Master of Frost

by Bolryder, Terry

  “And if I say no?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  Dmitri sighed. “Fine. Let me get my coat on.”

  “A coat? For an ice dragon?” The newcomer sounded amused, but it didn’t change that his early words could be taken as threatening.

  The front door opened, and Chelle had only a few seconds to realize they were actually leaving before the door shut again.

  Panicking, she ran out into the living room, then yanked open the door to see where Dmitri had gone.

  Dmitri had told her before that she should run if she ever knew one of their kind was around, but she didn’t want to run at all now.

  Unless it was to run after Dmitri and save him.

  She pulled out her phone to dial Luka just as she ran out the back of the apartment complex and saw Dmitri getting into a large, black car with the other dragon.

  Hopefully, they just wanted to ask questions. She had no idea how dragons interacted with other dragons. As the car pulled away, tinted windows preventing her from seeing Dmitri’s face inside, she ran back to the apartment, still waiting for Luka to pick up the phone.

  When he didn’t, she ran to Alek’s apartment, knowing that was Luka’s most likely location when he wasn’t at home.

  When Luka answered the door, looking sleepy with his dark hair mussed, he gave a big yawn, then focused in on her. “Chelle? What’s up?”

  She shuffled from foot to foot, telling herself to stop panicking. Heck, this whole thing might even be what Dmitri wanted. Surely, no one could force him to do anything otherwise.

  They were probably sent by other friendly dragons to help him adjust in this world. To be one of them.

  Maybe?

  “I… Someone took Dmitri.” Even as she said it, it sounded bad.

  Luka instantly sobered and glanced around for Alek before walking outside with her quickly. “What do you mean someone took him?”

  She crossed the hall to her apartment, trying to get her heart to calm down. If only she had reacted quicker. But what could she even have done?

  She fidgeted as Luka closed the door behind him and then folded his arms, expression serious.

  “I don’t know, exactly. I was in my room. I heard him open the door. I didn’t go out there because, you know.”

  Luka nodded. “You two have been awkward as hell lately.”

  She grimaced. “True. But I listened, just in case it would help. The other person, I think they were a dragon, based on the way they were talking.”

  Luka’s eyes widened in alarm. “And you just let him go?”

  “I didn’t know how to stop him.” She felt tears bite at her eyes. “Dmitri told me to never interact with one of your kind. I thought for sure he wouldn’t be talked into doing anything he didn’t want to.”

  Luka paced agitatedly. “He wouldn’t want to go full dragon in an apartment with his mate. Leaving would have been the only option.”

  “The guy he went with didn’t seem like a terrible person. What if he came over to help?”

  Luka shook his head. “That’s not how dragons work. Not in our time. Not ice dragons. We fought viciously. If another dragon was found in our territory, that meant it was trying to take all we had. Dragons fought to the death over it.”

  Chelle felt like the world had stopped turning as she stared blankly ahead. Someone wanted… to hurt Dmitri? Who would do that?

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I would have tried to stop him—”

  Luka sighed. “It’s not your fault. And you’re right. Dmitri wouldn’t have wanted you to go out there. There was nothing you could do.” Luka cracked his neck, looking around for his keys and a hat. “I have to go save him. I just hope it’s enough.”

  “I’m coming,” Chelle said firmly.

  “But you’re not—”

  “I’m not a dragon,” she said. “But Dmitri loves me. If he is going to be fighting for his life, I should be there. I should be letting him know he has a reason to come home.”

  “Or you might just get turned into an ice cube,” Luka said drily.

  Chelle thought of a world without Dmitri. One worse than the one she’d been living in, where instead of seeing him here and there in her apartment, she couldn’t see him at all.

  If he was gone, the world wouldn’t have a point anymore. Everything in color would be gray.

  She loved him. More than she had ever loved anything or anyone. More than she had a right to. More than she’d ever thought she could.

  And despite the sirens in her mind, she needed to tell him. Right this second. If she didn’t, she might not get another chance.

  She needed to tell him that if he died, she wanted to die with him, so he’d better keep fighting.

  Without him, there was no point being alive.

  Feeling the past still tearing at her with its icy fingers, she walked forward to stand stubbornly in front of Luka. “I want to help him. You know I owe him that much.”

  Luka shook his head. “Dmitri is going to kill me, but fine. I won’t stop you.” He cracked his knuckles. “The first thing is we need to find him. I have him tracked on my phone with that app you use to stalk people.”

  Chelle’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  “Find my people. Or something.” Luka studied his phone. “Great. Found him. If I’m right, he’s flying right now. Wait, he stopped moving.” Luka opened the door to the apartment. “Come on. We’ll have to drive to where I can transform and fly the rest of the way.”

  “Should we tell Alek?”

  “No,” Luka said fiercely. “No one knows about Alek yet, since he wasn’t involved with the matter at the nightclub. I suspect that drew attention to Dmitri in the shifter underworld. But Dmitri would agree with me that Alek should be kept out of this.”

  “All right,” Chelle said, hoping against hope they would get there quick enough.

  “Besides,” Luka said with an almost evil expression she’d never seen on him before. “If Dmitri and I pair up, I don’t think anyone, even a dozen dragons, could take us on.”

  Chelle followed him out to the cab he’d called, hoping he was right.

  For now, all her thoughts were on Dmitri. Hoping she got a chance to tell him she loved him, hoping she would finally be brave enough to tell him all of her truth.

  Chapter 15

  “That’s rough,” Lucien, the sapphire dragon, said before taking a deep breath and letting out a huge, icy-blue gust that sent ice needles everywhere. “I had a difficult time with my mate, but it wasn’t as hard as that.”

  Dmitri nodded. “It’s been interesting. Nice needle blast, by the way.” He swiped his huge, ice-spiked tail and sent a row of ice missiles straight at Lucien, who quickly dodged and parried with an ice wall.

  The wall broke against the missiles, leaving the air filled with ice as both dragons smiled.

  It felt good to be in dragon form with another dragon. Dmitri had been a little worried when the blond stranger with the soothing voice had shown up at his door. But given that there was just one of them, he’d figured he could take him.

  Plus, he’d known he might be able to get more information from another dragon, and if it had ended up being a trap, Dmitri had been confident that no dragon would be able to incapacitate him.

  His judgement had turned out to be good, anyway, because Lucien was a very nice dragon. He worked with dragons from other elemental classes that represented different gemstones and cooperated with other shifters to keep the human world safe.

  Lucien had said they would probably want to recruit him, but Dmitri had told him all about Chelle, his mate.

  Despite how much she’d hurt him the last time they’d come together, calling their mating a mistake, saying she couldn’t love him like that, he was determined to keep holding on.

  What choice did he have when he was in love with her? But he couldn’t force her to face her feelings. He could only wait for her and be there when she did.

  Even if he ached to hold her ag
ain. To see all the pain leave her as she just found rapture in his arms.

  He thought of the past few days, how they had moved by each other like shadows, neither knowing what to say to the other.

  All he knew was that if it took a thousand years, he was going to wait for her. And luckily, since they accidentally mated, they might have a thousand years at that.

  “Listen,” Lucien said. “Perhaps we should go back soon. She might be worried. Your friend, too.”

  “It’s fine,” Dmitri said. “Luka knows I can handle myself. Besides, Chelle was working, so I don’t think she even knew anything was going on.”

  The sapphire dragon didn’t look convinced. “I didn’t know what kind of person you were, so I needed to take you away from the apartment. I couldn’t risk any humans getting hurt if you tried to transform before you ran.”

  “I get it,” Dmitri said. “I still don’t get how you found me.”

  “The bar,” Lucien said. “We have a lot of contacts around, and some tigers were looking into your case. The guy you froze lived, but it raised some eyebrows.” Lucien gave Dmitri a stern look. “That was careless.”

  “I know, sorry. He threatened my mate with a gun.”

  Lucien scowled, his expression evident even with his dragon features. His dragon was a deeper blue than Dmitri’s, but no less sizable or impressive. Their powers seemed to be similar, too. “Well, you did what you had to, then. Anyway, no one knew who you were, but they had your mate’s name on file. I assume Chelle is your mate.”

  Dmitri nodded.

  “So that’s that. But they won’t bother you from here on out. We can give you some time to adjust before you talk to the oracle.”

  “The who?”

  Lucien laughed, making the trees around them rumble and drop snow. “Don’t worry about it. For now, just worry about your mate. Once I vouch for you, our world will leave you alone until you call for us.”

  “Okay,” Dmitri said. “You know, I’m glad you found me. It’s nice to talk to another dragon for once.”

  “Yes, for me, you’re the first ice dragon I’ve met. I thought there was only supposed to be one at a time. Then again, maybe you’re one of my ancestors.”

  “Not me, but maybe Luka’s family. Your name sounds like his, after all. He comes from super royalty, so it wouldn’t surprise me if his line was stubborn enough to persist. But ice dragons could have come from elsewhere as well, I guess.”

  “True,” Sapphire said, flinging another array of icicles with his spiked tail, which Dmitri blocked with an ice wall. “But we are very similar. Perhaps if you hadn’t been frozen, you would have been my great-great-great-uncle or something.”

  “It would take a lot more greats,” Dmitri said. “Besides, you’re the old man. You said you had a kid already?”

  Sapphire nodded, looking proud. “And I love him with everything. You should come to the mansion, meet him sometime.”

  “I should,” Dmitri said, thinking of what it would be like to have a family with Chelle. To see her holding his young. At least, according to Sapphire, it was possible. They even had dragons to help out. The thought was almost too wonderful, so he turned to Sapphire to distract him. “Hey, show me that ice needle blast again. I want to learn it.”

  Sapphire opened his mouth, and a huge ball of ice and wind swirled inside his throat, ready to fire out as a powerful projectile, when they heard something approaching overhead.

  “What the hell?” Dmitri asked, looking overhead to see a large shape moving through the clouds above them, visible only as a shadow. “Did you tell someone we were here?”

  Sapphire was so startled that he let go of the ice blast, and Dmitri was too distracted to dodge, so it hit him right in the face.

  “Damn,” Sapphire said. “I’m sorry, but—”

  Before Dmitri was able to say it was fine, they heard the angry shriek of a dragon flying down to attack.

  * * *

  “They’re fighting,” Luka said, his voice urgent as his wings beat faster, increasing their speed.

  It was bitter cold, but Chelle didn’t care. She clung to Luka’s talons that were wrapped around her and prayed they would be on time.

  Dmitri was everything. Her heart felt like it was exploding, not knowing if he would be okay. She didn’t have Luka’s hearing, so she didn’t know what he meant by fighting. Since Luka was now seemingly flying as fast as a jet, hopefully she would know soon.

  All she could think of was seeing Dmitri again, wrapping her arms around him, telling him she wanted to try.

  She wanted his friendship back, but she wanted more also. She wanted his smiles and his orgasms and his cuddles and his secrets. To be the one he talked to every night before bed. To be the one he came home to after work.

  She wanted to be his everything. Deep down, maybe she always had.

  “We’re heading down,” Luka said. “We can’t wait any longer.”

  As they moved through the clouds, Chelle could finally make out the shape of a mountain beneath them with a flat basin at the top. Two shapes were perched there. They looked small from her viewpoint but were probably pretty big, given the space they took up on the mountain.

  The two of them were facing each other, icy, spiked tails whipping back and forth.

  “Maybe they’re just talking,” Luka said, sounding hopeful.

  Then the darker-blue dragon unleashed a terrifying ball of ice that appeared to be filled with needles right at the fluorescent blue-green dragon. Dmitri.

  And that creature had just attacked him.

  They watched as Dmitri went rolling backward, knocked off his feet.

  Luka let out a scream of rage as he dove downward so fast it felt like falling. Chelle felt her stomach drop out but didn’t care. Not as long as they got to Dmitri in time.

  The wind blew harder and harder as they sped up, nearing the mountain. Just as they got close, Luka spread his wings wide to catch himself and opened his mouth to send a deathly spray of ice across the mountain, directly at the darker-blue dragon that was approaching Dmitri’s still form.

  “I’m dropping you,” Luka said sharply.

  Chelle didn’t even have time to scream before she felt Luka’s cold talons release her, and she fell into a fluffy snowbank she hadn’t even seen.

  The snow was deeper than she was tall, and it took a moment to dig her way to the surface.

  When she did, she saw that the darker-blue dragon had his wings out threateningly, while Luka’s dragon appeared to be readying an attack.

  Meanwhile, Dmitri wasn’t moving.

  Chelle’s heart froze in her chest, making her feel colder than any winter storm. She didn’t care if she tripped as she carelessly ran as fast as she could over to Dmitri.

  God, he was huge, she thought as she knelt beside his prone form.

  And beautiful.

  As she ran her hand over his neck, his scales gleamed in fluorescent blue tinged with green. The most beautiful color in the world for the most beautiful person.

  And he was still moving, his chest rising and falling steadily.

  She rested her head on him, letting out grateful tears that he was still alive. She didn’t know what her life would be like without him. And he didn’t deserve to die not knowing how she felt.

  Near him, Luka and the other dragon were still hissing, tails waving, and she felt Dmitri stir.

  One huge eye opened, looking right at her, and she felt her heart nearly stop. He was gigantic.

  “Chelle?” His voice was deeper, rougher, and seemed to rumble the entire mountain. But it was definitely the man she loved.

  “I’m here,” she said, fighting back tears. “We both are.”

  “Luka,” Dmitri said quickly, shaking his head. “I have to talk to him.”

  “No,” she said. “You stay here. You got knocked pretty hard. That evil dragon—”

  “No, he isn’t—”

  “Stay here,” she said insistently, just treasuring the fact
that he was okay. “I’ve got this. For once, let me help you.”

  “No, don’t go over there. It isn’t—”

  She turned over her shoulder to face him as she got ready to square off with the dragon. “I’m not going to let anything happen to me. I’m going to be safe because I know how much it hurts when someone you love isn’t. And after I beg him to release you, I’m going to come back and tell you everything you need to know about why I am the way I am. And if you still want me after that, I’m yours.”

  Dmitri just blinked at her, looking like a very surprised dragon, and Chelle stifled a smile. He couldn’t be more adorable if he tried.

  She tromped over to Luka and the other dragon, who appeared to be facing off.

  “Back off,” Luka yelled at the other dragon. “Before I give you worse than you just gave him.”

  “You aren’t paying any attention, idiot. Ask him what he wants,” the other dragon hissed back.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not to be hit in the face by you,” Luka retorted angrily. “So get ready to be blasted into the next century, you ugly—”

  “Can’t let you do that, I’m afraid,” the other dragon said. “So stand down, or else I’m the one who will end all your centuries.”

  “No. You might hurt Dmitri again, and…” Luka trailed off as he saw Chelle running between them.

  The other dragon looked down, his face a mix of confusion and amusement, and Chelle had to admit that, despite the scary circumstances, it did probably look weird. A tiny human interfering between huge mythical beasts.

  But she’d do more than that for Dmitri. Facing her past was far worse than facing any dragon.

  “Please,” she said, dropping to her knees in front of the new dragon as his deep-blue eyes widened in surprise. “Please, don’t keep attacking him.”

  “And you are?” The dragon rose imperiously, glaring down at her.

  “His mate,” Chelle said, liking the way it sounded even as it came out of her mouth. “I’m not a very good one. I have a lot of baggage, and I can’t love him the way he loves me. But I do love him, and if you hurt him, I won’t forgive you. I’ll die fighting you because I’ll be dead without him anyway.”