Fire The Blood: Dragon Mage Series Book III (8 page)

She felt the shudder of
his body as he seemed to wilt in relief around her, then she was crushed
against his hard chest.  "No, you hurt no one.  Do you know what is
happening here?"

"I flamed out
again?"  She wrapped her arms around his neck because there was nowhere
else to put them with him holding her so tight and because it was a comfort
when she felt as if she floated in a body unfamiliar.  Even her brain seemed a
strange place to be right then.  "I burned your clothes, too?"

"I burned the
clothes.  It was the easiest way to get them off.  Asha, you are entering your
first molt."

Asha stilled utterly,
feeling the words go through her.  "That's not possible.  I am not enough
dragon for that."

"You are."  He
pulled her away from him so he could look into her panicked eyes.  "You
are dragon; there was a block, Rhune removed it, and now you are making all the
changes your body should have made long ago."

She struggled then,
pushing against him in a rush and trying to kick him away from her.  "No! 
I will stop; I will not be dragon."

"You will, or you
will die," he said loudly, shaking her until she felt her bones rattle. 
She stuttered out a breath hearing those words.  "The healer said you will
die if you cannot make the transformation."

She thought about all she
had endured at the hands of dragon and all her mother had endured.  "Then
I will die." 

"The hell you
say!"  Braedon bit out grimly.  Before she could respond and explain why
she would never be a dragon, he had pulled her into his arms and crushed her
lips beneath his. His fire flowed from where their lips touched into the rest
of her body until it hit the ice encasing her fire.  It consumed the ice like
flame through paper and freed her own fire until she felt as though they were
one flame.  Desire blew from her center and crashed over them both.  She cried
out from need, and before she understood what was happening she became all
nerve endings and skin.  Then it was she who clung to Braedon, her hands
trailing over him and her legs wrapping around his hard hips.  Asha pushed
herself against all that heat and hard male and wallowed in him, skin to skin.

Braedon felt the raging
fight that was happening inside her and knew the moment it all shifted to
need.  It was as if her two warring sides had turned from their fight and seen
something they both wanted: him.  The power both cold and hot merged in one
wave that crashed over him in the form of lust.  Before he could understand
what was happening, the small fire mage had climbed him and was desperately
trying to impale herself on his shaft.  After that, he just didn't care.

She held him between her
legs, and her hands were seemingly insatiable for the feel of him; it was all
he could do not to rut like an animal then and there.  Despite what was going
on with Asha, she was still relatively innocent; he had to remember that. 

She was not making it
easy as she wrapped her soft fingers around his shaft to try to lead him inside
her.  The feel of the hot and cold currents running through her palm and
hitting him just there was enough to make him throw back his head and howl.  He
was so lost in the sensation that she had impaled herself fully on him before
he realized that was her intent.

He yelled mindless curses
in his head even as he reveled in the feel of her hot, wet heat enveloping him
to the hilt.  He must have said at least a few of those curses aloud because he
felt her hesitate and then still.

Asha shuddered against
him.  When he looked at her, her eyes were the heart of a flame and coated with
worry for him.  "Did I hurt you?"

Braedon choked on a
laugh, and he knew she could see the fire raging in his eyes because her eyes
widened and she gasped.

"What is
happening?" she whispered with a shudder even as her eyes closed and her
hands began to rub along his skin.

He wrapped his hands
around each side of her face and pressed his forehead to hers, trying to catch
his breath.  "We are mating."

She swallowed, and he
could feel her confusion and worry starting to grow.  The need was still there,
coursing through both their bodies on a current of power, but for now they were
holding it back.  "Mating?"

"Yes, 'in the way of
dragons,' I don't suppose you know what that entails?"  His voice was dry,
as it had just occurred to him that with her upbringing, or lack of one, she
might not know any more about it then he did, and that would be a problem.  He
pulled back his head, but their bodies needed to remain in as full contact as
possible.  With his hands in her hair, he tenderly brushed his thumb across her
face while their bodies stayed locked together.

"In the way of
dragons?"  Her eyes scrunched adorably, and despite the maelstrom they
were currently immersed in, he could not help but think that it was adorable.

"I believe we have
part of it covered," he said, moving his hips slightly to make his point. 
She shuddered and moved with him, and he had to release her face to grab her
hips or he would have lost it.  "Stay still.  Am I hurting you?"

"No," she
whispered.  Her eyes closed as she moved against his restraining hand. 
Apparently, the changes taking place within her were giving her the strength of
dragons because he could not stop her.  She threw back her head with her next
movement, and he watched the arch of her throat as she reveled in the feel of
him deep inside her.  With the water flowing both around and in them, it was
like an all-encompassing bath of pure lust and power.

He growled.  Leaving one
hand on her hip, he moved the other up her petal soft back to the base of her
neck and then attempted once again to keep his head.  "Blood and
sex," he murmured, even as he ran his nose up the side of her neck.  She
smelled like the air after a thunderstorm; it was intoxicating.  "I think
we can manage that," he murmured against her pulsing skin.  Then he found
the pulse at her neck and went for it, biting down hard enough to taste blood. 
Instead of fighting him off like he half expected, she groaned from the
pleasure of it, and he knew it was pleasure because the second he tasted her
blood, her hips began to piston over his shaft, and he lost whatever control he
was holding on to.  He swallowed her blood, and it coursed down his throat as
pure fire chased by her orgasm.  He licked at her collarbone for more even as
he pushed them both to the edge of the spring and positioned her back against a
rock to keep her in place while he pounded into her.  He knew he should be
taking it easy on her, but his body had a will of its own, and all it wanted
was to claim her.  He felt her come again, and the pleasure crashed over him
even as he was catapulted into what he soon realized was Asha's memories.

After the wave that was
everything Asha had finally subsided, he was shaking in the midst of all that
heat.  He felt Asha shuddering in the same backlash that he was suffering.  He
knew her sorrows and her belief that she had somehow been twisted into
something wrong.  He felt her rage.  And it became his own.

In an unexpectedly
violent move, he pushed her away from him and turned to the other side of the
spring with a roar of pain and rage that forced her to cover her ears with her
hands while she made herself as small as possible in the water.  He was too far
gone to notice; Braedon was so lost in his rage at what she had endured that
all he could do was beat his fists against the rocks of the hot spring until
they were bloody.

Sometime later he heard
her crying. In his mind again he was certain, as no sound but the boiling water
reached his ears.  He turned in a rush to see her wrapped in her own arms, her
eyes closed against the sight of him.  He could feel her now in his head, feel
her struggling against despair and mourning the mother she never had let
herself mourn until this moment when he had forced her to relive it again.  She
flinched when he walked to her and scooped her up in his arms.

She tried and nearly
succeeded in pushing him off.  She was definitely stronger now, but he seemed
to be as well.  "I do not want your pity."

He stopped trying to pull
her closer and instead looked into her heated eyes.  "Is that what you
think this is?"

She looked away, and her
face was set and cold.

"Asha, take my
blood."

She turned and looked at
him, her eyes blinking her confusion.  "What?"

"Take my blood. 
Complete the mating, and you will understand that the last thing I feel for you
is pity."

"Complete the
mating?"  Her face turned from confusion to panic, and she fought to push
him away once again.  But Braedon was not having any of it.  He bit his lip
over the scar from where they had shared blood the first time, and even as she
was pushing at him and saying "No, it is too dangerous for you…" he
was kissing her with that blood in his mouth.  As soon as the power of his
blood hit her tongue, he knew that the magic had been waiting for just that.  The
fire within them both exploded, and they clung together while their bodies
burned.  They relived the entirety of Braedon's life: every good and bad moment
until they reached the here and now, where she could feel his overpowering need
to protect her, the rage that nearly brought him to his knees at what she had
endured, and his pride that she had not allowed it to break her.

This time when they
returned to their bodies, they were wrapped in each other.  Asha cried warm,
silent tears into the side of his neck.

Braedon pulled her even
closer so that not even the air could come between them, and he felt her hot
tears against his neck like a claiming brand.  His voice was as ragged as his
heart when he spoke.  "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld,
and I am proud to claim you as my mate."

***

Asha felt more than heard
the words and pushed herself closer into all that warmth.  For the moment she
felt no cold: only an overwhelming safety in the arms of her mate.  She knew
there were reasons why she should not have done this, but for the moment all
she felt was whole, like she had found something she had not known she was
missing until that moment.  She let the warmth sink into her bones and the
feeling of Braedon sink into her soul.  She fell asleep in her mate’s arms,
content for that brief moment in time and only vaguely aware of being lifted
into strong arms and carried to a soft bed of clean white linens where the air
tasted like magic and smelled of flowers.

Waking up would not be
nearly as nice.

***

Braedon woke up to
confusion.  Instead of the cave of wonders where wild night blooms and ferns
grew without the aid of sunlight, where the bed sheets were magically cleaned
and you were dry as soon as you walked out of the hot spring, he was standing
in the lush green field below the cave.  He could see Eben Kinkaid, his mage
mate Lady Morgan, and General Solan standing with Melisande.  Riva was there,
as were Furee, Lux, and Aarion.  Beyond that group, the healer Shehar and her
dark mate, Ryall, and the council member Rendal with his dragon guard wearing
the colors of the House of Earth stood apart from the rest.  The politics that
were being discussed seemed out of place in the wild untamed beauty this close
to the north gate.  Strangely enough, he could not hear what they were saying;
it was only a murmur of words as if heard from a distance.  Then he heard the
sound of wind over grass and turned to see Asha and another woman who looked to
be an older version of his mate coming up behind him.  Asha took his arm, and
it was as if his ears had popped and he could now hear what was being said.

Braedon looked from Asha’s
serene face to that of the other lady with her, and he understood.  “I am in a
dream vision with you?”

“Yes,” Asha said.  When
she looked from him to the woman who had to be her mother, her eyes turned
sad.  “This is Laksee, my mother.”

Laksee looked him over
and smiled.  He would have to ask Asha how a dead woman could be in this
vision, but for now, just being dressed in his usual leathers, rather than
naked in front of her mother, was enough. 

"I am happy my
daughter has found her mate," Laksee’s eyes turned sad, and she looked so
much like her daughter that it was almost painful to see.  "She will need
you."  The words whispered through his head rather than his ears, and he
realized she was telling him something that Asha could not hear.  "When
she tries to push you away, that is when you must hold on the tightest."

Braedon heard the words
and would have loved to ask more about them and the feeling of fear that
accompanied them, but something was happening on the field below them.

"You are a fool,
Rendal, and you will not pass."  While staying in this house for these
past few weeks, Braedon had cause to hear a range of emotions from his hosts.  However,
he had never heard the grim fury he was hearing now, and from the easygoing
Prince Ladon of all of them.

"You have no right
to hold me from a member of my house!  As I am given to understand that she has
not had her first molt, she is not considered an adult and cannot declare
herself mated to a mage."  Lord Rendal was practically foaming at the
mouth.

He felt as much as saw
Asha tense at the council lord's words.  When he went on, it was even worse.

"What's more,"
the golden dragon postulated, his finger raised in the air.  "I have
doubts that she can be considered a dragon at all when she has reportedly never
shifted.  If that is the case, then she can be held to the same mating laws as
other mages."

"Which is it?" 
Ladon growled low.  "Is she a dragon of the House of Earth or a mage to be
mated at will?"

"Or would you have
her labeled both and completely under your power?"  Lady Morgan snapped
in, clearly as furious as her mate.  Braedon wondered on an aside when the
earth was going to start shaking.  Lady Morgan was a mage of all the elements as
well as a dragon’s mate.  The fact that Lord Rendal dismissed her with a flick
of his hands showed once again how much of a greedy fool he really was.

"What she is and her
standing will be determined at a later date.  For now, I have the right under
the law to take her into the protection of the House of Earth." He swept
his pointed finger over them all.  "If any of you try to stop me, it will
be an act of war against the council."

"You want to war
with me, Lord Rendal?" Eben Kinkaid’s rage was felt in each low word he
uttered.  His face was a study of grim resolve, and from the way he watched
Lord Rendal, the resolve was to see the dragon council lord in pieces.

It gave Lord Rendal
pause, and a panicked look came and went in his eyes.  Then he seemed to
internally buck himself up.  "If you break the laws set forth by the
Council of Dragons, then you make that choice, not I.  You will be hunted down
and made to face tribunal for your unlawful actions."

"And who will hunt
down The Executioner?"  Furee asked, his own voice a rough purr of
warning.  "Will you do it, Lord Rendal?  Or your
security
force
from the House of Earth?"

"I have every right
to form my own protection when the dragon knights are clearly under the command
of Kinkaid.  It is obvious that he and his mates are trying to bring down that
council so they can rule instead."

Lux boomed out a laugh. 
"Kinkaid doesn't need to command the army to end you.  If he wanted to do
it, Council Lord or not, he would do it himself."