Possessed by a Dark Warrior (23 page)

He left her alone, not wanting to scare her when she was already terrified.

The cells beyond her were occupied too. Two males. One alive, and the other not.

The gruesome remains of what had once been a male hung from chains and hooks, suspended from the ceiling, sections of his skin peeled back to reveal muscle and bone, and stomach sliced open, guts streaming from the gaping hole.

Bleu blew out his breath, sucked down another one as his stomach rebelled, acid burning up his throat, and prayed to his gods that they were on his side for once and he didn’t end up like that poor bastard.

He pressed a hand to his abdomen and dug his fingertips in. Shuddered.

It wasn’t going to happen. He wouldn’t let it happen. He was going to find a way out of this mess and he was going to make it back to his team. Leif would berate him. Dacian would give him the old I-told-you-so. Fynn would somehow turn it all into a joke.

He should have brought them with him. Together they could have fought off the dragon male and escaped. Now he was trapped here alone and they had no clue as to his location. Leif didn’t know the valley.

It was painful to admit it, but he was a royal idiot for trying to do things solo.

And why?

Because he had wanted to protect the female. He had wanted to keep her to himself.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. Gods help him. He was a bigger idiot than he had previously thought. He was the god of all idiots.

Because he had been blinded by lust again, made to believe something that wasn’t there.

She was his fated female, and he wanted to believe she felt something for him, but his current situation was making it hard to believe anything other than that she had stopped her brother from killing him for some nefarious reason.

It smelled of her down here.

She had been in the cellblock, and his gut said it had happened more than once.

For all he knew, she participated in torturing the poor souls trapped in the cages around him.

He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t noticed the coldness in her eyes, the same ice and darkness that had been in her brother’s when the male had been throttling him.

A rumbling growl cut his train of thought short and had his head whipping towards the source of the sound. Footsteps echoed down the spiral stairwell to his left. The female in the cell to his right shrieked and curled into a tight ball, her fear washing over him.

Bleu didn’t move.

He knew what was coming and that it was coming for him. All he could do now was prepare himself for the inevitable.

He was going to find out exactly what the dragons did to their captives to turn them into broken messes.

The male dragon loomed out of the darkness, golden light washing over his bare chest as he strode around the perimeter of Bleu’s cell and came to a halt in front of it, near the door.

His violet-to-white eyes locked on Bleu and Bleu held them, keeping his breathing slow and his pulse steady. The male’s lips quirked into a smile and then stretched into a grin.

“I have the feeling you will be an interesting one.” The dragon flicked a glance at the female, sighed and looked back at Bleu. “The others have disappointed me so much… they are weak… they broke easily… but you…”

“Will kick your arse if you give me a few more minutes to purge this damned drug from my system,” Bleu growled and rose onto his feet. His legs wobbled but he locked his knees, tensed his thighs and refused to fall. He bared his emerging fangs at the male, his voice a thick snarl as he pushed words out through his battered throat. “You lock your victims in cages and weaken them before you dare set foot in them. You want interesting… I will show you interesting… just a little blood and a few minutes and I will show you how weak you are.”

The dragon launched at the bars of his cell, hands slamming into them and rattling them. Bleu held his ground, calmly holding the dragon’s gaze as stone dust rained down from the points where the metal bars met the ceiling. The male was strong, but easy to antagonise. Prince Loren’s voice rang around Bleu’s head, a montage of the million and one times he had told him not to antagonise his opponents.

It never stopped him from doing it.

An angry and frustrated enemy was an enemy who was ruled by their emotions, unable to think clearly. It was an advantage, and Bleu loved to take it.

“You think yourself strong?” The male pulled a set of keys from his pocket, slid one into the lock on his cell door, and twisted it. The door creaked open and the dragon stalked into it, his eyes narrowed and fury rolling off him. He tilted his head, cracking his neck, and rolled his shoulders, and then slammed the door closed behind him. “I will show
you
how weak you are.”

Bleu ducked under the fist that came at his face and tried to evade the one aimed at his stomach, but wasn’t quick enough. It struck hard, knocking the wind from him and lifting him off his feet. He grunted and wheezed, and then growled as he tasted blood.

He had said to give him five minutes, hadn’t he? The bastard wasn’t going to prove anything by fighting him right now, while he was weakened by drugs.

Well, he wasn’t going to prove anything other than he was a pathetic male who knew he couldn’t win a fair fight so resorted to nefarious means to bring down an opponent.

Bleu spat blood in his face and swung at him. The male dodged backwards and Bleu followed through. The motion sent him off balance and he staggered right, tripped on his own damn feet and hit the black flagstones with jarring force, grunting again as he struck them.

“Pathetic.” The dragon grabbed him by the back of his neck and dragged him onto his feet.

“Funny,” he rasped, paused when he sounded groggy and shook his head to clear it of the fuzziness that was already encroaching around the edges of his mind, and flashed bloodied teeth at the male in a grin. “My thoughts exactly.”

The stone wall greeted Bleu’s back with a fierce embrace and he barely stopped himself from crying out as every bone in his body ached from the blow, fire zinging along them and numbing his fingertips. His knees gave out but the dragon grabbed him by the throat before he could hit the floor, hauling him off his feet and pinning him to the wall.

Someone else had done that to him once and it hadn’t gone down well then, and it damned well didn’t go down well now.

He brought his right leg up and slammed it hard between the dragon’s violet-leather-clad thighs. The male grunted, dropped him and staggered back, clutching at his groin. Bleu’s feet hit the floor and his legs almost gave out, but he remained standing. Progress.

He flexed his fingers, testing his body’s responsiveness. It was improving. Just a few more minutes and he would be strong enough to show this male that he had picked a fight with the wrong elf.

The male lifted his head and slowly released his crotch and rose to his full height. Violet fire flashed in his eyes as he rolled his shoulders back and his honed bare broad torso tensed as he growled.

The fingers of Bleu’s left hand twitched and he focused on them and the link between him and his blade, willing it to come to him.

The dragon looked down at his hand and then up into his eyes and hissed at him. He moved faster than Bleu could track, snatching his left arm and twisting it behind his back, shoving his hand up his spine so far that his elbow snapped.

He bit down on his tongue to stop himself from crying out and breathed through the pain as his cheek and chest slammed into the cold stone wall, the dragon’s powerful body pinning him against it.

“You will scream for me,” the dragon snarled into his ear, breath hot on Bleu’s cheek, and pressed him harder against the wall as he twisted his arm at an excruciating angle. “You will scream for her.”

Her.

That word pierced his pain-fogged mind.

Taryn.

A part of him reached out to her in response to her name whispered in his skull, seeking her, desperate to feel her.

The dragon sank claws into the back of his neck and yanked him away from the wall, spun him around and slammed a fist into his face. He lashed out with his right hand, trying to shove the male away, to gain enough space and time to stop his head from spinning and find his feet again. The male didn’t let up. He grabbed Bleu’s throat and punched him harder, pummelling his face.

“Scream,” the dragon bit out.

Bleu refused.

He gritted his teeth and didn’t make a sound as the male worked him over, not even when he switched to hitting him in the kidney and then his stomach. Not even when he kneed him between the thighs.

Not even when he raked claws down his bare chest and slashed up his back.

He wouldn’t give the male the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

Time blurred, the pain stealing focus from him, so his tentative connection with the female slipped away beyond his reach. The world turned red, hazy with blood as it streamed over his face from the cuts where the male had clawed at his skull, holding the top of his head as he had slashed talons over his flesh, cutting through his muscles and scraping over his bones.

Hot liquid dripped down onto his chest, seared the lacerations on it, and everything became streaked with bright colours before it all turned monochrome. Spots of colour came back. Red of blood. Violet. Startlingly vivid against the black and greys.

The male shoved him aside and Bleu skidded on the pool of his own blood that now coated the black stones and landed in a heap in the centre of it.

The dragon towered over him, bloodied chest heaving, eyes burning with violet fire. He held his hand up, a small empty vial held between his thumb and index finger, the source of the flames that had licked across Bleu’s wounds and caught his blood alight, and grinned viciously.

“Let us see how you fare now, Warrior.” Those words seemed to shimmer in the air before the dragon, twisted and echoed in Bleu’s ears as he struggled against the white-hot fire running through his blood, burning it up.

Bleu tried to focus on the male but he wobbled and distorted, blurred one moment and painfully sharp the next.

He sat on his knees, arms limp and useless at his sides, pain and the drug numbing him but setting him on fire at the same time.

His fangs itched, the scent of blood driving him mad with hunger.

Darkness rose in response to that hunger, transforming it into a terrible craving that he couldn’t deny. It consumed him, devouring his strength, tearing down his control until he could think of only one thing.

Blood.

He narrowed his eyes on the dragon’s carotid.

Launched at him with fangs bared.

The male backhanded him and he shot across the cell and hit the cold metal bars. Lightning sizzled across his mind, jagged tendrils reaching over his skull, and he slid down the bars to the ground, the world around him spinning.

When it finally stopped, the dragon male was gone and the door to his cell was open.

Bleu frowned at it, and then clawed at the ground, slipping the fingers of his right hand into the cracks between the flagstones and growling as he dragged himself towards it.

He had barely moved a few inches before the male was there in the doorway.

He wasn’t alone.

The dark-haired female he held by the back of her neck struggled like a wild thing in his grip, screaming and lashing out with her arms and legs.

“You are not allowed to die yet,” the dragon snarled and Bleu looked between him and the female, struggling to focus on either of them as his strength ebbed away and the roar for blood grew deafening in his ears. “You die once you have paid for chasing my sister… you die once she has witnessed your punishment and gives you leave to do so. Now… we will make you strong again.”

Bleu’s eyes slowly widened as the female the dragon held stilled and looked at him, her golden eyes enormous and her skin washing of colour beneath the dried blood and dirt.

He tried to speak, fought to find his voice and tell the dragon not to do it, because the darkness running in his veins was too strong, the hunger too fierce to deny.

She started to shake her head.

The dragon hurled her at Bleu and he pounced on her, taking her down to the ground and sinking his aching fangs into her neck. Blood burst onto his tongue and he moaned low in his parched throat as he gulped it down, a slave to his hunger as it hijacked control of him.

A dim and distant part of him told him to stop but he crushed that voice and sank his fangs deeper into her flesh, relished her cry as she clawed at him, fighting him and causing his teeth to tear ragged holes in her. He frantically lapped at the blood she spilled, desperate for it all, unwilling to waste a single drop.

He needed it.

He snarled as someone moved on the periphery of his senses, dragged the female closer to him so they couldn’t take her from him, and bit her again. She jerked in his arms and screamed, her warm sweet blood filling his mouth, feeding the darkness that flowed through him, swirling deeper to wrap black thorny tendrils around his mind and his soul. They tightened their hold as he drank deeper, greedily gulping down her blood.

“Feed,” a male voice murmured.

Bleu did so, too hungry to stop now that he had started and part of him silently hoping that if he obeyed the male, he would give him another to drink from.

Once this one was dead.

Taryn rushed from her room and hit the hallway at a sprint. Breath sawed from her lips and burned in her lungs, and her heart beat painfully hard. It leaped into her throat when the agonised bellow came again, joined by a more feminine shriek of terror this time.

The elf.

She bolted down to the next level and pushed herself harder, cursing herself for leaving Tenak’s side for even a heartbeat. She should have remained with him at all times, but she had needed a moment to breathe and pull herself together. Her brother had taken advantage of that, venturing down to the cellblock alone when he had sworn he would wait for her.

She cursed him too.

Another chilling high-pitched scream tore through the black castle.