Possessed by a Dark Warrior (6 page)

She lost herself in going over her plan as she walked, her feet growing sore again in her boots as the miles stacked up. The light in the valley began to fade. Night was falling. The dragon realm was so far from the elf kingdom that the light the fae brought into their world from the mortal one was weak when it reached it, barely able to drive the darkness back in the day, and leaving the world pitch black at night.

Her mind filled with images of what that fae kingdom had looked like and her bones warmed with the memory of how the light had felt on her skin. It had been so bright that her eyes had hurt and the land so colourful that it had been like a fantasy. A dream.

Did the mortal world look like the elf kingdom?

Was it lush and green, threaded with blue rivers, spotted with all the colours possible?

Gods, she could imagine that it was, and it made her ache to see it, to fly there as her ancestors had, long ago before they had been banished to Hell.

Her shoulders itched, her wings aching for freedom, the urge to shift rushing through her once more and pushing at her control.

A roar shattered the silence and robbed her of her breath.

Taryn stiffened.

He was coming.

A black shadow loomed above the castle, wrapped around it for a heartbeat before it spread enormous wings and took flight.

Her fingers shook so hard she struggled to tear the leather cuffs off her wrists, her breath trembling across her lips as she tore at the thick material.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she chanted as she ripped at the leather and one finally gave way, falling to the earth at her feet. She began to work on the other, her eyes darting between it and the shadowy dragon racing towards her. She had to get the cuffs off to break the spell. It was her only chance of getting him to recognise her.

Or at least, she hoped he would recognise her.

She ripped the second cuff off just as he landed hard only metres from her, causing the ground to shake and sending a blast of grit at her on a gust of wind that knocked her onto her backside. Pain bolted up her spine from the impact and she ground her teeth.

Out of the gloom, a rich deep violet head emerged, gigantic compared with her in her mortal form.

Bright violet eyes focused on her and the short spines that followed the ridge of bone above them rippled as he snorted, blowing hot air at her and the scent of ash. He growled, a strange disjointed sound that undulated around her, and bared his fangs. They gleamed in the low light, each as long as her arm, as sharp as a blade.

Taryn didn’t dare move.

He snorted again. Scenting her.

She waited, stilled right down to her breathing, willing him to recognise her. She held his gaze, searching it for that glimmer that would tell her that she had succeeded and he knew her. Those enormous violet eyes remained focused and deadly, narrowed on her, showing no sign that he recognised her as his kin.

His blood.

He shifted back a step, his broad wings folding against his back, so the white membrane was barely visible, and shook his head as he clawed at the ground, long talons raking at the black earth.

He was conflicted, unsure of her, but that didn’t mean she was safe. He could eat her in one snap of his jaws.

Taryn risked it and raised her right hand, holding it out to him.

His focus darted to it and his elliptical pupils narrowed into nothing more than vertical slits.

But then they widened again and she swore she saw a glimmer of recognition in them.

He lunged at her and she swiftly rolled out of the path of his strike, narrowly avoiding his bite, and launched onto her feet. So she had been wrong and he didn’t recognise her. She was quick to run with plan B, slashing a claw across her palm and spilling her blood as she turned back towards him.

Tenak went to lunge at her again but stopped dead, snorted and then inhaled deeply, his white chest expanding as he took a full breath down into his lungs. He exhaled hard, the hot fierce blast almost knocking her on her backside again, and then growled, the low rumbling sound encompassing her.

Her cut hand shook so badly it jumped around all over the place. She caught her wrist with her free hand to steady it and raised both towards him, so he could smell her clearly.

This had to work.

She had his attention, and this time she was sure he was beginning to recognise her. It was taking him longer than she had expected, but then she had been gone a while and he was lost to the darkness. It had often taken him some time to recognise her during his fits of madness.

He breathed in again, the nostrils in his beak flaring, and then lowered his head.

Relief swept through her and she bit out a sob, her adrenaline leaving her in an energy-draining rush as Tenak began to shift into his mortal form.

The relief was short-lived as the weight of the sword concealed in the blanket on her back reminded her that she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She still had to convince her brother to spare her life and forgive her, and if he sensed the sword she carried, he would do neither of those things. He would kill her.

She felt sure of that now.

The misguided beliefs that had plagued her during her journey, the lies she had told herself to keep her feet moving forwards, had fallen away now and she could see clearly.

Taryn looked at her twin where he stood before her, deep purple leathers encasing his powerful legs and his bare chest ridged with the honed muscles of a formidable warrior, his face as she remembered it but eyes foreign to her. They resembled hers, violet around the outside of his irises and white around his pupils, but while hers were only tinged with madness, his were wild and crazed.

He had truly lost his mind.

He stalked towards her, standing at least seven inches taller, radiating danger and deadliness that made her want to back away. It was a struggle to hold her ground, but she managed it.

She didn’t manage to hold back the flinch and the gasp when he shot a hand out, grasped the back of her neck and hauled her up to him though, forcing her head back and her eyes up to his.

He snarled through teeth that were still all sharp. “Why have you returned to me… after you left me… left me… alone in this dark world… without you?”

Taryn breathed hard, heart hammering and blood pounding as she shook from head to toe. His claws pressed into the sides of her throat, his grip on her nape fierce and unyielding, and she feared he would break her neck.

Her eyes darted between his, so familiar but so foreign, as if there was something else living inside her brother’s body, a sick beast that had driven the good male out and taken residence within him.

The pressure of his grip increased.

Memories surged.

Cold steel pressing on the back of her neck. Heavy on her wrists. Her ankles.

Tenak blurred in her vision as she went limp, her strength giving out, and she felt his arms around her, supporting her as she collapsed under the weight of her past.

He came back into focus, sharper than ever as her mind crumbled, and gods she hated acting like him, acting mad with a hunger for revenge against the kingdoms, because it came too easy for her and she feared it would swallow her whole and she would truly become like him.

She clawed at his chest, tried to break free of his hold. She needed to fly. He refused to release her and she curled her hands into fists and beat them against his shoulders. She wriggled and his grip on her tightened, sending her deeper under the tide of her memories. Hands on her. Hands.

Touching.

Taryn roared and gave one mighty shove, catching him in the face with her bloodied right palm and his chest with her left. His grip gave out and she stumbled free of his arms, twisting and staggering away from him. She couldn’t breathe.

Cold steel. Heavy. She had to fly.

She clawed at her hair and collapsed to her knees as the black mountains closed in around her like the walls of a cage.

“Sister.” Tenak’s deep voice wobbled in her mind, distorting into that of others.

The males who had purchased her.

Who had tried to break her.

She shook her head and curled over, breathing hard against her knees, fighting back as she tried to claw her way towards the light and shed the grip of the darkness.

“I did not leave you,” she snarled as tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped onto her knees to roll down the black leather. “I was taken.”

“Taken?” he snarled and the darkness in that single word frightened her.

She shrieked as hands caught her and pulled her onto her feet, twisted her to face their owner, and lashed out, clawing at the male. The scent of blood hit her and her fight fled her body, her muscles turning liquid again beneath her flesh. Her brother.

Taryn hurled herself at his chest, buried her face against his neck and shuddered as she sobbed.

He was still for a moment and then his arms carefully closed around her, the touch meant to comfort, but all it did was terrify her.

She broke free again and paced away from him, clawing her hair back from her face as she breathed hard and fast, chanted in her head that it was over. She was safe now. Free.

Free
.

She was free.

She needed to fly.

“Who took you from me?”

Who indeed?

She looked back over her shoulder at her brother, recognising him this time. Her precious brother, his face bloodied and chest streaked with crimson that dripped from dark slashes. The darkness in his eyes pleased her now, the hunger to maim and kill—the same darkness and hunger that beat in her heart.

“Slavers,” she whispered, filled with a ridiculous fear they might hear her and come for her again, might find her here.

That fear turned to hope a moment later. She snarled and willed them to try and take her, to come and see what her brother would do to them. He would make them pay. The increasing darkness in his eyes warned that she was speaking her thoughts aloud and they pleased him.

He already wanted to kill those who had hurt her, and she would give him more cause to want their blood on his hands, would weave a lie to draw him to her side.

“They took the sword… I only stole it because I wanted power like you… I was going to use the sword to get it,” she muttered and his face darkened at the mention of the blade she had taken from him. “I wanted to be powerful too. I was going to give it back. I wanted to be like you.”

She fell to her knees again and scratched at the earth, feeling that maybe she was already like him.

Mad.

“I kept track of it… but I lost it… the second male who bought me hid it.”

“Second?” Tenak snarled and came to tower over her again, a formidable sight as his eyes glowed with violet fire. “How many…?”

She was glad he couldn’t finish that sentence, because she was finding it hard to keep the memories at bay enough to spin her web and catch him in it as it was. It wouldn’t take much to push her back over the edge.

“Six,” she whispered and fought the faces of her owners as they came to her, pushing them back down inside her, refusing to look at them or those of the people who had traded her. “There were six before I escaped.”

Escaped.

When the elf was there.

The elf.

She looked down at her dirtied bloodied hands. At claws that had marked him. He would be coming for her. She was sure of that. She was sure that he had been hunting for her since their paths had crossed again three lunar cycles ago.

Taryn lifted her eyes to Tenak’s face and he hunkered down in front of her, his steady violet-to-white gaze so warm and soft, so beautifully familiar and comforting now that she wanted to cry.

She tensed when he reached for her, but then she was in his arms, held gently against his bare chest, his warmth seeping into her, and all she could do was rest there and let him be strong for her.

He growled low in her ear. “I swear… together we shall make all of Hell pay for what they have done to you.”

Gods, that sounded dangerously appealing.

Taryn sat with her head against his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the black mountains in the direction she had come, her bones vibrating with awareness that urged her to move faster, to accelerate her plan.

The elf was coming.

He believed her responsible for stealing the blade and attacking the elf kingdom seven long centuries ago, killing thousands of his kind. He could never feel anything for her other than hatred, and she had been fine with that, because it had meant he would never end up at the mercy of her brother.

But now she had delayed too long and her dragon instincts warned that he was closing in on her, and when that happened, the future would grow clouded and uncertain.

Both for her.

And for the elf.

Her fated male.

His mouth caressed sweet fire across the top of her breasts, breathed it up the line of her throat and seared her lips with it as he claimed them again, his fierce inhale stirring the embers that burned in her blood too, setting it aflame.

Taryn arched up against him, desperate with a need to feel his body against hers. Cold scales greeted her bare flesh, but couldn’t cool the fire burning inside her, a flame he had lit seven centuries ago. She moaned into his mouth as he plundered hers, the dominance of his kiss driving her deeper into her desire and stirring it to staggering new heights. She mewled, clawed at his arms, craved the feel of his warm skin beneath her fingers and his lips on her throat.

Fangs in her neck.

He drew back, breaking away from her lips and denying her. His wicked smile drew a growl from her that caused it to only grow wider, more amused as he tortured her with his distance.

She caught him around the nape of his neck and pulled him back down to her, tore a sweet gasp from his lips as she hooked her right leg around his backside and rolled him over, landing on top of him. It was her turn. She had been a slave to him for long enough, letting him master her.

It was time she mastered him.

She pressed her hands into his chest, her belly fluttering at the hard feel of it beneath her palms, all power and strength. It spoke to her dragon instincts, fanned her desire until it burned hotter and all she could think about was fulfilling her need of him.