Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
“To keep the poison of the desert from harming you and your Drake,” she told me. “You will still feel the pain when you fly over it, but the evil will not be able to penetrate your skin.”
So there’s that. But still—it fucking hurts.
We could fly higher. The air would be cleaner up there—thinner, colder—but cleaner.
But I don’t dare.
Because Irena is on our back.
She’s wrapped in the pale blue gown and soft cape the Sorceress gave her, the fabric fluttering gently against our scales. It looks warm enough. But I don’t trust appearances—not when the wind bites like this and the sky grows colder with every league.
Too cold, my Drake warns, his thoughts heavy with worry. She would freeze.
I know, I send back. We’ll stay lower.
Even though it hurts…even though every mile feels like flying through poison-laced knives.
I feel her small weight between our wings, still and quiet—too quiet.
At the start of the journey, when she climbed onto our back, I heard it—the soft, broken sounds she tried to hide—sobbing. She was crying as softly as she could, probably thinking I couldn’t hear her over the wind.
But I heard. Fuck, of course I heard.
My chest tightens painfully at the memory. My Drake wanted to turn his head—to nuzzle her, to show her how we both care for her.
But she’s been so distant since the Sorceress told her about the effects of the collar and how I would be stuck in Drake form if she died. She’s withdrawn—like she’s built a wall between us and I don’t know how to tear it down.
My Drake shifts restlessly beneath her, wings beating harder than necessary.
She is hurt, he tells me, a mournful certainty in his voice. She thinks we came only because we had to.
“I know,” I growl softly. “And that’s not fucking true.”
…Is it?
The doubt slides into my heart like a blade.
I tell myself—I would have come for her. That I would have chased her across the forest, across the desert, across the fucking world if I had to.
But we started as enemies.
She was my captor—my Mistress. The princess of the kingdom that chained me in a dungeon and treated me like a beast.
I hated her at first.
So when did it change? When did I stop seeing her as the enemy and start seeing her as mine?
I don’t know.
Maybe it was when she bathed me in the wooden tub at the Slaughtered Lamb. Maybe it was the way her hands shook as she touched me—afraid, but determined. Maybe it was the way she looked at me like I was a man, not a monster.
Or maybe it was later—when I held her as she cried and she trusted me enough to be vulnerable. Or maybe it was when she trusted me with her body, her pleasure… her heart.
Fuck—I don’t know. I only know she should be mine—that we ought to stay together.
I swallow hard, my throat tight.
I love her now. There’s no doubt about that. I did everything but Bond her to me when we made love—everything but seal her as my mate forever. My Drake wanted to—Gods, how he wanted to.
She is our mate, he rumbles insistently. She just does not know it yet.
She might never, I answer bitterly. She feels bound to her family. To her crown.
We will lose her, my Drake says quietly, fear bleeding through our bond.
The thought is unbearable to both of us.
Losing her would tear us in half—me and the Drake both. Once a Drake gives his heart, it’s forever. There’s no taking it back—no forgetting.
I grit my teeth and push harder against the wind, wings straining.
I have to do something.
I have to find a way to make her understand—to make her believe that I didn’t protect her just because of the collar. That I didn’t come after her only because I was afraid of being trapped in Drake form.
I came because I wanted her.
Because somewhere along the way, my curvy little princess became my whole fucking world.
But how do I say that? How do I prove it—when I’m not even sure myself when it changed?
I take some control of my Drake and glance back as much as I can without losing control of our flight. She’s hunched slightly, hands gripping the ridges of our scales, her head bowed against the wind.
“Irena,” I rumble in my Drake’s voice, though I know she can’t hear me. “Sweetheart…”
The wind steals my words.
I have only a few more hours of flying before we reach her kingdom. A few more hours to figure out how to bridge this rift—how to make her believe that I love her. That I would choose her, collar or no collar, crown or no crown.
Because if I don’t…
I don’t think my Drake—or my heart—will survive losing her.
And that, more than any poison wind or desert, is what truly terrifies me.