eyes. “I have to talk with an angel about a problem I feel I’m going to have with that Echelon angel. I need more info about my bloodline, because I have the feeling he’s going to be one persistent bastard.”
Taken by a Dragon Page 24