35. Tamsyn

35

Tamsyn

A SOB SCALDED THE BACK OF MY THROAT.

I watched, helpless, as I lost him. As Fell slipped from my back, his comforting and solid weight gone from me, falling in a wild flailing of arms and legs, vanishing into the air below, disappearing beneath cloud and mist, along with all my hopes.

I started after him, but the big onyx dragon got in my way, snorting and chuffing at me, delaying me.

Precious seconds lost.

I reacted. My lungs burning, fire building, intensifying and blasting through me, out of my mouth in a torrent, making contact. A direct hit, lighting up the dragon barring my way. He screamed, twisting away wildly, his enormous wings like great sails, violently flapping on the air as he retreated.

And then I was gone.

Diving for earth.

Cutting through wind and mist in my desperate panic, despair a cold thing sliding and sinking into the heat of me. To reach Fell.

But he was gone. So far below. Out of reach. Just a speck.

Almost to the ground.

I tried everything, flapped my wings harder, made my body more like an arrow... anything, everything to go faster. To move. To get to him. Get. To. Fell.

It didn't matter. I couldn't close the gap.

I opened my mouth on a scream that I felt like a current running through me, rattling my fangs, vibrating my very bones—a roar louder than the rushing wind in my ears.

He was almost there. Almost gone.

I watched, transfixed, unable to look away from the horror unfolding, helpless to stop it, helpless to save him.

What was I thinking? I should have left him behind. He was a human. This wasn't his world. He did not belong with me. Not anymore. Perhaps he never had.

He should have stayed in the Borg. It was his home. He had his warriors. They were family to him. They would never let anything happen to him. He could have withstood whatever the lord regent sent his way.

I'd brought him with me because I wanted him with me. Because I was selfish and scared and didn't want to be alone. I could lie and tell myself he'd made me bring him along, but I could have left him behind. He was here right now because of me.

And I'd killed him.

Suddenly I couldn't see him anymore. That speck disappeared in a bright flash of light.

I shook my head in confusion. Had he hit the ground?

Then I saw it. A dragon. Another dragon emerged from the burst of light.

I hesitated at the sight of a beautiful silvery creature, desperately scanning the ground below, searching for Fell's broken body.

He was not on the ground. Pieces of him did not litter the earth. He was nowhere.

I continued my descent, approaching warily, suspicious of this new dragon after nearly being killed by those others.

He flew directly to me—for me. Close enough for me to see his eyes. Those familiar frosted eyes.

Fell.

WE FOUND A CAVE.

Together we had searched, losing the other dragons—or perhaps my fire drove them away. We flew into a dip, along the col of two mountains, sticking close to the sides until the mouth of a tunnel appeared among the dark, snow-speckled rock.

We dove into that blackness.

Unable to fly within the confining space, we moved on our feet.

The dark did not bother us. Our eyes possessed exceptional vision. We maneuvered expertly as though it were the middle of the day and not a sunless tunnel.

The danger was not gone. Dragons were out there, and here we were plunging into a tunnel, into the labyrinthine system of caves that made up the Crags... home to the dragon. And as we had just learned, not all dragons were friendly.

Apparently, being a dragon did not mean we were safe from other dragons.

But at least we were together. We had each other.

The tunnel dead-ended into a cave, a den...

I sank down on the mossy ground. It was surprisingly warm and yielding beneath me. I brought my knees up to my chest, hugging myself tightly. Fell was there.

Dropping down, he wrapped an arm around me. We sat like that for some time, our breaths falling hard and labored. Not a sound between us except our gasps.

I reached up to scratch my nose, and that was when I realized I was no longer in dragon form.

I was me again. The other me. The human me. I had changed back.

Turning, I looked at Fell and saw that he was himself again, too. Well. Not entirely himself. His hair was...

I reached out a hand to stroke the long strands. His hair was no longer dark as a raven's wing. The color had bled from it. The strands were the same color as his dragon. A lush, iridescent silver. His dragon.

He was like me.

He settled his familiar eyes on me. That had not changed. They were the same frosty gray as before.

"What just happened?" he demanded.

I shook my head. I wish I had answers. For both of us, I wished. "I don't know."

He looked at me in disbelief.

"I don't know!" I repeated, my voice harder as I felt my temper flare. "I didn't do this to you, Fell."

Yet even that I didn't know to be true. What if I had done this to him? I didn't understand how it had happened to me, so how could I be certain I wasn't to blame? Had I somehow infected him? Did it work that way?

His hand came up quickly to capture mine, and there was nothing gentle in his grip. Only strength. Unyielding hardness. Our twin X's pumped with life, energy. Need. He shifted his hand so that our fingers laced together and our palms were flush, kissing, sparks of heat shooting between us.

My eyes found his, and I felt a deep sense of recognition as I read the fury within his frosted gaze. Suddenly, I realized we were two puzzle pieces fitting together. Fire melding with ice. Heat with vapor. Smoke with fog.

This had always been there between us. Waiting for acknowledgment. Waiting for us to own it. Waiting for us to take it. Seize it. Do something. Be this . That inevitable thing.

Looking at him, I felt a wildness pulsing beneath the surface, beneath my skin.

My heart beat like a wild bird trapped inside my chest, struggling to get out. Struggling to break free, to reach him.

We were so close, barely any space between us, and then there was none. No space at all.

I couldn't say who moved first. Looking back, I would never know. I would only know that when we came together, we moved as one. Existed as one.

Blood rushed through me, filling my ears, pounding a tempo that matched my racing heart's. Mouths fused, hot and bruising.

There was still the fury. The confusion. We unleashed it on each other as we crashed together. Lips frantic. Everything desperate, violent in its fierceness.

Hands roamed everywhere, touching, stroking, squeezing, tugging.

He dropped over me, his bigger body a delicious weight. We were already naked, and I was grateful for the convenience of that as he moved between my thighs.

I devoured the beautiful sight of him, the sensation of his bare skin sliding against mine. He ran bruising kisses over my breasts, my throat, my stomach, leaving no part of me untouched. I whimpered, arching my spine, wanting more.

His mouth closed around one nipple, drawing it deep, sucking the tip until I snarled, writhing wildly.

I clenched his hard biceps, nails digging, the scent of blood filling the den. He shifted his weight, bringing his cock directly against the center of me, rubbing it into my moist flesh.

He panted, and I didn't know if the wild animal sounds came from him or me.

My fingers clawed through his silvery hair, yanking him closer as I rotated my hips, desperate, hungry, needing him inside me.

His frosted eyes gleamed down brutally at me. He pulled back slightly and then plunged inside. I moaned, the pleasure so deep, so wild, so perfect, it edged into pain.

His arm wrapped around my waist, mashing my breasts to his chest as he lifted me higher for his cock, thrusting himself fully, deeply inside me, again, and again, and again. Hunger coiled through me as we mated, the friction hot and stunning, driving all rational thought from my head.

I clung to him, sinking my teeth into his shoulder.

This was different than before. Feral. Furious. Rough.

No veil between us now. The fire in my blood not metaphorical.

And we couldn't stop. Couldn't slow down.

My nails scored his back, and he went faster, rocking his hips against me until we both cried out, our shouts reverberating off the walls of the cave as the pressure exploded between us in a brilliant burst of sensation that felt a lot like flying.

THE EUPHORIA OF our climax did not last. It burst like a bubble, vanishing into nothingness. As though it had never existed at all.

Fell lifted his head to look down at me, and I felt the full blast of his wrath in his icy gaze. He was still seething. Still bewildered.

Maybe more than before.

I scrambled out from beneath him, eyeing him warily, wishing for clothes, feeling very vulnerable in that moment... very human.

I opened my mouth to speak, and then stopped. Angling my head, I listened.

Something was coming.

He stilled, too, his head canting to the side.

We heard them before we saw them.

Actually, I smelled them. Dragons.

They had a distinctive aroma. An earthy musk. I would know it always now. They smelled like wind and fog and fire and earth and woods. They smelled like me. They smelled like Fell.

They'd found us. I grimaced. We hadn't exactly been quiet.

We were both on our feet, bracing ourselves, readying ourselves, staring at the mouth of the tunnel in expectation.

They were getting closer now.

We glanced at each other, a lingering look. Fell reached for my hand, holding it, giving me a comforting squeeze, and I was glad for that. At least I wasn't alone. At least we were together.

They grew louder, the sound of them advancing, their feet tromping over the floor of the tunnel, death coming, rolling closer, nearing us in the sanctuary of our little den.

Then they were here. Easily a dozen of them. Dragons... but not quite.

Some of them were like us. Human in appearance. But clearly not human. Clearly still dragon in nature. Their skin shimmered, blinking in and out with various colors like it could not quite make up its mind whether it was human or dragon.

Fell's hand tightened around mine. Face-to-face with us, the creatures stopped hard. Stared. Looked us over, both of us. But they seemed most intrigued with Fell. Beautiful Fell. Their gazes wid ened as they took him in. I gave Fell's hand a comforting squeeze, as though he needed this from me. As though I was not the one who needed it from him.

The group of them exchanged glances, murmuring with one another. There was a stirring among them, bodies shifting, parting, making way for something, someone else.

He emerged from the shadows like smoke wafting through the tunnel, taking shape, materializing in the form of a man. Tall. Big. Muscled. Hair silver as snow, flowing long past his shoulders.

I gasped.

It was Fell.

Fell's face.

I swung my gaze to the man beside me, confirming Fell was still here. With me. But this man, this dragon, had his face, and I felt irrationally annoyed at that. As though he had stolen something that belonged to Fell.

The stranger stared back at us. He looked over my naked body with marked interest before settling his attention on Fell—clearly who most fascinated him.

Unhurried moments ticked by, long as the day.

Finally, his lips parted—those familiar lips, so like the ones I had just felt so thoroughly all over my body. Words emerged, as deep and penetrating as the fog rolling around us.

"Welcome home... brother."