They’re going to die because of me. Raiden, Stone, and Kodiak deserve so much better than the pathetic excuse of a mate they were saddled with.
Under his breath, he mutters an unintelligible flurry of words. While he’s lost in his spiral, the air in the room seems to thin until each breath I draw in is harder than the last. His power is growing increasingly volatile, wind whipping around the room and sending several plants onto their sides, dirt spilling across the floor. My hair smacks into my cheeks, getting in my face and obscuring my vision as I frantically try to fill my lungs, but it’s like Malcolm’s a black hole, sucking all of the oxygen out of the room while simultaneously destroying it.
“Stupid, so fucking stupid. How could I have missed it?” he mutters as he continues to pace, seemingly oblivious to his abilities getting away from him.
“Please.” It’s barely more than a gasp, and I claw at my throat, each inhale harder, like sucking air through a pinhole-sized straw.
As my ears pop, I faintly hear him still talking to himself. “Nothing has to change. The problem is the mark, but if I carve it out, then everything can go back to normal. No mark, no problem.”
Satisfied, he turns back to me with a determined glint in his eye, grabbing my upper arm and dragging me back upright. “I can still fix this. The only marks you'll wear are mine.”
My head throbs painfully. “Can’t. Breathe.” Even those panted words feel like they were ripped from my throat, and I devolve into a weak coughing fit.
My rapid heartbeat has slowed to heavy pulses, echoing in my ears and muffling Malcolm’s crazed rambling. A tingling sensation across my skin quickly morphs into agony, feeling like it's being peeled from my bones.
Behind my back, I fumble with the latch on Avery’s cage. I might not be able to get her out of this hellhole, but if she doesn’t have to worry about me, maybe she can find an air vent I missed. We’re both dead either way; at least now she’ll stand a fighting chance.
A scream is ripped from my throat as his claws rake across the nape of my neck, agony spreading throughout my entire body like liquid fire in my veins.
“Fuck!” Malcolm shouts, talons raking across the side of my neck as he stumbles back a step.
Sucking in a rattling breath, I collapse onto my knees without him holding me up. Coughing and gasping down air, it’s torture on my abused throat. A flurry of movement in my periphery forces my gaze up in time to see Avery ducking a swipe of Malcolm’s hand, diving back to rake her talons across his eye.
“Son of a bitch!” he bellows, covering his eye and blindly lashing out. Blood leaks out beneath his palm, trickling down his cheek and jaw onto his bare chest.
Still doubled over, I struggle to get my legs under me, stumbling forward as I lunge. I don’t have a plan, and I don’t stand a chance against a fully fledged dragon. But if I’m going to die, I’m going to go down fighting.
If he’s determined to kill me, I’m at least going to make him work for it.
Not expecting my sudden attack, he goes down; hard. I canhearthe back of his head crack against the floor, and it gives me a sick sense of satisfaction. I’m barely aware of my actions, running on pure adrenaline and rage. His hands are busy fending off Avery’s attack on his face, leaving himself open and giving me a perfect shot.
We both freeze in shock when my nails puncture skin, talons hooking to embed themselves between his ribs.
It could be seconds or minutes, but the spell holding us hostage is broken with his furious roar. As he rolls out from under me, my clawed hand still buried in his flesh, it rips four deep gashes from one side of his ribcage to the other. Blood drips to the floor, but his skin is swiftly replaced by light blue and white scales.
“I gave youeverything!”he screams, still bleeding profusely as he tackles me onto my back. “And youruinedit!” His hand wraps around my throat, and when I meet his emerald gaze, the manic look I find staring back at me has my heart skipping a beat in cold terror. “I tried so hard. Why couldn’t you just love me back?”
A scream is ripped from my throat as his claws dig into my shoulder, slowly dragging down with clinical precision. My heart stutters in my chest, and my entire body feels like it was dropped into a volcano. Burned alive, torn apart, and roughly stitched back together. Through all of that pain, what Malcolm is doing to me hardly even registers. As he fully shifts and attempts to eviscerate me, claws slashing across my stomach, I feel like I’m seeing him clearly for the first time.
Human Malcolm? He’s the monster that haunts my dreams. But as a dragon? He was right; we’re perfectly matched.
Instincts flare to life as my own dragon responds to his shift, a low growl building in my chest. Before I even realize I’ve moved, I lunge for his exposed throat. The taste of his blood in my mouth makes me want to gag, but the pained sound he makes has me clamping my jaw tighter, my teeth getting sharper and larger with every second I hold on.
Wrestling for dominance, we roll across the floor, crashing into potted plants and sending them sprawling. A sharp pain explodes across my back along with a sickening crack. While a vague sense of recognition files it away as bones breaking in my wing, my present mind can’t make sense of it, doesn’t understand how that translates to me.
My gaze flicks over to Malcolm’s scaled, upper arm where his tattoo is hidden, and it’s like a switch is flipped in my brain. Rage like I’ve never known floods strength throughout my body. Tearing my mouth off his throat, I bite down on the spot, digging my teeth in as deep as I can before wrenching my head to the side. A horrible cry echoes around the room, piercing my eardrums, but I ignore it, spitting the hunk of scaled flesh out of my mouth.
But it’s not enough.
Launching back to the gaping wound before it can heal, I shred it to fucking bits. It doesn’t matter if Malcolm kills me anymore. The only thing that I care about is removing every trace of that fucking tattoo first, making sure that I sever every connection between us first.
The air is knocked from my lungs as I’m slammed to the ground again with another sickening crunch that sends a new wave of agony through my shoulder blade. Claws slash down my stomach, my chest, my arms, and I return each swipe with one of my own. My vision goes blurry as my lungs refuse to expand, the air in them seeming to freeze.
Avery’s shrill cry is followed by me finally being able to suck down air again, and I don’t let the opportunity go to waste. Surging up, I dig my claws into the back of Malcolm’s neck the same time I bite down hard on his throat. With a furious roar, I jerk my head to the side, a spray of blood showering my body before a heavy weight crashes down on my chest.
Struggling out from beneath him, I rise on trembling legs, chest heaving. The limp form of the pale dragon doesn’t give me any peace of mind, and I let instinct continue to dictate my actions. Stomping down on the section of spinal cord visible through his mangled throat until there’s a brutal crack, I finally breathe a sigh of relief.
For the longest time, I stand there, staring at the monster that’s tormented me for years, waiting for him to get up. To rip me apart for trying to break him like he nearly broke me. But he doesn’t twitch a muscle, sprawled out on the ground, and I finally send a few small sparks out to the plants strewn across the ground. They smoke before finally catching on fire, and still, I wait until the flames leap over to his body, searching for any reaction and finding none. It’s the confirmation I needed to assure myself that he’s really dead, and I can finally force myself to walk away.
