Because I wanted to.
The sex might be otherworldly, but my sudden faith in him went beyond that. I’d never been so confident in something. It felt right to choose Onyx. His mark meant something. Even if trusting him was a mistake, it was one I’d never regret. I would’ve died for less had he not chosen to spare me, and I believed every word the leader said. After he marked me, I wasn’t afraid of tomorrow.
Onyx spent all morning showing me how to disable a dragon shifter in their human and partial forms. He said it’d take time for me to get control of the abilities our bond granted me, but we’d be connected through a mind link. Like with his brothers, he could speak directly inside my head in his human form andI into his. I sensed his influence in my mind. No matter what happened today, he’d be there at my side.
The air changed. Electricity moved across my skin when the other dragons arrived. They hadn’t come in dragon form; they appeared in partial transformation with their wings carrying them on the wind. The ground shuddered with each impact. Seven in total.
The strange-looking dragons were covered in armor, their features visibly different from Onyx and the Sky Demons. I hadn’t expected it, but while it’d make getting to their vulnerable spots tougher, it wasn’t impossible. Onyx assured me that the areas he taught were universally effective against any dragon shifter as he called them.
As they landed one after the other, instead of hyper-focused on the presence of another dragon leader and his guards I hadn’t seen at the weird dragon leader meeting, I was transfixed to the human they brought with them.
The leader, who I noticed immediately because he wore a crown of gems and gold, held her close to his chest. But it wasn’t out of care or devotion; it was out of possessive demand and expectation he kept her close. Nothing like the way Onyx held me. She was his property, nothing more. His toy. His possession.
His slave.
The attractive male’s pale eyes, short platinum-blonde hair, and powerful physique covered in light blue scales barely registered when the human’s eyes lifted and stayed with mine. The sight of her was a memory come to life. My present and past collided in a single, solitary moment.
The gorgeous green that had haunted my dreams for seventeen years was right there in front of me. I was physically staggered by it, frozen to the floor, rigid and in shock. Her eyes stole the air in my lungs, and I forgot how to breathe.
The other woman’s gaze went wide, stricken by the sight of me. Recognition dawned in the slow-sweeping glance she offered my lithe frame, as if she, too, couldn’t believe what she was seeing. As if I’d haunted her dreams for just as long as she had mine. And maybe I had.
The light blue dress she wore danced in the wind as the pale-haired leader put her down, and not at all gently. She nearly toppled over, but the dragon next to the leader swept in to save her. His eyes met hers briefly, a look that resonated in my chest, before she straightened and lifted her chin. The fierce wind hit her with force, but she stood without faltering again.
She was older now—thirty-three by my count—and still as beautiful as I remembered her being. Still a terrifying beauty no mortal could compare to.
Her strawberry-blonde hair was braided and falling around pale shoulders. I had several inches on her now. I remembered her being so much taller than I was, but now she barely reached my shoulder. She was still uncomfortably thin, but her body was much curvier than before. Nothing like it’d looked at sixteen. One fact remained—she was alive. She wasn’t dead. She was here.
Emotion crawled into my throat. I couldn’t find the words, couldn’t assign a feeling to what it was like standing in front of her after all these years. Joy? Fear? Heartbreak? Rage? Injustice? Hope?
Tears threatened to fall, but I kept them in check. Her being here was another confirmation of what Onyx had told me about Jona and the others. What Iris insinuated about Desert Roseland. Worse, her being with them meant…
Her eyes were on me. Disbelief, heartache, and concern flitted across her expression. She was scared. The strength of her rising fear reached her gentle gaze. Her lips pursed as her eyes did another sweep of my body, taking me in the same way I was her.
A tear broke away from her eye and trailed down her cheek, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. The look she gave me said enough. It was one that spoke of years of guilt and regret.
She saw another slave. A woman sentenced to the same fate as her. Something told me she never considered one day I might be in the same position as her. Maybe she was fed lies, too, from the leaders pretending to be Rebels.
I read the confusion and betrayal on her face as she stood next to the strange-looking dragon leader, smaller than she’d ever been at sixteen and street trash. My eyes dropped to the huge metal choker around her neck, then down her body where bruises in different stages of healing covered her perfectly pale skin—proof that she’d sacrificed everything seventeen years ago, and if I had to guess, to avoid me suffering a similar fate.
Oh, Luna…
Onyx’s eyes cut down to me, hearing the name through our mind link. His lips thinned before returning to the dragons flanking the pale-haired one.
Your sister?his deep baritone asked inside my head.
I peered up at him, and our eyes met for a heated second.Yes. Which means…
Desert Roseland is working with another dragon faction, and someone in the Sky Demons has betrayed their oath,he finished, confirming my line of thought.
Chapter 17
“Ahuman? You?” the blonde leader taunted, voice husky with amusement. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
Onyx kept his eyes trained to the newcomer, stoic, calm, and as apathetic as ever. “Artemis,” was all he said in greeting. “I think you’ve known me long enough to get to the bloody point. Why have you called me here?”
“There’ve been whispers about a conflict between you and another faction, and I simply came here for answers. Why didn’t you reach out to warn us about the recent clash withthe Stormriders? You know how little I like Dreythos and his generals.”
Onyx crossed his arms, the muscles in his torso hardening to total visibility. “How odd for you to come by that information. One might think you were spying.”
