Chapter 4

When I wake up, I’m in someone’s arms, being carried through a haze of green trees. It only takes me a second to realise that it’s Terrin and I’m safe in his arms…wait, arms? My heart races as it all comes back to me, him shifting back into a man, crashing through a storm, and him grabbing me tightly as we smacked into the treeline. I don’t remember anything else; I must have hit my head. I’m still soaking wet from the storm, but it’s no longer raining now.

The forest’s damp leaves make Terrin’s footsteps nearly silent as I stare up at him, my eyes widening as I take in his human form. He’s even more beautiful than the last time I saw him. His thick, lush brown hair is even darker as it falls wet around his shoulders, his beard thicker, and yet it does nothing to stop my heart racing in joy of seeing him again like this. I thought we’d only get stolen moments where I drained my magic to change him, not this.

He pauses, looking down at me with his crystal-clear green eyes that are more vivid than any shade in the forest, locks of soft brown hair tumbling over his forehead. “You’re awake.”

Terrin sits me down, my back resting on a tree. He’s very naked, and it’s very hard not to look at all of him as he kneels in front of me. He touches my forehead, and I wince at the sharp pain, my senses coming back. I hurt pretty much everywhere, cuts and bruises littering my body, but none of it matters. Terrin is here. He isn’t a dragon at the moment. “You hit your head pretty badly on the trees. I tried to catch you, but the trees caught most of us before I could do anything.”

I look at the nasty gash that’s all the way from his shoulder down his arm, blood still seeping. He carried me with that injury? “Terrin, how else are you injured?”

“I’m fine, but you’re not. My mate has an injury, and there isn’t a healer or the water king around,” he growls, a possessive flash in his eyes.

I touch his cheek. “I’m okay, I’m awake now. I will heal in time. It’s not too bad. You, on the other hand…” I wave my hand over him and the many cuts I can see. He took more of the fall, I know that. He focused on saving me, and I would have done the same if I had a chance. We flew right into a tornado, and the magic here changed everything too quickly. “That looks nasty.”

Terrin shrugs, helping me stand. He wouldn’t admit anything hurt when we are vulnerable like this. We are in a foreign world, and we could be attacked at any moment. Maybe we were foolish to rush in here.

It’s very difficult not to look down, but I force myself not to peek. It’s not his fault he doesn’t have any clothes, and he must be freezing. “We should walk and find clothes, and?—”

His lips tilt up at the corners. “Am I distracting?”

My cheeks feel like they boil. “Yes.” I clear my throat and look away. “Where are the others?”

Terrin rubs the back of his neck, and my heart drops. “I don’t know. I think I was hoping you’d be able to find your mate, but…” I close my eyes, searching for Emrys, but something’s wrong. It’s like the magic in this place is different. “I sense it too.” He puts his hand on the ground. “There’s a lot of magic in this world. It’s just pouring through the air, the ground even. Like currents. I think it’s messing with the bond, because I’m not speaking into your mind, either. We can’t talk like that here.”

Fucking fantastic. “So, we are trapped here with no way to communicate with the others? I’ve got no idea where any of my other mates are? You’re injured and with no clothes or weapons?—”

He tugs me into his arms, and I rest my head against his warm chest as he strokes the back of my head until I calm down. “You’re with me, and I would die to protect you. We ride together, we fight together, and whatever comes our way is nothing compared to us.” He kisses the top of my head as my heart rate slows and my shoulders drop. He’s right. “And we’ll be fine. Let’s walk and find somewhere for the night. Emrys will be searching for you. Hope and Xandry too.”

We walk for a while, my hand linked in his, when a thought suddenly hits me. The staff. “Where is the staff?”

“You dropped it in the storm, don’t you remember?” I wince as the memory comes back. “Where we landed, it was swampland, but we didn’t fall in. The staff could have easily fallen in there.”

I don’t stop walking, even as my mind races with that knowledge. “We’ve lost the highly dangerous magical staff. That’s the only way to get back to our world?” I groan. We really are not good at this. I don’t know who put us in charge, but they made a mistake…

He bumps my shoulder. “We will find it. It’s not broken; it’s too powerful to break in a fall. There is no one around here except us, and anyone that found it, they aren’t powerful enough to hold the staff. You were drained to the brink just holding it for a minute.”

Somehow, he makes me feel better with just a few sentences. “It’s good to talk to you, like properly talk to you, not when you’re a gigantic scary dragon.”

He grins and I really love his smile. “I like being this way, too. I don’t remember much from when I was a kid. I think my memories were messed with, but I remember us talking for hours in the spirit castle once. You were the princess, only five or six, and we just talked for hours. Your father came to find you, and he had a strange look on his face.”

“I don’t remember that,” I admit, chewing on my lip. “I was too young. What did we talk about?”

“Shadows, dragons, chocolate cake, and how you hated your boring tutor.” He laughs with me. It sounds like something I would complain about back then. The truth is the memories I do have were all so normal. I was a princess, yes, but my mother and father brought me up in the most normal way they could. I was grounded in my room for misbehaving, I learnt normal subjects with my tutors, and we had family game night every Saturday. We always sat down to dinner every Sunday night, and I used to cringe as my father flirted with my mother, making her laugh. I had everything back then, and I wonder if they would be proud of me now that Ares is dead. I have no idea if my mum has woken up, if my grandmother managed to help her at all, or if Ares dying let go of some magical hold on her. I hope so.

We walk together for a long time, never stopping our conversation, and I spend an awful amount of time making sure my eyes don’t dip below his waist. The number of rippled muscles on his waist is astounding, and I have to remind myself this isn’t the time to touch. I mean, I’m getting used to absolutely gorgeous men being around me, but Terrin—phew!

I glance at the setting sun as we climb over a fallen tree, seeing it’s quite low in the sky. It’ll be dark soon. My first plan of flying around until we found some sort of settlement and seeing if anyone’s seen some dragons around has really gone out the window, but being in a strange world in the dark is not a good plan. My magic feels chaotic here, and I’m not sure using it would be a good idea. Terrin follows my gaze to the sun, and a silent agreement spreads between us. We quickly make our way through the forest, searching for anything. It’s quiet, empty, with only a few rabbits and foxes running about.

Eventually, we come up to a house, or what is left of a house. It’s in ruins, broken, and caved in at the top. Huge cracks line the stone everywhere, but the front door somehow is intact, even covered in moss and ivy. Terrin goes up first, opening the door, and I’m looking at his spectacular ass the whole entire time until he goes inside.

“It’s clear.” Terrin’s shout echoes from inside the house. When I come in, he’s shaking out a pair of old trousers that are smothered in dust. “I found an old suitcase. There isn’t much in it, but it’s clean.”

I glance around the room as he gets dressed in the jeans and an old black cloak with gold clips. It’s hard to see what’s in here, the windows are blocked out with wood, and the only light is pouring in from the huge gap in the upper floor and ceiling, making me wonder what exactly destroyed this place years ago. Cobwebs, dust, and dirt mostly fill the room, and under them is rubble. All of the rest of the rooms are completely destroyed, and the staircase is gone. The place where it used to be is now just two broken steps. The only good thing is there’s a big old fireplace. I think once we clear the rubble out, we’ll at least be able to sit in front of the fire for a while. “I’ll go and get some wood for the fire.”

“Be careful out there,” he warns. “I’ll clear this room out as best I can.”

I’m glad he offers to do that. The number of spiders I know are hiding in there makes me shiver. After spending the next half hour picking up wood, I bring a pile of it back. When I do, I’m surprised that Terrin has nearly completely cleared the room, like he had a giant broom and had brushed all the rubble to one side. He somehow found cushions to line the area by the fireplace. Although they do not look in the greatest of states, they’re better than nothing to sit on. Somehow, he’s completely cleared the fireplace out, found glasses and has a jug of water. “I found a water well in the back and glasses in the rubble. I’ve cleaned them for us.”

I drop my logs near the fire and happily drink a few glasses of water with him before he gets the fire going. I’m surprised he knows how to make it work, but I’m too tired to ask how. I breathe in the warmth as I sit down on the cushions, watching as orange light glows across the top of the house from the many, many gaps. If it rains, we’re completely screwed. “I feel bad, like we should get moving to find the others, not sit here.”

“You’re still injured and so am I,” he softly reminds me. “Your other mates would hang me up for not caring for you right now and letting you wander in the dark to find them. We don’t have any weapons with us, and I have no issue fighting to the death for you, but we should do that in daylight. This isn’t our world, and we don’t have the upper hand here. In the morning, we could look for the staff first, and then find Emrys and the others. He can handle himself.”

I let out a sigh. Terrin is dangerously good at being reasonable. “Agreed. Then we find somewhere with people. Emrys might have the same idea. I hope there is someone to find.”

Terrin stokes the fire. “Someone built this house. There must be people here.”

I smile softly at him. The firelight makes the tanned colour of his skin look warm. “I really think it’s going to be hard to stop staring at you all night. I feel like your human form is temporary and I’m not going to be lucky enough to have this for long.”

He looks at me, dropping the stick. His eyes darken, and everything in me tightens in response. His gravelly voice sends shivers across my body. “I should go and hunt for food for us.”

I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”

He tightens his hands into fists, and I just know he wants to reach for me. He is trying not to. “But you will be when you wake up and?—”

“Terrin.” I put my hand over his, and I crawl over to him. I climb onto his lap, putting both my legs around his waist and admiring how perfectly we fit together. He runs his large hands up my spine and down my shoulders, leaving goose bumps everywhere he touches. “While we have this blessing that you’re like this, that you can really be my mate and not just my dragon, I want to enjoy it.” I lean forward, kissing the corner of his lips. He groans. “In every way that we possibly can.”

He looks up at me, and his eyes are so green, pulling me deep into their depths. “Last time I got to taste you here.” He touches my lips. I feel like I’m buzzing with life as he runs his hand down my chest, between my breasts and to my stomach. His hand drops lower, and he brushes his thumb against my clit. Even through the clothes, it’s like pure electricity bursts up my spine, and I gasp. “And I want to know what it’s like to be inside you, to have you on my tongue, to be your mate.”

“I want the same,” I breathe out. He smiles, his hands gripping the bottom of my shirt. I put my hands up for him, and he yanks it off. The cold air breezes against my skin, making my nipples peak under my bra, and he runs his eyes over me. Terrin unclips his cloak, letting it fall down to the ground. I run my hands up his chest, over his rippled muscles, over the small scars that are there, up to his shoulders.

“You really are so beautiful, Elle. I never wanted to be mortal for anyone but you.” His hands sink into my hair at the back of my neck. “I’m really, really going to enjoy being inside my mate, watching you break in pleasure.” He kisses my jaw, my cheek, everywhere but my lips, and I’m so close to begging him to. “Being that close to you but unable to kiss you. Having you ride me in every single way except for the one that I wanted was torture, Elle. I was cursed before you came into my life, but I never suffered until then.” He runs his bottom lip against my earlobe and down my jaw until his lips are a breath apart from mine. “Show me you were just as tortured as me, Elle.”

I don’t wait before crushing my lips onto his. He groans, kissing me back just as feverishly, just as passionately, just like the world will stop and end for us in this moment. He rips my bra off, tugging at my leggings, and I pull them off as he undoes his jeans, pushing them off too. He covers my body with his, pushing his hard cock into my stomach and making me gasp.

Terrin doesn’t tease me for long, kissing down my chest, my stomach, and widening my legs for him. He kisses the inside of my thigh, his hands reaching up to hold my breasts as he gets closer and closer to my core. Terrin licks all the way up my core, watching my reaction, and when his hot tongue touches my clit, my back arches and I moan. He runs his large thumbs across my nipples as his hot tongue licks and swirls around my clit, learning what I like, and when he figures it out, I can’t hold back my orgasm. I cry out in pleasure, the world spinning, and he stays with me, riding every second of my pleasure before kissing up my stomach and lining up perfectly with me.

I reach down between us, guiding him, and he kisses me as he slowly inches inside. Inch by inch, pushing and filling me until I can’t breathe from how big he is. He groans against my lips. “You feel so tight, so beautiful. Fuck, I don’t ever want to be a dragon again.”

I moan as he thrusts in and out of me, fast and hot, pounding into me, and he feels incredible. I know this is his first time, but he leans down, kissing my nipple, and the crash of pleasure sends me over the edge with him. I tighten around him as I cry out, and he roars with me, spilling inside me and thrusting one more time. We both stare at each other, breathless and smiling. “I’m glad we have all night. I want you to ride me next.”

Rest is not for dragons, it’s for mortals, and we aren’t that. We never were.