Possessed by a Dark Warrior (29 page)

He dunked the cloth in the crystal clear water, pulled it free and ran it over his bloodstained skin, scrubbing himself clean. It smelled tinny as he used it to wipe the thick crust of blood off his neck and face. When the cloth was deep red, dripping crimson onto the pale gravel, he sent it away, back to his bathing room in his apartment, and looked himself over. A marginal improvement in his appearance. Deep red gashes still criss-crossed his chest and arms, angry scarlet around their edges, and his skin was still pinker than usual from all the blood, but it would do. He couldn’t exactly dunk himself in the fountain as he wanted.

The damned thing was sacred.

He had already gained a multitude of black glares and looks that questioned his sanity by using the water to wash himself off. If he got blood in the water, he would probably find himself strung up in the cells.

He blew out his breath and quickly headed towards the arched entrance of the castle. The guards eyed him as he passed and he swiftly moved through the ground floor of the castle, his bare feet silent on the cool stone flags. The pale stone walls glittered in the warm glow from the lights along the ceiling. White statues towered above him on either side of the grand hallway, standing at intervals between elegantly carved columns that looked like pristine flowers made of ice.

The old kings and queens of the elf kingdom. Loren’s bloodline. Bleu had never known any of them, but he had walked this hallway so many times that he knew every detail of their faces and their clothing.

He kept his eyes locked on the wooden door at the far end of the wide corridor, exhaled hard and inhaled again, wrestling with his nerves.

Loren was in the throne room beyond those doors. Bleu could feel him.

He looked back towards the entrance behind him. The brightness of the outside world made the archway a blur of white light, impossible for him to see beyond. His steps slowed and he turned back towards it.

Taryn was out there.

Unmated males surrounding her.

He growled and took a step back towards her, forced himself to stop and spun on his heel to face the closed wooden doors again. As much as he wanted to return to her and protect her from every male in the castle, ensuring none looked at her and that she was his and his alone, he had to keep moving forwards. The only real way of protecting his female was to explain everything to Loren and request he inform everyone in the castle that Taryn wasn’t the enemy and was not to be touched.

Or even looked at.

Bleu growled low in his throat, satisfied by the thought of Loren telling everyone that they couldn’t so much as look at her.

She was his, and only he could gaze upon her beauty.

He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and growled again. Thinking like that was only going to get him into trouble—both with others and with her. He had witnessed Loren in the throes of the mating urge, suffering from an incomplete bond to Olivia. He had seen King Thorne of the demons go half-mad with need of Sable.

He had to be stronger than that.

He had to keep control and keep a level head.

He refused to fall victim of his instincts.

Pain shot through him, hot and fierce, tearing his heart asunder and pulling the floor out from under his feet. His knees hit the pale polished flagstones and he bent over, pressing his palms into the cold stone and panting hard. The fire came again, licking at his bones, searing his flesh, and he cried out.

A mighty roar echoed along the corridor at his back.

A chill swept over his skin.

Taryn.

Bleu exploded to his feet and teleported to the main portal of the castle where he had left her.

She was gone.

His heart pounded, her fear colliding with his as he scoured the courtyard for her. Only elves as far as his eyes could see and he wanted to grab every single one of them and rattle them until they confessed her location.

He tried to focus on her blood in his body, but it was hard when every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to find his female. She was afraid. Terrified. In pain.

Suffering.

He snarled when he got a fix on her location and his gaze snapped towards the gate in the inner wall of the castle grounds, settling on the garrison on the other side.

Damn them.

He would kill them all.

He sprinted towards the square three storey stone building, moving in a blur as his bare feet chewed up the distance between him and his female. He issued the mental command to his armour as he ran and growled when it didn’t come. Fuck. He had forgotten the bastard dragon had stolen it from him.

He shouldered the main door open, sharp pain splintering across his bones, and ignored the comments some of the soldiers tossed in his direction as he ran towards the steps that led down off to his right. He leaped the first set, landing in the turning, and then leaped down the second, his feet striking the cobbled floor of the cellblock hard enough to get the attention of everyone crowding the corridor between the cells.

A flicker of regret shone in Dacian’s eyes, but that wasn’t going to stop Bleu from butchering him later.

He had trusted Dacian with his female and the warrior had failed him.

He pinned everyone present with murderous looks, barely holding back the surging tide of darkness, the hunger to do more than glare. He wanted to sink his claws into their flesh and tear them apart for what they had done.

As casually as he could when his blood was thundering with a need to kill and Taryn’s fear flowed through him, he walked forwards, chin tipped up and shoulders back. The urge to run to her cell battered him but he somehow managed to reach the group of males without surrendering to it.

They parted for him and he ground his teeth together, his fangs cutting into his gums when he saw Taryn huddled in the corner of the cell.

Bleu turned on his team. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

“Following protocol.” Leif’s calm tone only made Bleu bump him to the top of the list. He would be the first Bleu would make acquainted with his claws once he had procured new armour. “She had to be placed somewhere secure while you spoke with Prince Loren.”

Bleu curled his fingers into fists and reined in his fury. It instantly slipped its leash again and he had to dig his short nails into his palm to stop himself from lashing out at Leif.

“I cannot argue that it was not the right course of action, but who gave you permission to hurt her?” He flung one hand towards her, pointing at her where she sat curled into a ball, rocking and muttering to herself.

Her pain was crushing, far worse than he had felt in her back in the cell of the dragon castle when he had bitten her. It pressed down on his heart, left him feeling as if it might crush it entirely, until nothing remained and all he knew was agony for eternity.

“No one hurt her,” Leif countered. “We brought her down here and she turned crazed.”

Liar.

He looked across at his little female as she stared at the opposite corner of her cell, eyes dull and lifeless as she chanted to herself in the dragon tongue.

“He is coming for me… he is coming for us all… he is coming for me… he is coming,” she whispered as she rocked, arms wrapped tightly around her leather-clad knees.

Bleu slowly frowned as he realised that the only wounds she bore were the ones he had given her. Leif hadn’t lied.

“Unlock the door,” Bleu said and no one moved to obey him.

He growled at them, snarling through his fangs as his pointed ears flared back against the sides of his head.

“Need to fly,” Taryn muttered in the dragon tongue and her pain worsened, near crippling him as it ripped into his heart.

He had to calm her. He couldn’t deny that urge even when he knew that doing so would raise questions in his men and possibly suspicions too. He didn’t care. His female was in pain. She was afraid. Suffering. He had to do something to take away her fear and hurt and soothe her.

He snatched the keys from the hands of the male in charge and fumbled with them, his hands shaking as he rushed to find the one that would open her door.

“Need to fly,” she whimpered and began clawing at her hair, raking blunt nails over her skin and leaving red marks in their wake.

“Taryn,” Bleu said as he found the right key and shoved it into the lock. He growled as his hands shook so violently he almost knocked the damn key back out again and finally managed to turn it.

He shoved the door open.

Her eyes snapped up to him.

Bright and clear.

She launched to her feet with a growl, barrelled into his chest and sent him staggering back into the men behind him, knocking them all down. Her booted foot pressed into his stomach and she kicked off, breaking to her left.

Running for the courtyard.

“Taryn!” Bleu scrambled onto his feet and stumbled over the fallen males who were trying to get up too. He growled at them and broke free, bare feet hitting the cobbles as Taryn reached the first bend in the stone staircase. “Taryn!”

She didn’t slow. She didn’t even look at him.

Her eyes remained locked ahead of her, up the stairs.

Gods damn it.

The whole courtyard was filled with soldiers and if they saw her fleeing the garrison they would try to stop her, and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from attacking them.

He sprinted up the stairs and rushed out into the daylight, eyes watering at the sudden change in brightness. When his vision recovered, he scanned the outer courtyard for her, and then whipped his head towards the arched entrance to the inner courtyard to his left when shouts came from that direction.

A roar sounded and he growled as her head appeared above the top of the wall, white horns brushing the violet scales of her neck as she reared back, standing over sixty foot tall in her dragon form. Arrows flew at her, bouncing off the white plates across her chest.

He snarled and teleported, landing in the centre of the orchard, facing a small army of archers.

Bleu spun on his heel to face the other direction and Taryn loomed over him, her huge front paws swiping at the arrows zipping towards her. One struck her face and she flinched, enormous right eye closing as she tried to protect her sight.

A thin line of red blossomed along the path the arrow had taken, from her lip up to the top of her snout.

He growled and turned on the archers. “Stand down!”

They all looked at him as if he had gone mad, and maybe he had. Maybe he had been mad from the moment he met her, crazy to deny that she was his fated one.

His ki’ara.

His everything.

Her broad wings beat the air, their white membrane stretched taut as she spread them, easily spanning the breadth of the courtyard from the interior wall on her right to the castle on her left.

She kicked off, shaking the ground and sending a few of the soldiers around him to their knees. Her wings beat harder, sending a gust of wind that drove more men onto their backsides, and she lifted into the air.

“Wait!” Bleu hollered and waved his arms.

She turned wild eyes on him and he knew in that instant that she wouldn’t listen. Whatever madness had gripped her, it was too powerful for her to break free of its hold.

He turned as she flew overhead, leaving him as the only male standing, and he could feel her joy as it ran through him, the deep relief she felt as she flew, spreading her wings. Her fear remained though, lingering in his blood, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what she had said.

He was coming.

Had it been a vision?

Had she seen her brother coming for her?

For them all?

It had clearly shaken her and he needed to follow her, not only to comfort her. As powerful as that need was, the other that ruled him was equal in strength to it.

He needed to find out what she had seen because he had the feeling that the kingdom was in danger and it was his fault.

He had gone against her wishes and brought her here rather than to the dragon realm, and in doing so, he had turned her brother’s focus to this realm and his kin once more. He had given an unbalanced warrior a reason to believe he had kidnapped his sister in order to harm her.

And that warrior had a sword that could cut an entire legion of elves down in one swing.

“Pursue the dragon,” Leif shouted, snapping him out of his thoughts.

Soldiers were already forming groups.

Hunting parties.

“Belay that order,” Bleu barked and everyone stopped to look at him. “I will go alone.”

He teleported before anyone could respond, but in the heartbeat of time between willing his portal and disappearing, he felt the presence of Loren.

Bleu reappeared on the brow of a hill a short distance from the castle and looked back at it, the wind that always raced over the green plains tousling his hair and caressing his bare torso.

Loren had witnessed everything.

He was going to have to answer some tricky, personal, questions when he returned.

He didn’t care.

Maybe he would have once, only a few days ago, but now all he cared about was Taryn. Loren could punish him, could question him in front of every soldier in the castle, could strip him of his rank for insubordination and the fact he had endangered everyone in the elf kingdom. He didn’t care what happened to him.

He only cared what happened to Taryn.

She was the only thing that mattered now.

Bleu scoured the lands around him. Villages dotted the rolling green hills, marked by the windmills and golden fields of grains that often surrounded them. Taryn would avoid those and any hint of civilisation. He looked over his right shoulder, in the direction of the First Realm of the demons, towards the stronghold. He doubted she would return to the dragon realm and her brother, but he couldn’t be sure.

He scanned back around, sweeping his gaze over all the lands to his right and then settling them on the mountain range that separated the elf kingdom from the free realm and the others.

Would she have kept flying straight and true, towards those mountains, or would she have swept around to head back towards Tenak?