I’m taken aback by the heir’s slip of emotion. My mind is warning me that I know better than to trust The Horde, but I’d be an idiot not to notice that there’s more going on here than I’m capable of understanding right now.
Aeson reaches for me again, and this time, I let him trace the slashes on my neck with his unsheathed talons. I should probably be afraid. I’ve seen firsthand what the wrath of a dragon can do, how quickly it can tear the world asunder. But there’s something about being in the presence of this primal, raw rage that calls to me. It’s as though basking in the physical manifestation of what I can onlyfeelinside is exactly what I need to be whole again, even if it’s only for a little while.
Instead of my dragon surging forward and battering against the confines of the curse, the opposite happens. That part of me settles and calms, like it knows it’s finally home…safe, and now it’s time to heal and rest.
Aeson pulls me closer and I go willingly. He relaxes infinitesimally when our bodies press together, and he drops his face and rests his forehead against mine. Thick smoke wraps around us, but it isn’t choking or cloying. It feels strangely protective, like he needs to shut everything else away and take a moment. As someone who’s been there quite a lot lately, I get it.
Hot fingers stroke the scars on my neck and upper chest before dropping down to graze over the ones running down my arms.
I think he’s counting them.
“How?” Aeson half rasps, half rumbles.
I sigh and close my eyes, wanting to lock his dragon out, but he nuzzles the tip of his nose against mine, and I give in and look up into his exacting blue eyes.
“Beatings, at least it started that way. He had this special kind of whip he liked to use. That’s what’s on my back,” I explain, and Aeson’s hands move from my arms to my shoulder blades where he traces his way through my pain, one slashed scar at a time. “Eventually he got bored of that and started carving tallies into me. At first, he would do it every time they bled me, like he wanted to keep track of it on my skin. But after a while, it became less about the blood and more about lording his power over me. He’d carve tallies like I was his own personal scoreboard, a walking embodiment of his wins and my losses.”
I shake my head and run a thumb over the lines and slashes on my forearm.
“I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t heal. I couldn’t stop him.”
My whispered confession mixes with the smoke floating between us. Aeson breathes it in, my pain anchoring his anger.
“Who?” he demands, the solitary word a threat and a promise.
I study him for a moment, taking his measure. I can’t decide if he’s worthy of my trove of wrongs and reprisals, if he can be trusted to bear the weight of them like I have. Maybe I should continue to hoard all of my hurts, keep everything to myself, but the temptation to share the burden, to put it down for just a little while, is like a siren’s song rising through the haze of Aeson’s smoke. I know I’m going to end up broken on the rocks for giving in, and yet, I just can’t stop myself.
The fluttering in my stomach becomes its own frenzy, but I can’t tell if I’ve trapped butterflies or wasps. My pulse races and my blood burns with rage, with heartache. Before I can change my mind or think better of it, I offer Aeson a broken sliver of myself, wrapped in the name of the bastard who tried to shatter me beyond repair.
“Wistan…Wistan Allaire.”
Chapter 15
AESON STRAIGHTENS, DROPPING HIS HEAD back while sucking in a deep breath. It’s as though my admission has freed him from a painful constriction around his chest and now he can properly fill his lungs and breathe again. He keeps me pressed tightly against him—not that I’m trying to go anywhere. A rumble of approval rolls out of the commander, the bolstering sound wrapping around my tormentor’s name and carving Aeson’s dominion across his destiny like a dooming slash cutting through the tallies of Wistan’s future.
Aeson doesn’t fill the nonexistent space between us with declarations of what he’s going to do to the Tainted fuck who hurt me, or paint pretty promises of how he’ll fix the unfixable. He doesn’t need to. I know exactly what it means to hand over a name like this to a guy like the commander. The vow of reckoning is silent, but it’s there all the same.
Part of me wants to get lost in the depths of that unspoken promise. It’d be easy to read into it, to wade around in the possibility that’s suddenly swirling around us like Aeson’s smoke. The appeal is most certainly there. I could turn my brain off and let my baser instincts slip lust-first into the haze of dragon pheromones and the dreamy defender-of-my-honor shit that’s growing thicker by the second. But falling for a dragon, let alone Aeson Noctis, is about as smart as an injured gazelle sidling up to a lion for a cuddle. I’m, without a doubt, going to get eaten, and probably not in the way I’d enjoy.
No. I need to stick to the surface of what he’s offering and not dive any deeper. People extend a helping hand for a myriad of reasons, and not many that make the list are completely altruistic. The commander is feeling protective, maybe even a little possessive, but that could have everything to do with him and absolutely nothing to do with me. Is it genuine interest, or is it just a carefully orchestrated and expertly executed plan?
For all I know, the hospital already told the scions all about my injuries and scars, and now they’re using them to their advantage. It wouldn’t be the worst plan: catch me at a vulnerable moment, then get me feeling all warm and fuzzy with the protective dragon schtick. Aeson turns up the charm and taps into some of his undeniable appeal, but just enough to get me nice and chatty until I’m singing like a canary in pursuit of that dick.
If I don’t fall for Aeson’s tune, I suspect Lorn will step in and try his hand at playing me. The two have already started stacking the chips in their favor with the rescuing, the comforting, the touching, and the lap sitting. It’s a good plan—I’d consider it myself in their shoes—but it’s going to take more than a pretty face, a monster cock, and an unspoken promise of beating up the big bads in my life to get me to slice myself open and spill all of my secrets.
Aeson looks down at me, his dragon still staring out of his eyes. He lifts a hand from the scars he’s been tracing on my back and pushes strands of my tangled hair off my shoulder. I’m tempted to tilt my head and see what he might do with better access to my throat, but whatever’s at play here, I need to make sure it’s workingforme andnotworking me over.
It’s time to meet fire with fire.
Decidingif the commander can touch, I can touch too, I lift my hand and lightly run the tips of my fingers up his forearm. Slowly, I trace each of the connecting plates of his scale armor, the hard ridges hugging the contours of his arms perfectly. I expect his armor to be cold, like metal, but his scales are warm, and there’s a subtle texture to them that isn’t discernable with the naked eye.
I’m not sure how sensitive the protective plating is, but Aeson must feel something because a tremor moves through him as my fingers carefully explore. I want to ask him what it’s like to wear it or call it forward. Does it feel the same in his drake form as it does when he’s a dragon? Did it hurt the first time it appeared after he revealed? But I keep my mouth shut. If they know how eager I am for answers, or how little I know about dragons in general, they’ll use it against me.
Aeson’s fingers slip behind the back of my neck, and his thumb smooths its way across the line of my jaw. He gently tilts my head, the motion a demand for my eyes to leave the progress of my fingertips on his arm and focus on his face. His vivid blue stare burns with fervor, and his brow is drawn like he’s trying to root out exactly what it is about me that has him so ensorcelled.
The stubble on his jaw proves entirely too enticing; I give in and run the back of my fingers across his prickly cheek. He closes his eyes for a breath, and when he opens them, his dragon has receded and I’m staring up into the bright blue gaze of his drake again. His nostrils flare and he scents me as though he’s trying to catalog every thought and emotion I might be having while his rage and inner beast start to settle and calm.
Something new heats in Aeson’s gaze as he appraises my face. His other palm finds its way to my hip, his hand so large that it skims across the small of my back and coaxes a small quiver from the muscles there.
