by Tessa Dawn
The female groped at his arm. “Oh, my prince, please…please…please stop.”
The dragon allowed the prince to listen, but only for a moment, and then he drank even faster.
Raylea.
The little girl with the doll.
The warlock’s skin was turning blue, his body beginning to tremble. His flesh was the temperature of ice, and his heartbeat was slowing…diminishing…rapidly shutting down.
He has my sister.
He made her a slave.
If you kill him, I’ll never find her.
“Dante, please! I’m begging you.” The female was on her knees, yanking on his trousers. She was sobbing in desperation, but the warlock’s essence, his terror, and his power—Great Master of Vengeance and Fire, it tasted so good.
As the body went limp in his arms, and the heart began to stutter, Dante lapped his tongue over the gaping wound and sank his fangs in deeper. He wanted it all. He needed it all. The moment of death would be utter bliss.
And then he felt the female’s hand pressed against his chest, quivering over his heart. “If you ever felt anything for me…if any part of you ever cared…then I beg of you, my prince, please help me save my sister.” She sounded so piteous and forlorn.
As the dragon took one final drugging pull from the warlock’s vein, Dante seared his consciousness into the warlock’s mind and sucked out his memories, transferring each vile transgression to his own lucid awareness.
The warlock’s body froze into a block of ice.
The dragon withdrew its fangs.
And Dante Dragona shoved the corpse forward, watching as it struck the ground with a thud and then splintered into a thousand brittle, irretrievable pieces.
*
Mina gazed at the frozen shards in shock.
Sir Robert Cross was dead, and Dante had killed him.
She would never find Raylea.
She took an unwitting step back, dropped her head in defeat, and let her arms fall to her side, simply trying to come to grips with the gravity of the moment.
Simply trying to reconcile the fact that Raylea was gone…forever.
A deep, angry growl rose in the dragon prince’s throat. “Mina. Louvet. What the hell are you doing here?”
Her head shot up and she gulped. Dante was staring at her like he had half a mind to drain her dry as well. His mouth was coated in blood; his throat was convulsing with need; and his claws were still extended, adorning hands that were covered in hard leather scales. Yet and still, he looked deathly calm—his eyes were two vacant caverns—tranquil in a way she had never seen him before.
And Dearest Bringer of Rain, the prince had grown a tail!
It was gone now, but still…
She took a second, cautious step backward and screamed as Dante opened his mouth, hurled a sweltering ring of fire in her direction, and caged her within the dancing, circular blaze. Turning to the left and then the right to appraise the fiery fortress, she wrapped her arms around her midriff and trembled. “My prince?” Her voice was a mere whisper of a sound.
He cocked his head to the side like some kind of animal, rather than a man, like he was straining to make sense of her words, like the human language was a foreign tongue. “I have no time for your games,” he spat in a gruff, guttural clip. “What are you doing here?”
Mina was about to curtsey, but the flames were much too close. Eyeing them through her peripheral vision, she nodded. “No games, milord. Life and death. The warlock that you killed was named Sir Robert Cross. He works for the high mage of Warlochia, Rafael Bishop, and several weeks ago, the day you rode to the district to execute the traitors, their band of slavers attacked my mother and my sister. They took Raylea prisoner and—”
Dante waved his hand through the air to silence her, and she instantly shut up. “I know this,” he grunted. “I absorbed his memories.”
Mina’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and she nearly shuddered with relief…and hope. “Just now? Before you killed him?”
Dante nodded coolly.
Her eyes filled with tears and she bit down on her lip. An emotional whimper still escaped, and she clasped her hand over her mouth to contain it. “Thank you,” she whispered into her own trembling palm, which was now quivering against her face.
He sighed, seeming to regain his composure. “You came here in the middle of the night, without Prince Damian’s permission, to do what? Confront a warlock? Provoke a shade, a soul eater? For what purpose? To try to somehow rescue your sister?”
Mina gulped, trying to hide her fear. “I know it sounds crazy, but I was desperate. I thought maybe, just maybe, Raylea might be here…in the traders’ encampment.”
“And you would somehow…what? Just stumble upon her?”
Mina shook her head. “I know it was a long shot, crazy, maybe even suicidal, but so what? What do I have left to live for, anyway? A life with Prince Damian? A life of torture, rape, and humiliation? Yes, Prince Dante, I risked everything to come here, including your brother’s wrath, which has already been promised to me, for a snowball’s chance in a dragon’s fire of saving my ten-year-old sister.” She took a cautious step forward, careful to avoid the dancing flames, and raised both hands in supplication. “How far would you have gone to save your twin?” The moment she said it she regretted it. “Oh gods, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I—”
Dante waved his hand through the air, extinguishing the fire with a slight and simple gesture, and then he stepped forward into the space where the flames had just been and glided closer to Mina. He moved with the grace of a predatory animal, and he didn’t stop coming until his broad, powerful frame towered over hers.
Despite her resolve, Mina took a cautious step back—he was just too intimidating, his supernatural presence completely overwhelming.
“Sweet…rebellious…Mina,” he crooned, reaching out to stroke her jaw.
She flinched before settling her nerves and allowing his touch—as if she had a choice.
Tracing her cheek with the pad of his thumb, he whispered, “Raylea is in a cabin in the mountains of Umbras with a shadow named Syrileus Cain. The warlock who made the sale is dead.” Before she could speak, he pressed his forefinger over her mouth. “Shh. I will find her, and I will bring her home, return her to your parents. I promise you this.” He narrowed his gaze with conviction. “But you; you have to promise me that you won’t grow weary of serving the Realm.” His eyes scanned her visage as if he were drinking her in: first, her dark green eyes, and then, her raven-black hair. And his own sapphire-blue reflection deepened with some emotion that Mina couldn’t quite name. “Gods, you are so beautiful,” he said. “You always were.” The corner of his lips quirked up in the barest hint of a smile. “And smart. And crazy. And stubborn.” His smile turned into a frown. “And I do regret, deeply, what my father has done, but you cannot take such foolish chances, Mina. Whether he knows it or not, my brother needs your influence. He needs your gifts and your tenacious will. The Realm needs your strength.”
Mina’s jaw dropped open in surprise, and she quickly pursed her lips to close it: On one hand, she was intimately touched by Prince Dante’s words—he had never spoken so affectionately, so personally, to her before, as if she were more than a slave—but on the other hand, she was sickened by his conviction, wondering if he even understood…
Damian did not want or need her. In fact, the only thing he desired was the callous use of her womb. And for what noble purpose? To create soulless dragon offspring in his own abhorrent image? To spawn monsters just like him? Children she would neither be allowed to raise nor love? And gods forgive her, she didn’t think she could if she tried: love them, that is.
As if he had read her mind—and truth be told, he probably had—Dante’s expression turned as hard as stone, and he cupped her jaw in his hand. “Mina…” He spoke softly in spite of his stony resolve. “You will love your children. No matter what occurs, no matter how much they resemble Damian, you will love them.”
“Then fight for yourself and their future!” he insisted, his vehemence taking her aback. “Just be smart about how you do it. You’re resourceful, Mina. You’re determined, and you’re imaginative. So make yourself indispensable. Fight to stay alive.”
Dante’s powerful words brushed over her like an unexpected breeze, yet they didn’t cool her despondency. She just couldn’t see it, imagine it, even conceive of it—finding or making a way, any way, in a universe governed by Prince Damian. “You know your brother,” she whispered respectfully. “To oppose him, even in the slightest, is to die.” She averted her eyes because she really wasn’t trying to argue—the truth was simply the truth.
He snorted in defiance. “Really?”
She met his gaze once more and gawked at him, at a complete loss for words.
“Did you not fight for Tatiana?” he asked her, raising his dark, sculpted brows. “Have you not done everything in your power—no matter how limited—to oppose me since the day we first met?”
“That was different,” she mumbled.
“Different? How!” he exclaimed. His large shoulder muscles contracted, then grew rigid, as he leaned forward, grasped her by both arms, and raised his voice. “Was Tatiana more worthy—am I more worthy—than yourself?”
She laughed then, another hollow sound. “I love Tatiana!” she argued, feeling her anger start to rise. “It was an instinctive reaction, not well thought out. And I thought I could love”—she caught her words, recoiled in surprise, and immediately changed direction, steadying her voice—“I never opposed you out of disobedience or malice, Prince Dante. Never. I was simply trying to understand you, to understand the Realm…and my duty to it. I was simply trying to get along.” Her voice softened as her heart joined her words, and both began to flow as one in a pure, unadulterated stream. “I wanted to find my place with you, some place with you—any place with you—that was real. I wanted to somehow know you, if only from afar.” She rolled her eyes at her own audacity, realizing she was about to purge her soul. “I knew that I was only a slave, your servant, just one of many, but despite that knowledge, despite that certainty, I was still just crazy enough…stubborn enough…to believe…to hope…that this whole thing”—she swept her arm in a wide arc around them, ignoring his iron touch, indicating the nearby encampment, the broader territory beyond the north, the entire Realm—“that this whole thing would be easier, at least for me, if I could find a way to serve you with my body and my heart, if I could find some way to care for you, even if you couldn’t care for me.”
She averted her eyes in shame and rushed to spit out her next words before the prince could silence or condemn her. “I know. I know. I heard you, each and every time, and you were right all along: Duty, obligation, obedience—that’s all there is. You told me and told me, but I refused to listen. I didn’t want to hear it—I couldn’t accept it—not with the duty I was facing; and I’m sorry that it took me so long…” Her voice trailed off as she swiped several angry tears from her eyes and forced herself to meet his penetrating gaze. “But I get it now. I hear it now. I even accept it, but don’t ask me to fight for such a meaningless existence anymore. Don’t ask me to oppose Damian for the sake of our unborn children. Not now. Not when everything has changed. Not now that you’re gone.” The last sentence was nothing but a whisper. “Not when I don’t have any love or rebellion left.”
Dante grew deathly quiet, and time seemed to stand still as he processed her words and studied her features, as he searched for a way to respond. Finally, after several long, tense moments had passed, he cleared his throat. “Earlier, in the throne room, you collapsed before the high priest could administer the sacred rites. Did Damian—”
“Administer the tonic?” she interrupted, knowing exactly what he was referring to. “Did he give me the fertility drug?” She scoffed. “Yeah; he broke the vial over the mantel and shoved the contents down my throat, broken glass be damned. Yes, he administered the rites.”
Something dangerous and foreboding flashed through Dante’s eyes, and then his forehead creased in a deep, brooding frown. “Then he also…” For whatever reason, he couldn’t finish the sentence—he couldn’t quite muster the words—but Mina caught their implication.
“No,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
Damian had not raped and impregnated her…yet.
There were still twenty-one hours left inside the thirty-six-hour window when pregnancy was guaranteed by the serum.
Dante nodded, stoically. He ran a taut hand through his hair and sighed. “You are a woman who is led by her passion, Mina Louvet, a woman who must fight for a cause. And you are the poorest excuse for a slave I have ever seen.” He withdrew his hands from her arms and strolled away, pacing around her in what could only be described as predatory circles. “You have given me the courtesy of the truth. Now, I will do the same: In thirty-one years, I will be capable of fully shifting. You already saw what happened with the Lycanian—the change has already begun. And when that day comes, I will be strong enough to challenge my father. My sons will be strong enough to lead this realm at my side.”
Mina visibly recoiled at the seditious words. She couldn’t help it—it went against years and years of stringent indoctrination—yet she watched him astutely, curiously, as he turned on his heel, stalked directly toward her, and cupped her face in his hands. “Until that day, you will love at least one child, and you will fight to stay alive.”
Mina trembled like a baby bird in the hands of an inquisitive child.
She was emotionally exhausted, physically worn out, and she couldn’t track where the prince was going with this line of thought. Did he intend to take control of her mind? To force her to feel something for Damian—surely not!—or at least for a future child? “I’m sorry, my prince, I don’t understand.”
Dante took her hands in his and tightened his grasp, almost painfully, sinking the tips of his fingers, now those of a normal man, deep into her palms. His eyes grew distant, and he bit down hard on his lower lip, drawing a trickle of blood. If Mina hadn’t known better, she would have sworn he was wrestling with his own indoctrination, battling some ancient demon, inside. He glanced at the moon, peered at the earth, and then gazed beyond her shoulders, as if seeking guidance from the northern shores. Then just like before, a white owl swooped down, perched atop a low-hanging branch of a tree, and hooted three times, revealing a mystical sign.
Dante must have understood it because his eyes grew all at once clear, and he met her seeking gaze with a look of absolute certainty. “You will fight for me. You will fight for the Realm. And you will fight for your unborn son because the child will not be Damian’s—he will be mine.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Mina gasped in alarm, even as Dante swept her up by the waist, carried her into the thick of the trees, and dropped to his knees with Mina still in his arms, effortlessly laying her down along a soft patch of grass. “My prince!” she protested, trembling from head to toe as he crouched above her with fierce glowing eyes.
There wasn’t a question in Mina’s mind that Dante had made a decision, that the prince was asserting his privilege, or that the dragon was now in control. It was evident in Dante’s regal but ruthless posture, his gentle yet possessive grasp, his determined and hungry gaze. There would be no dissuading him from his chosen path.
Yet and still, she had to try.
What he was suggesting was beyond dangerous or improper. It was betrayal at its worst, adultery at the least, illegal, no matter how one turned it over. “My prince, we can’t,” she repeated the objection.
He snarled, flashing the barest hint of fangs. His eyes swept lower, beneath the neckline of her cr
oss-laced doublet, and his hand instinctively followed, his finger trailing a provocative line between her breasts.
She snatched at his wrist. “Stop,” she panted, truly beginning to panic.
“Shh,” he uttered, dipping down to brush her lips with his. The contact was fire and ice, sweltering heat and arctic cold, creating a shocking sensation of alarming intrigue, and despite her fervent protests, Mina’s head began to spin.
“My prince!”
“Look at me,” he commanded in a deep, raspy voice, arching forward to rest the bulk of his weight on his powerful arms while he gazed into her eyes beneath sultry, hooded lids. “Tell me what you see.”
Mina blinked rapidly, trying to bring things into focus, trying to clear her befuddled mind…trying to still her racing heart. His onyx hair was disheveled and unruly, falling forward into his stunning, mystical eyes; his sculpted lips were full and parted, just barely, adding interest to his regal mouth, and blessed goddess of mercy, his chiseled, commanding frame—that rock-hard chest and those strapping shoulders—were practically trembling beneath his effort to restrain his passion. He was darkness and light; stealth and grace; beauty and anguish, all intertwined.
He was the most magnificent being Mina had ever seen, and his countenance—his otherworldly dragon’s aura—swirled around them like an elemental coronet of light, bathing her body, her mind, and her soul in his primordial heat. “I see…I see…” The only male she would ever love. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s in your eyes, sweet Mina,” he rasped. “You are already mine.” He bent to brush his lips against hers a second time, and her stomach clenched in response. It was as if he truly did own her—and not as a slave or a citizen of the Realm—but as an intimate extension of his own primal body: like she was made by him, of him…for him.
No…no….no.
This wasn’t right.
It couldn’t be.
He pressed a firm, languorous hand over the expanse of her chest and splayed his fingers over the region of her heart before he deftly began to unlace her bodice. And his touch was pure, unadulterated magic.