Chapter 16 - Camilla

The gray dragon with onyx crystals had been flying toward the Aurora Island castle, toward me when he spotted me behind the glass door. I can hardly believe that he’s here—that he found me.

A part of me felt guilty for peeking out through the side of the curtain, but I couldn’t stop myself. I heard the dragons' roaring screeches and thunderous howls the moment I entered the room, and I couldn’t bear it.

Knowing Stryker was out there, I had to see for myself that he was still alive. I watched him fight the other dragon before, and there were a few close calls.

A torrent of mixed emotions comes crashing into me, sending me hurtling onto the balcony when I see Stryker fly down after hitting the gray dragon in the side and knocking him off his course with the help of his brother, who’s identical to him.

What does the gray dragon want with me, anyway? Is it just a coincidence that every time I’m around Stryker, he wants to capture me?

Bracing my hands so tightly on the rails until my knuckles pale, I watch the gray dragon serving a blow to Stryker that has him tumbling to the ground, and my gut fills with horror. The impact is so forceful that the ground quakes and sends vibrating pulses up the cobblestone walls of the castle.

“Stryker…” I whimper fearfully when the gray dragon steps a large webbed foot on Stryker’s chest. Just then, more dragons come swooping in from the sky, disrupting the fight until the imposters gather near the mountain as if they’re retreating.

When the gray dragon flies up, he glances at me briefly, a glint of menace in its dark eyes before it spins around and flaps its wings toward the sun. Roars and screeches fill the air as the handful of intruders fly out, with a gold and ruby dragon giving chase.

I look down at the meadow in time to see Stryker’s scales slithering into the folds of his human flesh. But he doesn’t get up. Instead, he remains limp on the ground, his eyes closing while he has a hand pressed on his ribcage. Dread fills my gut when I notice the bright red liquid seeping through his fingers and pooling beside him.

Oh, no!

“Stryker!” his brother shifts into human form and rushes to him.

With my heart in my throat and a thrumming buzz in my ears distorting my mind, I bolt for the bedroom door and run as fast as I can to the elevator.

It takes too long to come up, so I take the stairs on the side, hopping down two at a time in my haste to get to Stryker. Almost tripping and rolling down the last flight, I somehow manage to regain my footing and reach the landing just in time to see someone carrying a lifeless Stryker past the door.

“Is he still alive?!” I cry out as I swing through the door and follow the man behind the castle to a stone path between the garden.

“Hanging on by a thread,” the man with a resounding, husky voice remarks. He doesn’t stop jogging toward a brick-faced building, and I have to run twice as fast to keep up with the pace of his longer strokes.

It’s my first time outside the castle, but I have no time to appreciate the lavish garden. It’s like I’m running through my dream in the physical world this time, but it’s turned into a nightmare as blood oozes from Stryker’s ribs and drips like breadcrumbs toward the building behind the castle.

I hurry ahead, pushing the door open for the man as he carries Stryker into what seems like a hospital. The air is full of the crisp scent of antiseptic medication and the subtle fragrance of soaps and cleaners.

The tall, broad man makes a beeline for the first door, kicking it in just as a red-headed woman appears out of nowhere.

She doesn’t bother to introduce herself as she hurries into the room. I follow her inside, rushing to Stryker’s side when the man lays him on the bed and rips his shirt off.

I wince when the ghastly wound is revealed as if Stryker had been mauled by a bear. His flesh is ripped from where the gray dragon sliced his sharp claws into his side. The gash is so deep, I can almost see the bars of his ribcage from where blood splatters.

“He’s losing too much blood!” the man hisses, glaring at the woman in the room. “Do something, Doctor!”

The woman nods, flitting around the room and gathering tools on a rolling tray she wheels over without a word. She seems calm and composed for someone with a dying man on the bed.

In no time, she hooks Stryker up to a drip containing a cloudy liquid, then prepares her suturing tools to stitch his flesh together. I swallow back the acrid bile that rises in my throat every time she pierces his skin with the thick needle, desperately wanting for this horror to be over.

It feels like time stretches hauntingly before the doctor can stop the bleeding, even if it’s only a few minutes that have passed. She rolls a high-tech machine over and uses a type of scanner that illuminates Stryker’s skin with ultraviolet light that magically repairs uneven bumps of flesh and weaves them together until his skin is smooth again.

The heart rate monitor calms down, the beeps becoming less incessant and steady as the doctor turns to the man.

“He’ll be fine, Alpha Draco,” she assures the man, and I quickly realize that the tall, dark man is none other than Stryker’s oldest brother - the dragon clan leader.

He turns to me, offering a reassuring smile. “Heard that, Camilla? He’ll be fine,” Alpha Draco says, patting my shoulder loosely.

I barely know him, since we haven’t met before, but Draco seems trustable enough when he leaves the room and leaves Stryker’s condition in the doctor’s hands. I’ve only ever heard about him from Olivia, and she swore that he could be trusted. He’s the leader of the Aurora Dragons, after all.

Then why can’t I shake off the terrifying feeling that I’ll never meet Stryker’s eyes again?

Even the doctor assured me that he’d wake up soon, and left me alone in the room with him.

She says he needs time to recover, but her voice is nothing more than a blur that does nothing to ease this broken heart of mine. As it pitter-patters unsteadily, the raindrops of tears that flow from my eyes stain the white sheet that covers Stryker’s body. Seeing him in this condition, I realize that my torn heart is as ripped as his flesh had been a few moments ago.

I can’t bear it any longer. Staring at his face and wishing he’d just wake up so I could tell him how I feel, does me no good. It makes me realize how wrong I was when I told him I hated him, and the regret lodges like the heaviest sob in my throat.

I care about Stryker, more deeply than I could ever admit. The second I saw him passing out, the fear that I might never feel his touch again reared its ugly head and surpassed the horrors I’d ever faced in my dreams.

This was probably what Olivia spoke about when she explained what it meant to be a dragon shifter’s fated mate. I’d been oblivious to the strong pull, that invisible thread that drew me to him. Until now, when all I feel is emptiness in the wake of his unconscious state. The void gnaws on my being, numbing every inch of my body until I’m nothing but a limp mass dragging my feet to the door.

Watching him lying unconsciously on the bed, hooked to machines as he recovers from his injuries while he fought to protect me again has me hanging my head in shame.

As I sit outside the hospital room with my face in my hands, puddling tears in my palms, I realize that whatever those dreams were, I got it all wrong.

There’s no way I could be linked to Stryker dying. I can’t stomach the thought of losing him; I can’t foresee a future in which he doesn’t exist. There’s no way that knife my ancestor passed me was meant to be wielded as a weapon against his life.

A life that is more valuable than I could have fathomed. Now that I understand what it means to be his fated mate, I know it’s his life that is priceless.

That’s why he was determined to protect me before. I couldn’t see past the deception of being kidnapped to the island, but I know that it was only his determination to protect me that made him do what he did.

Bursting into tears, I lay my head down on the metal bench. I deserve the hostility of the cold, hard metal for all the bitter words I’d thrown at Stryker.

Outside, thunder rumbles the skies before the clouds part to open the floodgates of the sky’s turmoil that mimics my own as I wait impatiently for Stryker to regain consciousness.

We didn’t have enough time together. I barely know him, yet it feels like I’ve known him my whole life. I never thought I’d find such a deeply profound connection with anyone, and now that I’ve briefly tasted the sweet delicacies of a fated mate bond, I’m not willing to let it go.

He has to wake up.

Please, God, let him wake up.

***

The clearing of a throat jolts me awake, my eyes snapping open, and my body automatically rising off the cruel bench.

As soon as I meet the warmth of green eyes, I launch myself forward and fling my arms around his neck.

“Oh, my God!” I exclaim with intense relief. “You’re awake!”

Stryker chuckles, his hands awkwardly touching my shoulders to peel me away. My heart sinks as I step back on my heels, frowning profusely at him, when I notice that I’m unable to get lost in his eyes the way I usually can.

“Stryker?” I whisper in confusion, taking a step back to inspect the diffidence I feel radiating off his auric field. He’s not as warm and inviting as I remember, and it's as if his injuries shifted something in him.

The rich, citrus and sandalwood scent that surrounds him is gone, too. It’s only when I narrow my eyes at him that I realize he’s not Stryker.

The man standing in front of me chuckles lightly. “I’m Stryder,” he clears the air, sticking out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Camilla. And sorry for waking you so suddenly.”

A brief sense of relief washes over me as I shake Stryker’s twin brother’s hand. For a moment, I thought that Stryker had turned cold on me. But my relief lasts only long enough to greet the man before I remember that Stryker, my fated mate, was lying unconscious before I fell asleep, thanks to the weight of sadness that crippled me.

“H-how is he doing?” I ask tersely, mentally praying that his identical twin isn’t here as the bearer of bad news. I notice the only difference between the two men is the mole on the left side of his lips.

Stryker’s is distinctly on the right side of his mouth.

Stryder skims a hand over his mouth, looking down. “He’s awake.” When he looks up, he smiles warmly at me. “You should go inside. He’s been asking about you.”

Hope spreads through me like wildfire as I race to the door, my heart pounding with excitement. As soon as I throw the door open, I pause, locking eyes with Stryker and feeling relieved when his lips curl into a smile.

It’s that smile that has me sprinting forward and throwing myself into his waiting arms.

“You’re awake!” I chortle, my voice breaking between a giggle and a cry. His arms fold around me as he holds me tightly, and I feel his chest rumbling with a chuckle.

“I had to wake up,” he soothes gently. “I had to see you again.”

The tears that spring out from my eyes this time are full of relief. I don’t care about the past anymore. All that matters is that he’s awake.

How can I hate him for kidnapping me when all he was doing was protecting his fated mate?