“No,” I snapped. “He was always that.” Always the Terror. She just never realized it before.
She nodded slowly. “He married Alise, my sister—”
“And gave himself a path to the crown,” I said grimly. The fucking Terror of the Borderlands. Married to a royal princess. No. No way would that stand. I would end him.
She nodded, her gaze searching my face.
“I am still Lord of the Borderlands.”
“Fell.” She stretched a hand for me.
I moved back several paces from the edge of the pool—from her—and she frowned. I could not be touched right now. Not with the rage that blazed through me.
“I will kill him. And take back my lands. This time you won’t stop me.”
She flinched, and I knew I’d wounded her, knew she felt that I blamed her. I could not stop to comfort her, though. The anger spiraling through me was too much. I needed to direct it elsewhere.
“I will be back,” I growled.
Turning away, I left her, ignoring her when she called out afterme, trying not to feel as though I was leaving a part of myself behind … a part of myself I had only just recovered.
I ran, my fury carrying me, my legs working hard as I launched myself from the mouth of the cave, legs and arms pinwheeling.
My human body dove into the sky, and I transformed as I fell through the air.
I lifted up, caught on the wind and cool mist. Turning, I tore through the night sky, my wings beating fast, urgency fueling me with renewed purpose.
I had my home to reclaim … to wrest from the clutches of my enemy. Bloodlust pumped swiftly through me turned my vision red. I was not gone half an hour before I realized there was actual physical pain in leaving Tamsyn. It was too soon. The X at the center of my palm popped and fizzled, stung like a fresh wound, longing for the relief it had found reuniting with her. It tugged me back in the direction I had come. I resisted the pull. Pushed on.
I should have brought her with me, I grudgingly acknowledged.
I could not change it now, however. I hurried, speeding and twisting through the vaporous sky until I returned to the spot where I was unearthed.
I touched down. The bodies of the dead were still there, rotting in the snow. Soon their corpses would be buried, covered in pristine white, and there would be no evidence of the massacre I’d wrought.
It was all a blur now. Flashes of memory. Screams and blood and the sound of breaking bodies. Because of me.
I felt conflicted about that. It was a brutal thing I had done, but necessary. Tamsyn’s life had depended upon it. And they were soldiers from Veturland. I had fought them many times in my old life. Countless had died beneath my sword before. What difference did it make if they died beneath my talons now? Either way they were enemies. Enemies in my old life and in this one.
Their horses had wandered off, likely returning to the familiarity of their homes in the north, but several of the satchels that hadattached to their saddles had broken free in the melee and were discarded on the ground.
I took anything and everything that could be of use. Clothing, weapons, food, and other random supplies. But mostly clothing. We couldn’t walk about naked.
Clutching the straps of the satchels, I launched into the night sky, eager to see her again—to put eyes on her and know that she was safe. Safe and with me.
The darkness presented no difficulty. Although my vision was sharper when I was like this, I could have found my way back to her blindfolded, guided by instinct alone if necessary. The pulsing mark in my hand burned hotter, beat faster, buzzing with an almost electric energy. It was like lightning in my hand the closer I got to her.
By the time I returned to the cave, I was already afire, overcome, shaking with need, with hunger—my body aching, punishing itself for daring to leave her—my mate.
Mine.
You would thinkIwas the fire-breather the way I burned for her instead of a creature that generated cooling mist.
She was still soaking in the spring when I arrived. My chest lifted on ragged breaths, and I very much felt like the animal that I had been moments ago—that I always would be.
I was winded and breathless in a way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with need, with my urgency to see her again, to feel her, to touch her, to taste her … to sink myself into her.
Never had I beenthisbefore. A thing of want and need. Be it man or dragon, I had never felt this kind of hunger or desperation for anything. Foranyone. It went beyond duty or affection or lust. It was something far deeper. Something that existed in the pulsing marrow of me. A scar in the bone. When I was gone from this earth, flesh no more, this would remain. Forever.
