Bound to the Dragon King (8 page)

“Why did you run away?” he asks, loosening his hold on my arm.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper automatically as I notice the ferocity in his eyes is tainted with a hint of fear. “It was just incredibly offensive when you were treating me like that in front of Colin. More than offensive. It hurt. It seemed like his opinion mattered so much to you. You’re so stubborn, I can barely convince you to do anything. But the moment some werewolf starts throwing out suggestions, suddenly you’re all ears.”

“The werewolf’s logic meant nothing to me. My only concern was keeping you safe.” Asher presses his lips to my forehead. “We weren’t alone, we couldn’t talk about it. You wouldn’t follow my lead and I needed you to-”

“I don’t think that’s who I am,” I interrupt him again, cringing as the words leave my mouth. “Oops.”

Ash exhales in frustration, steam curling from his nostrils. “Yes, I’ve definitely noticed that.” His grip tightens on my wrist. “I’ve also noticed that you do not trust me,” he says.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t and I can’t understand why. Because I love you.” Asher kisses my palm before letting my arm fall to my side. “So much.” His hands cup my face, his thumbs grazing my cheekbones. “I would never dream of leaving you all alone, locked up in my lair so I could run off with some shifter pack. I wanted to get you away from them as quickly and safely as possible, and you just disappeared,” he croaks.

“Ash…” I can’t find the words to express my remorse. I guess I always disappear on him, but this time I could control it.

“You think I could really do that to you? That I could honestly feel that way about you, after everything we’ve been through?” The wind picks up, sending a light haze of sand spiraling around us. Shivering, I find myself too distracted by the creepy dragon bone background to answer him with words, so I wrap my arms around his neck instead. “This can’t be us,” he whispers into my ear. “We can’t be like this now that we actually have each other. We have to fix it somehow, Lindy…”

“Of course we will.” I’m as eager reassure him as I am to prove it to myself. Asher rests his forehead against mine as the corner of his mouth lifts into a tentative smile and a lone tear rolls down my cheek. Asher kisses it away, his lips lingering there as we both take a ragged breath.

I turn my head to move my mouth closer to his, hoping he’ll take the bait and kiss me. After a split second of resistance he does, winding his hand into my hair. His tongue presses against the seam of my lips, coaxing them to open. Our embrace gets deeper. Hotter. Flames lap at the peripheral of my vision as my body disappears into the warmth of his.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t follow your lead,” I murmur when his lips leave mine. “I should have trusted you. I should have known better.”

“Yeah, you should have. When are you going to figure it out? You’re the independent one.”

“Not really,” I laugh.

“You ran off all day and were completely fine on your own. I had no idea where to go,” he confesses. God, how could I have just left him on his own like that? “You are the entire world to me, Lindy.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “You’re my everything. It will never be like that for you, I know that. And I’ll… find a better way to deal with it before I end up pushing you away.”

“That will never, ever happen,” I say truthfully, but Asher snorts out a bitter laugh. “Ash, really. It’s not possible, you aren’t the only one who is dependent on the other.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“Honestly, I don’t have my shit together as much as you think,” I explain. “I wasn’t good at anything at all until a few days ago. And yeah, maybe it does bother me that it’s all because of you. I don’t think I realized how tired I am of being looked down upon and everyone having such low expectations of me.” My voice cracks and I drop my chin. “Including you.”

“Lindy,” he says soothingly. “That’s not how I see you at all.”

“Sometimes it feels like it’s always going to be like that.”

“Well, it’s not.”

I guess this is as good a time as any to start treating him like the leader he’s destined to be. “If you still want to attack Arralt with those shifters… I mean, I don’t really think it’s a very good idea, but if that’s what you need to do....”

“It’s not what I intend to do, actually.”

“What happened, Ash?” I ask.

“I got tricked, I suppose. Though, if you hadn’t run off, I wouldn’t have gone with Colin to begin with.”

“No shifter army, huh?” I knew there couldn’t have been that many of them around.

“No,” he replies sadly. “No, unfortunately there is not a legion of powerful beasts making their way here to help our cause. Just a fractured pack of cursed werewolves that I turned into a group of confused, broken people.”

“I’m sorry it worked out like that.”

“I could feel that some of them wouldn’t survive so I had to leave them in wolf form. Colin’s deception is understandable. All he wanted to do was save his sister.”

“Did you save her?”

“More or less,” Ash replies, glancing at the tiny dragon skeleton for a moment. “He also wanted to be the Alpha, and he got his wish.”

“Really?”

“Their leader was too old, I couldn’t change her. Even if I could have, we didn’t think it through. I ended up leaving a half dozen naked people in desert, arguing over what to do next. You’re right. I am impulsive. Hotheaded. My father always said it would hinder leadership,” Asher murmurs, his gaze moving to a massive skeleton across from the tiny one.

“Asher... is that your sister?”

“Yes. After seeing Colin and Ellen together, I just had to know if she was here.” Turning from me, he drops to his knees in front of her remains. “I wonder how she died,” he says, his voice shaking as he brushes some sand away from the tiny pits in the skull’s surface. “Who put her here? There is no one left to ask and it’s all my fault.”

“You were just a kid.”

“No, she was just a kid,” he snarls, clenching his fists. “Look how little she was. Still, I bet she put up a good fight, if she saw it coming.”

His jaw starts to tremble and I just can’t stop myself, sinking to my knees and crawling toward him. Asher pulls me into his lap once I’m within reach, wrapping his arms so tightly around me it’s hard to breathe.

“I belong here with them,” he whispers, sinking his head into my shoulder.

“No, you belong with me.”

He chokes out a stifled sob, nodding. “I’m so tired. I barely made it here, I practically fell out of the sky. But now you’re here…”

Asher falls on his side, pulling me to the ground with him. It’s hard to imagine that he’s in the mood, and I’m certainly not. But if we don’t, we’ll be stranded out here. Maybe we can make out a little bit and fly further away to charge up. And finish making up.

The dragon’s powerful voice rumbles in a low groan through my human lover’s chest as he drapes his arm over my waist. It’s heavy, but I only feel the pressure on my ribs for a moment before I’m surrounded by fire and the arm becomes a wing that blocks out the chill. I glance up at the massive black dragon and find that he’s already asleep. He must not be ready to leave what’s left of his family yet. I snuggle up next to his warm body, the tattoo on his scaled chest flaring as brightly as the brand on my thigh.

Chapter Nine

When my eyes open, I’m staring up at million stars shining in the inky black sky, so we must have only slept for a few hours. A fiery light illuminates the graveyard the moment I’m out from under Asher’s wing. I whip around and find him lying on the ground in his human form, naked and blinking in confusion.

His face hardens as his gaze focuses on the skeleton of his little sister. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” he says flatly as his eyes lock with mine.

“Okay.”

The wind picks up as Ash rises to his feet. “Did I shift?”

“Yeah. In your sleep, I think.”

“There goes my latest pair of pants,” he chuckles, picking up a piece of shredded denim. “You wouldn’t happen to have spare in your bag, would you?”

“Actually, I do,” I say proudly, retrieving them. “And I managed to put a reassembly enchantment on them, so hopefully this is the last time you’ll find yourself in this predicament.”

“Hopefully?”

“What can I say? My powers are still broken, we’ll see how the spell holds up.”

“They’re a little tight,” Ash says, adjusting himself.

“Yeah, they sure are,” I reply, biting my lip. There is no way in hell I’m ever getting this man a shirt to wear. Ever. “Are we going back to your lair now?”

“You’re worse than I am,” he laughs, raising an eyebrow and flashing me cocky grin that drives me crazy. “No, we’re not. I can’t fly that far yet.”

“Oh. Well, um… the bracelet isn’t ready yet, so I guess we’ll walk.”

“No, we won’t. It’s at least a hundred miles away.”

“What?” I exclaim. “Where are we?”

“Outside Sedona. I already set up a camp, it’s not far. I don’t want to be around humans right now. And there’s food.”

“Food, huh?”

“I hope you like steak.”

“I love it.” That put a big smile on his face. He’s so adorable. “But only if it’s
super
fresh,” I tease him.

Shaking his head, his eyes fall to the ground guiltily. “I always aim to please.” Asher’s fingers interlock with mine as we takes one last look around the graveyard. “How is the concealing spell holding up on this place?” he asks.

It’s hanging by a thread, but I don’t want him to worry. “Good enough for now. Ash…” I trail off, unwilling to ask him.

“What?”

“Never mind. Where are we headed?”

“No, what did you want to say?”

“It’s just… I was at Georgia’s house and there are so many fascinating ingredients for casting spells. Eye of newt, toe of frog, that kind of thing. So, I was kind of wondering…”

“If you could have a little powdered dragon bone to add to her collection?”

“No. To start my own.”

“Well, when you put it that way how can I refuse?”

“Really?”

“Sure. It is quite powerful, as I’m sure you can tell. It used to be extremely popular, that’s part of the reason we hid this place so well.”

Of course they didn’t want their bones used that way. “I shouldn’t have asked, I’m sorry.”

“No, you should have some. Do you have a preference?”

“Yes, actually. Over there,” I reply, pointing in the direction of the ancient dragon Asher was investigating when I came here.

“Illuzuras,” he whispers, nodding. “That makes sense.”

Oh, crap. I probably just asked for a chunk of his favorite uncle. “Why?”

“He’s the oldest one here, by far. And he was married to a powerful sorceress who supposedly resurrected him after he fell in battle, which gave him an unusually long life span.”

“Supposedly? So you didn’t know him?”

“I did not. He’s a relative, but he’s been dead for nearly ten thousand years.”

“Wow.” No wonder there’s such a strong energy pulsating from that one.

Asher strides over to the remains of his ancient kin, sliding his hand up one of the spines on the skeleton’s back. “Does it matter where it comes from?” he asks.

“I don’t think so.”

He cracks off the tip of the spine and clenches his fist. “Do you have a vessel of some sort to carry this?”

“I do,” I answer, fishing around in my pack for one of the jars I bought at the marketplace. Asher holds his hand over the opening and a line of white powder trickles into the jar. I can’t believe he’s strong enough to crush that by hand, even with his powers depleted. Maybe he really could take on Arralt on his own.

Asher scoops me into his arms when we’re ready to leave, unwilling to let me walk even the short distance to the camp in the canyon below us. My feet are so sore from walking all day, I don’t even protest. There’s a fading campfire waiting for us, but I don’t have the heart to lecture him about wildfires right now. He’s been through enough today and he obviously set all this up for me.

The steak is absolutely fantastic and I’m famished. Asher has such a satisfied expression as he watches me eat. “Sorry I couldn’t find any Coke,” he says.

“Oh, it’s fine. This water is actually amazing, I don’t think I’ve ever had anything so pure.”

“I’d ask if you were just saying that, but it’s from an enchanted spring.”

“If we bottled this, we’d be rich.”

“You did notice the giant piles of gold and jewels that I have stashed away, right?” he laughs.

“Oh, yeah. I never thought about how much it would be if it was converted into human money.”

“I’m not ready to trade a single coin for any of that ridiculous paper. If you need any, just swipe it when I’m not looking so I don’t have to watch such an abomination occur. The third pile from the west corner is my least favorite, the one with that hideous sea monster statue on top.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I still have my smuggling business to get me through the lean times.”

“There won’t be any lean times.” Asher’s tone suddenly becomes so serious and solemn, his brow furrowed as he stares off into the distance.

“Are you alright?”

“Of course.”