Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“No! I don’t want to abandon you at all. But…I can’t abandon them, either. I can’t destroy their lives just to please myself.” Her thoughts are full of frustration. She is torn, too. She wants to stay with me. She doesn’t want to go back to the fort…and yet, she feels obligated to protect her friends, because they would protect her.
I nip at her shoulder, trying to distract her. It means this much to you?
“It does.” Her voice chokes with emotion. “It’d be so much easier for me if it didn’t, but I can’t abandon them, Jurik. Please understand. I’m not asking you to go back, but I have to—”
I will go back with you. I meant it when I said you are never leaving my side again.
Rachel sucks in a breath. “You…you’re sure?”
Of course. I stroke her clit, loving the little shudder that ripples through her body. How else can I protect you?
“You’re amazing,” she tells me, her thoughts full of happiness. Tomorrow, she will find her friends and figure out how to fix this. Tomorrow, she will save them. But tonight, she is all mine, and I intend on claiming her over and over again.
31
JURIK
It is near dawn, but I do not sleep.
The air is perfumed with mating scents—my scent mingling with that of Rachel’s until I cannot separate the two. Over and over I claimed my mate, until she drifted off to sleep in my arms. Even now, I hold her as she dreams, her thoughts of a more peaceful time when she had two hands and no scars. I want to dive into her dreams and experience them with her, but my head is too full of the day ahead.
I must think things through.
My mind feels whole, even without the constant, darting touch of one of the two infant drakoni. Rachel’s light, Rachel’s connection is more than enough to keep the madness at bay, and I consider what we are to do later this day.
After she rises from her slumber and eats, I will fly her back to her human hive, her fort.
It is madness to even think of doing so. Every drakoni knows to avoid Salorians, because they can capture minds and enslave spirits. I have known far too many drakoni that have been enslaved in the past.
I myself might have been enslaved in the past…I cannot recall. My memory is as bare as my mate’s pink flank; when I search for names and places, there is simply nothing left in my mind of another time, another place. I cannot even recall Salorians, just that they are bad. That they are evil, and they enslave my people. That I should avoid them.
Yet…this world changes all. Have I not been changed to my very bones? I am not the drakoni that came through the rift, and I do not need memories to tell me this. I have taken a human as a mate, though, and soon we will establish a nest. I want to fill my mate’s belly with my seed until she swells with my young…and it takes me a moment to realize that I have not once thought about returning to my homeland.
Some part of me knows I will never go back. With Rachel here, I do not even wish to attempt it. This is my home now, in all its ugly, noisy, smelly glory…and it is a good place because my mate is here, and in my arms.
She makes everything bearable. She makes me think I can do anything.
Even face down a Salorian.
I think back to her mental images of the Salorian—Lord Azar. The name is unfamiliar to me, but that might be due to my blank memory once more. I think of her mental images of him, of the gray-eyed dragons he keeps on the fort’s walls. Of her observation that he seemed tired, strained.
He told her he could not take more drakoni because he is at his limits. Perhaps I am a fool for trusting this, but I think he is right. I think he is right and because he is at his limits, I will be safe.
I will not touch my mind with his—I am no fool—but I will fly under his nose and take my mate there to see her friends.
And if he puts her at risk, I will raze the place with fire and claw.
RACHEL
I wake up to Jurik nibbling on my neck, his hips flexing against my backside.
Oh good. You are awake.
I bite back a snort of amusement. “How am I supposed to sleep through all that?” Not that I’m complaining. I’m sore all over, aching in places I didn’t know I had muscles, and I’m sticky and sweaty…but not complaining. Because right now, I’m being snuggled against a big, warm chest and held as if I’m the greatest treasure in the world. It’s a feeling I suspect I’ll never be able to get enough of, this safe and cherished feeling.