No dragons beating through the air. No frantic footsteps of scared newbies. Not even the sounds of insects or birds.
My muscles seize and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Someone’s behind me.
Chapter Two
Legend
She senses me before she sees me.
Her back goes stiff and those rough little hands freeze along her blade. Slowly, her head turns, eyes the color of the demented forest slamming into mine from fifty fucking feet away.
Her brows dip with confusion.
“Legend.” My name leaves her lips like a wicked little prayer that claws at my insides, making my teeth ache to bite. Slowly, she turns until her body faces mine.
“How did you get here?”
I say nothing, creeping closer to the girl who thought she could run from this.
From me.
When I don’t answer her ridiculous question, she asks another bullshit one. “Why are you here? You shouldn’t have been able to get through the barrier.”
“So that’s how you want to play this?”
Haide glares, arms crossing over her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A dark chuckle escapes me, and I cock my head to the side, feeling that heavy, constant fucking thrum that now beats beneath my chest. It grows louder with her nearness, driving me mad with the need to get closer. Need that’s beyond my control.
“Now that’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Is that any way to talk to your king?”
“Sorry, please,King Deveraux, if you would kindly…go fuck yourself.”
A split second after the last word leaves her mouth, she turns on her heels and runs.
“Bitch.”
She’sfast.
Faster than any chick I’ve seen, so I put some actual effort into my strides.
Sorry, baby girl, but no one is faster than me. I will catch you.
And when I do…
She bolts like a shot of lightning across the cliffs. I swear the earth answers her call, driving her farther from me, tearing through the blackened rock beneath her boots and throwing it back at me, like it knows I’ll raze this place to the ground to get to her. Like it’s trying to protect her from the sharpness of my claws.
It can’t.
Nothing can.
What the little warrior princess doesn’t know is I happen to like a good chase. I dart down the edge of the massive rocky cliff, thunder cracking from above, and a fire ignites in my veins. One that burns hotter than anything before it.
