Chapter 6

Someone had marked his mate.

Someone had dared to touch what belonged to him.

His female had blushed at the confession that no one had ever touched her sexually. Alistair enjoyed the knowledge he would educate her in this, but it made no difference.

But this? Someone would die for this.

"You're hurting me. Alistair!" she yelped.

He immediately released her shoulders. Still, the anger rolled off of him. He wanted to roar. Wanted to find whoever had done this. And he wouldn't simply end them. He would make them beg for it before he was through.

"The water is getting too hot!"

He forced himself to tamp down on his anger, dousing his power, lest he boil his fated mate in this very pool.

"Tell me, Lenora. Who dared harm you like that?"

It was an effort to speak quietly when he ached to roar at the injustice. But he didn't want to terrify the female any more than he already had.

Her back was covered in scars. He was no expert in human wounds, for his own body didn't scar and no one had landed a blow on him in decades, but there was no mistaking the fact they must have been excruciating. Lines across her back, some newer, some old and faded. She was young, his mate.

She would've been a child when someone had hurt her.

Oh, they would rue the day they first thought to take a hand to an obsidian dragon's twin flame.

"It doesn't matter." She wouldn't meet his gaze.

"If it doesn't, then you will tell me."

"Why, so you can eat her?"

Her. That narrowed it down to perhaps half the pathetic humans in his Lenora's little village.

"I will not eat her," he promised.

Eating someone was an effective way of dealing with enemies, but it was too quick. Often the neck was snapped by the time they made their way down his throat, or simply dissolved in his stomach acid. Too pleasant for what Alistair had in mind.

"Then it doesn't matter, does it?" His courageous mate had returned.

Ah, but her loyalty was misdirected, and that infuriated Alistair anew.

"You will tell me how you came to have these scars, Lenora. Because if you do not, I shall fly to Mossley and set the entire town alight. In fact, since I hardly know one settlement from another, I may paint this entire country in flames. Surely you do not want that."

She gaped at him. "You would kill thousands! Hundreds of thousands."

He looked at her, taking in every curve of her face, the wide set of her eyes, the way the hair framed her face. As if any of them mattered, even all summed together, when weighed against his fated one.

"Come now, pretty one," he coaxed. "One life for so many. They made the same trade for you, didn't they?" Perhaps it was cruel to pour salt into that particular ache, but he needed the name.

She hesitated. Alistair could feel her indecision, weighing whether his words were simply an empty threat. They weren't, but it would be much more satisfying for him to hunt down the particular offender.

"I can't." The words broke from her lips, forced out in an uneven space.

He forced himself to rein in the desire to push more. Their bond was young; she did not trust him yet, but in time, she would. And then he would have vengeance on her behalf. Whoever had dared lift a whip to his mate was marked for a painful death. But for now, more important than that, was comforting his mate.

"I'm sorry," she continued. "Please don't destroy Wyrdova."

He would burn the world for her in a heartbeat. But not if the thought brought her pain.

"Hush now, pretty one. I'm not going anywhere."

"Pretty." She scoffed. "With my skin so ruined."

"There's not a single part of you that could ever be ruined."

"You can't expect me to believe you could find my body pleasing like this."

He drew closer. "Does it please me to know someone dare harmed my"—he nearly said mate, but quickly adjusted—"treasure? Of course not. But you could never be made lesser by someone's acts against you. They should be worn with honor. You are not defined by someone's cruelty; you are defined by your strength for overcoming their trespasses."

She watched him carefully. He wished he could feel her emotions more fully, the way truly bonded twin flames could. Wished he could know what she was thinking. But that would not come for some time, not until she let him into her heart.

At last, a small measure of tension eased from her shoulders.

"And no one will ever do that again," he finished with a growl. The urge to turn into a dragon and hunt down whoever might have harmed his female, to prove the truth in his words and eliminate any threats, was overwhelming, but no. That wasn't what mattered now.

"Do they hurt?" The idea of his mate in pain was unbearable.

"Not often," Lenora admitted. Which meant they hurt more often than he liked.

"Then let me make it better."

He retook the oil, and after a moment's hesitation, she obediently turned for him.

When he'd first demanded she bathe him, he'd told himself it was a joke. A bit of teasing to get a reaction from the bashful female. He had not wanted to admit, even to himself, how badly he had craved to feel her hands on him.

No one had properly touched him in centuries. Even Morthil seldom lowered himself to come to be petted, and that suited Alistair fine.

But his mate… he had wanted to beg for her touch. When she gave it, he thought he had found a pleasure even greater than flying beneath a moonlit sky. Yet her touch became torture, because Alistair was determined to not touch her back. He didn't dare startle her cautious exploration. It had been a wonder, to see her grow more confident, to enjoy learning her mate's body. His muscles had tensed with need, but he'd stilled his hands.

Now, his patience was rewarded.

Her skin was soft to the touch, like the smoothest silk he'd ever been offered. Few of the scars were raised on her back after so long, and though it threatened to set Alistair's rage alight again, he controlled himself for her sake.

Her muscles were tense, stiff from the journey. He used the oil to massage them, not bothering with the pretense of cleaning. He enjoyed her natural scent, berries and springtime, able to breathe it in now that he could bury his head in her hair.

Yet there was an eroticism to using the oil, part of his hoard, to spoil her. A hoard was seldom meant to be used. It was to be owned, acquired, put on a shelf.

But her… oh he had meant what he said. He would not rest until he had tried every single perfume and cosmetic and saw how it mingled with her scent.

As the knots released from her shoulders, he began to move his hands to the front, but stayed them, waiting for protest.

None came. Instead, the barest dip of her head, a silent approval he might have missed if not for his perfect vision.

Finally.