Oh, God.
“Tell me,” I whispered when everyone was far enough away, and Tato was consumed with the dragon. “Tell me why you lookafraid,Donavyn.”
Donavyn’s brow pinched, and he came one step closer. But with witnesses across the clearing and who knew what else, he couldn’t touch me. He wanted to. I could feel it. For the first time since we’d discovered the bond, I found myself relieved that he couldn’t.
His throat bobbed and his brows pinched, but he spoke through the bond to keep his words utterly private.
‘This dragon belongs to a man we sent on a mission the day you were Chosen.’
I stopped breathing.
Thatmission. The one in which Ruin had flown away from me.
“Ruin?” My voice cracked on that single syllable, and Donavyn’s expression grew miserable.
“No!” he blurted. Then sent to me through the bond.‘Not Ruin. You have my word, I would tell you if this was his dragon. But, it’s one of his closest friends’. The dragon’s rider was Davros. One of those men who—’
I hadn’t realized we could push each other away in the link, but somehow I managed it, shoving the rest of that sentence far, far away so I didn’t have to hear it.
Donavyn grunted when I took a step back, and jerked to look past him at the pale, dying dragon on the ground.
I shook my head.I don’t want this. Not now.
But against my will, my mind filled with memories, searching for faces, cataloging voices, smells, touches—
Oh, fuck.Nausea surged and I took another step back.
“Bren,” Donavyn murmured. “Please, Bren, don’t leave.”
“I’m n-not,” I managed through chattering teeth. “I just—which one?” I had to know. Because if I didn’t, I would wonder, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept seeing their faces, their lascivious smiles, hearing their voices,smelling them,feeling their touch…
My skin crawled and I flinched.
“Bren—”
‘It washim,’ Akhane sent, her voice heavy with empathy. It was only a flash, a smiling, handsome face with gleaming eyes, dark hair, appearing above the ladder in the barn loft when I’d thought Ruin and I were alone. As soon as I had the answer, myhead stopped spinning. But my heart began. I was plunged back into the memory of that devastating day…
“Hey-yo! Where the fuck are you, Talon? You weren’t joking when you said this place is in the middle of nowhere.”
I startled at the strange voice below us in the barn, jumping to cover myself, but Ruin grabbed my wrist and pulled his head up, grinning wickedly at me as he pinned my arm back in the straw next to my head. “Don’t cover up, beautiful. They want to see you,” he graveled, then raised his voice and turned his head to look over his shoulder, towards the ladder. “Up here. The loft.”
“But—!” I hissed, anger and disbelief spearing through me. “Who—what are you—”
“They’re my brothers. I told you, I told them about you,” he said, turning back to stare down at me, his piercing eyes an inferno. I stared at him in horror, only a small part of me comforted when he leaned higher, covering me with his body, one hand in my hair, his nose almost touching mine, his gaze burning. “I’ve been bragging about you,” he rasped. “About how you want me.” My mouth fell open as he slid his marble-hardness against me so my body clenched and I gasped. “That’s it, Brenny,” he muttered, gritting his teeth, his voice rough and raw. “That’s my horny little filly.”
“No, I—”
Noises below of men joking, footsteps, rustling in the straw near the ladder to the loft. They couldn’t—surely he didn’t mean for them to—
“They want to meet you, Brenny. They’re my brothers. I told you, we do everything together.”
“But—”
“You said you wanted to meet them!” he hissed, the flames in his eyes flaring with anger as well as need, so I froze.
I’d imagined I wanted to meet themclothed.
A second voice said something too low to catch, then more, deep, male voices laughed. A shrill scream started in my head a moment later when a strange face appeared at the top of the ladder, a handsome man not much older than Ruin, with dark, tousled hair and a scar on his chin. His eyes widened and darkened, like a cat’s when they sensed a mouse. I froze, then cried out as my love cursed wickedly and thrust into me—
