Forbidden by Fate

by Kristin Miller

  Oh, so the sleek one was the deadliest. Damon had been right.

  Damon stepped out of his jeans, tossed aside his cloak and hung his head low. With a loud snapping sound, his wings exploded from his back. They unfurled, bulking up. He stretched them to their fullest with a quick flap and then shook a heavy coat of scales down his body.

  Despite the fact that he was about to kill his second wolf of the night, Damon didn’t feel as powerful as he had before, when he was lying in bed with Sasha. His muscles were firing hot, ready to strike. His legs were light, and adrenaline was worming its way through him, pumping him up for what was to come.

  Even so, Damon couldn’t help but feel like this was not a new beginning with the rest of his clan at Castle Arcane—this was the end.

  A definitive end to the possibility of a life with Sasha.

  After this moment—this one last kill strike—he’d never look back. Never look at another full moon, wondering if Sasha was thinking of him, too. Damon would leave her behind, along with every memory at the springs. It’d kill him to do it—he’d be a ghost of the Draco he once was—but it had to be done.

  This was it.

  Damon unfurled his wings to their greatest length, sat back on his haunches and roared, rattling the leaves from the trees. He called to Sasha, wherever she was, yelling until his lungs emptied and his chest ached. His cry startled the wolf, who hunched low, its face shadowing to an ominous black slate.

  Damon pounced, bounded through the air and over the spring. He landed with a thud as the wolf rolled out of the way. It charged around the other side. Damon was right—the slick-backed fur ball was quick.

  He leaped again, spun around and around like a tornado, slicing his massive wings through the air, using their natural weight to pull him over the spring and closer to his enemy. The wolf backed away, pushed flush against Were Mountain, and howled over the rebellious wails coming from its packmates above.

  What was it doing? Damon wondered. It almost seemed like the wolf didn’t want to fight. Was it waiting for the perfect moment to strike?

  If Damon had anything to say about it, the wolf wouldn’t get the chance.

  As he pulled out of his spin and leveled his stare on the wolf, he saw something in its furry expression. Something that made Damon pause instead of stabbing his wing tip through the wolf’s chest cavity.

  The wolf was gripped with fear.

  The split-second hesitation cost him. Instead of shrinking further into the mountain, the wolf smacked him open-pawed across the snout and then gouged its claws into Damon’s nostrils.

  Searing pain raced to his skull, blinding him. Not wasting a single moment, the wolf beat him over the head and nose, strike after strike. They weren’t heavy blows, but they were lightning fast and came from unexpected angles.

  Burying his head, Damon curled his wings around the wolf and squeezed. He whirled around and tossed the mountain of fur to the earth like a chew toy.

  Wolves cried in opposition and dragons beat their wings against trees, creating their own storm of roaring thunder that rumbled the earth at their feet.

  Landing on its back, the wolf attempted to roll away. Damon stabbed a wing tip through its shoulder. Fur ball wasn’t going anywhere.

  It howled, its neck arching back in pain, its black fur glistening with sweat.

  Damon knelt over the top of his prey, ready to dig its heart out, when stunning violet eyes pierced through him.

  Sasha’s eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  Holy shit, what had she done?

  She wasn’t supposed to be fighting Damon. She’d merely come to make a grand presentation at her father’s command, to stand next to him and the warrior they’d chosen—Bludge.

  But the words her father whispered moments before the fight had changed everything.

  “If Damon makes it out of the ring alive, I’ll kill him.”

  Panic had set in, clamming her skin, sickening her stomach. She’d been such a fool to come. To believe her father wanted to make a united showing to the pack. He’d chosen her to fight. To kill the man she loved.

  They were both dead, their futures colliding with lethal force.

  Sasha couldn’t kill Damon any more than she could dig her own heart out of her chest, but if she sacrificed herself, dying by Damon’s hands, her father would kill him anyway.

  Sasha didn’t have time to think of a way out of the situation. Damon had charged, taking her off guard. She’d defended herself. Escaped to the other side of the spring.

  But Damon was faster and much too strong to fend off for long. He’d pinned her, the tip of his blade piercing her flesh, stabbing straight into the bone…but then he paused.

  Chills scampered up Sasha’s spine, working fast to numb the pain. She closed her eyes for a split second, bracing for the kill shot she’d seen him use on Gordon. Instead, the metallic silver dragon that had been hovering over her disappeared, leaving Damon standing naked and glistening with sweat in its place.

  “Sasha?” Damon dragged his cloak over his shoulders. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  God, she didn’t know. Tears scorched her throat. How could she explain what had happened? Because Damon loved her too damn much to harm her during the fight, the wolves could easily win the springs, and he’d die the moment he stepped off neutral territory.

  Her father was cruel to use their love as a weapon of war—he was more of a monster than she realized.

  Her shoulder throbbed something fierce, stinging with each hard pulse of blood, but it paled in comparison to the implosion of her heart.

  “Are you crazy?” Damon screamed, as the dragons behind him beat against the trees harder and harder, creating a banging symphony that would only climax in her death. “I could’ve killed you!”

  She shrank from the fury in his voice, the rage in his eyes. And for a second, Sasha thought the anger boiling inside him might’ve erupted completely, sending him spiraling over the edge of reason.

  “Fight, Sasha!” her father screamed from the sidelines. “Finish him!”

  Damon recoiled at his words and helped Sasha get into a crouched position. “Is the urge to follow your Alpha’s orders so severe that you’d rather kill me than disobey him?”

  She shook her head and backed away. Damon simply didn’t understand the predicament she’d been put in. Should she shift back and tell him she loved him? That this was the last place on the isle she wanted to be? Would her father take her shifting back to Were form as an invitation to strike Damon down now?

  This couldn’t be their last moment together…couldn’t be…

  “You know what?” Damon’s tone dripped with venom as he lifted his hands to his sides. “It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing more you can take from me, Sash.” He charged her slowly, backing her against the mountain. “I’ve given up everything to be with you—my home, my family, my heart. But it’s still not enough.” He jerked off his cloak and tilted his head in front of her jaws, baring his neck. “You might as well take what’s left.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Queen Elixa shouted, charging onto neutral ground. “You were chosen to fight! Fight!”

  Kenyon mirrored the intrusion, blocking the queen’s path to Damon. They exchanged heated words, none of which Sasha could hear. She stared into Damon’s liquid-silver eyes, tuning out everything around them.

  “What are you waiting for?” Damon asked, his voice a thick rasp. “If this is what it’s come to, I don’t want to live anyway.”

  Damon had to know this isn’t what she wanted.

  She leaned in close…so close to his neck. He held surprisingly still and sucked a jagged breath between his perfect lips. The warm, spicy scent she’d come to associate with Damon flooded her senses. With a soft growl, she nuzzled against him, rubbing her nose down his neck and along his collarbone.

  His gaze slowly tracked her movement. And when she looked up at him, remorse shining through her, he sighed. She c
aught the slow exhale from the tiniest of shoulder slumps. If she wasn’t so in tune with the slight movements of his body, she wouldn’t have caught it.

  The moment ended too quickly.

  With a thunderous roar, Kenyon leaped through the air and knocked them both to the ground. Damon rolled over the ground and jumped to his feet, shifting into a dragon before Sasha could stand upright. Her protective instinct soared.

  Alpha or not, Kenyon would not touch a scale on Damon’s body.

  Jumping between them—the dragon with the deadly wings and the wolf with fangs that salivated for vengeance—Sasha snarled from the pit of her stomach. The reverberating growl rolled through her body, from her curled-back toes, over the hunch of her back, to the fur standing high on her neck. Damon towered behind her. Heat hurled from his body, shrouding them in a haze of fury. But she didn’t need his help.

  This was her fight. And it was a long time coming.

  Kenyon bared his gums, revealing the full length of his fangs. He growled deep in his belly. Glared beneath thick, furry brows. Hunched low as his back arched higher.

  He was no longer her father. But a wolf—an Alpha—contested for pack dominance.

  Though Sasha didn’t see Queen Elixa step in behind her, her musky perfume wafted over Sasha’s shoulder. “Come,” she whispered to Damon. “They are fighting for leadership of the pack. We cannot intervene.”

  Damon pushed against Sasha, shoving the queen aside with a swipe of his wing.

  “We fight for the hot springs, you arrogant ass…not for this.” She pulled him back with a jerk. “Not for this. You will unleash full-scale war between our races.”

  Sasha was going to rip out Kenyon’s jugular whether Damon was standing two or twenty feet behind her. Adrenaline was pumping too fast and too hot now.

  Keeping her attention on the twitching flanks of her father, Sasha felt the assuring tap of Damon’s wing on her shoulder blade…and then he disappeared somewhere behind her.

  Kenyon paced around Sasha, jugular pulsing, the sides of his mouth foaming.

  He lurched with the force of his massive body, snapping for her face. She recoiled, shrinking back, and then thrust forward and clawed him good, right across his nostril. Blood trickled from her claw.

  Sasha lashed out again and chomped at Kenyon’s neck. He reacted fast. Snapped back. Bounded to the side to get a better lead on her. She followed his path, mouth open wide, fangs dripping in anticipation.

  He would not win this fight.

  Sasha would bring him down, even if it meant her own death.

  Kenyon lunged to her right. She dodged right. He sprang to her left, she matched him. She wasn’t going to overtake him this way, tit for tat, bite for bite.

  Knowing how he liked to prey on the weak, Sasha retreated, taking a slow step back.

  He charged just as Sasha thought he would, rage fueling his attack. She took her chance. Planting her feet, Sasha let him push her onto the ground. Except she didn’t fall back helpless and defeated. As she fell, she gouged her claws into Kenyon’s back and reared up, sinking her teeth into his neck. She hit the ground hard. Blood spurted into her mouth, drenching both her lips and his fur.

  Teeth still lodged in the side of his neck, Sasha hooked one of her legs around his and swung herself over the top of him. He howled and screamed for help.

  Wait…

  “Get your asses down here and get her off me!” he shouted. “Can’t you see she’s gone mad? She’s going to kill me!”

  Wolves couldn’t talk in their animal form.

  Unless…

  “Stand down,” she ordered through her mind, gasping when his muscles instinctively relaxed. He looked up at her, the gleam in his eyes yielding. “You can hear me? That means I’m…I’ve become…”

  “What the hell did you do?” Kenyon eyed the blood dripping from her mouth. “What have you done? I can hear you, but…no, it can’t be. I’m still unchallenged. Positions haven’t changed. Not yet! Didn’t you fools hear me? I’m still unchallenged!”

  “Alpha.” She heard the pack as one, echoing their respectful chant through her mind. “Sasha, daughter of Kenyon, command us at will.”

  She’d stood up to her father—challenged her Alpha—and had earned the respect of the pack.

  What had she done? She pulled herself to her feet, eyeing the pack of wolves on the mountain. The wolves she now commanded. They bowed, one by one, lowering themselves onto their front legs.

  Her father rolled over, stumbled to all fours…and bowed in line with the rest, despite the rejection paling his muzzle.

  “I’ll never understand why you treated me the way you did,” she said through her mind, so the entire pack could hear. “Why you’d put your own daughter into a fight where she’d either die or watch the love of her life get killed at the hands of her father.”

  “Give me a chance to explain, Sasha, and you’ll see I had no choice.”

  She sighed, searching for Damon through the clan of dragons perched at the edge of the springs. She spotted him shoving his legs into his jeans, his back turned from the crowd. Once he dressed , he strode to Queen Elixa’s side. She almost ran to him, wrapped her arms around him and buried her head in his chest. But there was still something that had to be done…

  “I won’t give you another chance to ruin my life,” Sasha said, dragging her attention from Damon to her father. “You already did it once when you ripped us apart, and you just tried to do it again. I’d be a fool to let you explain anything a third time. Now leave my sight before I finish what was started.”

  As he skulked back into Were Mountain with the rest of the pack, his tail was dragging embarrassingly close to the ground.

  Being the only wolf left at the springs amongst a sea of dragons, Sasha shifted back to Were form. She snatched Damon’s cloak off the ground, threw it around her shoulders and cinched it closed.

  “Interesting turn of events back there.” Damon coiled his arm around Sasha’s waist and pulled her into a tight embrace. “I suspect there’s a lot of explaining you’d like to do.”

  She forgot he couldn’t hear mind-speak…and suddenly knew what it was like to be wearing the other shoe. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you every last detail.” Her gaze skipped to the dragons watching with drama-hungry eyes. “Later.”

  He nodded and kissed her cheek.

  Queen Elixa pushed through the clan with an enchanted air, magical and breathtaking. She stood in front of Damon and Sasha on neutral ground, yet she had an aura of conquest. “Never thought I’d live to see the day when a female would take control of the pack.”

  “It’s not so far-fetched, is it?” Sasha asked, raising a challenging brow. “How much of the isle do you control?”

  “Oh, dear,” Queen Elixa sang, shooing her question away with a flick of her wrist, “let’s not talk territories just yet.”

  “And the territory we’re standing on? The hot springs? What of those?”

  Queen Elixa studied Sasha carefully. “With a new Alpha comes new rules for land negotiation, but you knew that, didn’t you, slippery girl?” She sighed. “We’ll have to hold the fight another day.”

  “If there needs to be a fight at all,” Sasha said. “I’m sure we can find a way to share the hot springs, bringing peace between us. What did you want with them anyway?”

  She leaned in close and whispered, “There are legends that a certain spring on the isle has healing powers. Some legends say that those powers can only be awakened when a Draco and Were are joined together for life.”

  “Is that why you insisted Damon negotiate the terms of the springs?” Sasha asked, understanding the real reason he was chosen. Queen Elixa had planned to shove Damon and Sasha together all along. To see if their springs were the ones that birthed the legend.

  “There are other legends, too,” she continued, nodding. “Ones that speak of our beginning and our end. Some believe the legends are carved into the walls of caves along the old riverbeds.”
She turned her attention to Damon. “You wouldn’t know where to find one of those caves, would you?”

  Damon shook his head. “No clue.”

  “Well, we have plenty of time to talk about all this later. I’ll arrange a meeting in the coming weeks, though I’ll have to find a new messenger to send now, won’t I?” Queen Elixa’s lips pulled into a proud smile as the entire clan of dragons took to the sky in an outburst of flapping wings, leaving the forest oddly void of color. “You will be a fine Alpha, Sasha, I feel it in my bones.”

  When she turned and retreated into the forest, Sasha heard the familiar whoosh of a Draco shifting, then the pounding of a massive set of wings. And although Sasha didn’t see Queen Elixa shoot through the sky, she bet the sight was brilliant.

  Damon set his smoldering silver gaze upon Sasha, erasing all thoughts of the fight, the queen and her father.

  “What am I going to do with you?” He tunneled desperate fingers through her hair, dragging her deeper into his embrace.

  “I can think of a few things.” She stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him, slipping her tongue past his lips. Hot sparks of fire mixed with lingering bursts of adrenaline shot through her chest and down her body, making her warm and tingly in the naughtiest of places.

  “Mmm,” he said, licking the taste of her off his lips. “That’s a good start.”

  “We’ll have a great end, too.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Sasha kissed him again, using the skill of her tongue as a distraction, and then shoved him backward into the hot spring. Arms flailing, smiling ear to ear, Damon created a monstrous splash before slipping underwater.

  She shed the cloak and followed him in, jumping into his arms as he resurfaced.

  “Brat,” Damon teased, swiping water out of his eyes.

  “Sure you want to live with me forever?” she asked.

  He smashed her against him, until the heat between their bodies made the steaming spring seem cool. “I’d like to be claimed in the Draco mating ceremony…if you’ll have me.”