Possessed by a Dark Warrior (39 page)

He teleported his leathers away, not bothering to cover himself before he called fresh clothes to him, letting her get a quick flash of him naked. Her heartrate quickened, jacking his up with it, and desire flooded the link between them.

“I lied,” she rushed out and clenched her hands at her sides, flexed her fingers and curled them again, as if she wanted to grab hold of him and was resisting that desire. “I mean I did not lie as such… but I meant to say… earlier… w-when I talked about the pool…”

His smile widened as tight trousers appeared on his legs, hugging his thighs, followed by riding boots, and then his black knee-length jacket. The one with the pale blue embroidery on the two long rectangular tails on the front and the two on the back, around the cuffs and the stand-up collar. The one that he liked to save for special occasions because it was damned expensive and Loren had given it to him as a gift, but the cut was incredible and he thought it emphasised his physique, and he wanted to look handsome enough that his little dragon would want to eat him whole.

The hunger that filled Taryn’s eyes as she raked them over him said that he had been right to think it.

He stepped towards her and husked in a low gravelly voice, “You were talking about bathing with me.”

Fierce red coloured her cheeks, but then she straightened, looked him right in the eye and nodded.

“I wish to bathe with you.”

He liked that flash of courage in her eyes, that determination in her stance and the challenge in her tone.

He snaked his arm around her waist, hauled her close to him and feathered his lips up her throat to her ear and whispered into it, “You scrub my back and I’ll scrub yours.”

She trembled, a little squeak escaping her, a deliciously feminine sound that he wanted to hear again and again because it was so at odds with the dangerous side of his powerful little dragon that was all he had ever known. It made him want to stay and learn this new side of her, to learn everything about her, every little thing, leaving nothing hidden.

She tipped her head to one side, moaned as he tongued the lobe of her ear, melted against him before bracing her hands against his chest and pushing him back. He growled at her as she broke free of his grip, stealing herself away from him when he was hungry for more of her, and she planted her hands on her hips and glared at him.

“The pool is filling.”

He looked beyond her, cursed when he saw it was almost a quarter full.

“Stay here. Do not leave this room. Lock the door.” He pulled her to him for a quick hard kiss that had her gasping into his mouth and then teleported, intent on keeping his promise to her.

He wouldn’t break another one.

He appeared in the central courtyard and strode towards the arch in the high wall that led to the outer courtyard. The soldiers who had greeted him in a not so friendly fashion when he had returned with Taryn were gone, returned to their duties, leaving the orchard quiet. He didn’t need more than one shot at guessing where he would find his men.

He reached the pale garrison on the other side of the arch and took quick steps down the narrow corridor between the stable block and the main building. A grunt sounded from ahead and Bleu’s lips twitched into a smile.

Dacian was in his usual place in the arena, fighting Fynn for a change while Leif leaned against the wall, propped up on his elbows and shouting suggestions to the younger elf as he desperately tried to best the big warrior.

Good luck with that.

Bleu had fought Dacian before and the one time he had won, it had been a hard fought battle that had left him bed bound with strict orders to rest for three days.

He shrugged to himself. Dacian had had it worse though. The medical team had ordered him to rest for three weeks. The warrior male had grown close to losing his mind by the time his term in sick bay had finally ended. Bleu had never seen a male so glad to get back out onto the battlefield.

“Leif,” Bleu said and the noble male turned his head and looked over his shoulder at him before straightening and coming to face him. “I need you to relay information to the First Realm of the demons. Fynn and Dacian can hit the Second Realm.”

The two males in question broke apart and jogged over to him, both breathing hard and sporting a few new wounds.

“We are to warn them that Tenak will be passing through their lands. He is amassing an army en route. They need to decide how to act… whether that is evacuating any villages along the path the dragon might take or fighting him… but warn them that Taryn, this dragon’s sister, has seen a vision of them fighting on the side of the elves in our kingdom in a great battle against her brother.”

All three males frowned at that and he could see they had questions, but he didn’t have time to answer them.

The damned pool was probably close to a third full now.

Leif’s frown stuck. “What of the Third Realm? The dragon lands are closest to that kingdom.”

Bleu nodded. “I will take care of informing King Thorne.”

He couldn’t send anyone else in his place, no matter what Loren had ordered. It was his duty to go to the Third Realm. None of his men had met the demon king who ruled it, but they had met with the First and Second Kings before, during their previous search for the dragon.

He waited for all three males to nod and willed his portal, vowing to thank Dacian later when he had more time and they were alone. Green-purple light chased over the contours of his body and the darkness embraced him, cold against his face and hands, and then dissipated to reveal the courtyard of the squat dark stone castle belonging to King Thorne.

Part of him had expected his clearance to use the portal that exited in the castle to have been revoked and to find himself bounced to the nearest public portal or back to the elf kingdom.

He hadn’t exactly been on the best terms with Thorne. He couldn’t quite imagine worse ones since they had both been after the same female. Sable.

He took a step towards the nearest demon warrior milling around the courtyard and then stopped when a revelation hit him.

He was testing himself.

Sable would be with her mate and part of him needed to know whether seeing her would affect him as it used to, when she had been unmated and even after she had made her choice.

The demon swung his way, hefted a great broadsword up onto his wide shoulder, and strode towards him, the huge muscles of his bare torso shifting with each heavy step and dark brown leathers reflecting the light from the braziers that burned around the courtyard. The male’s dusky horns flared, curling from behind his pointed ears and around on themselves, so they resembled those of a ram.

It was a sign of aggression in demons.

Bleu stood his ground.

The demon was taller than him by a few inches, and broader too, but that didn’t mean he was stronger. If the male tried to fight him, he would find that out for himself.

“What you want?” the big male grumbled in broken English.

Bleu snorted. As if he couldn’t speak demon.

“I request an audience with King Thorne. I have news for him from the elf kingdom, so if you would be so kind as to stop stomping around acting like you own the place and take me to the male who actually does, I would most appreciate it,” he said in the demon tongue, skipping the usual greeting that was often in the form of an insult and earning a deadly glare from the male, one that said he was intelligent enough to recognise he had just been patronised and didn’t like it.

The male had started it. Bleu had only given him a taste of his own medicine.

The male’s meaty fingers flexed around the hilt of his broadsword.

Bleu’s twitched at his side, ready to call his blade to them if the demon attacked.

Another demon strolled over, burgundy leathers creaking as they struggled to remain in one piece over his thick thighs. Bleu recognised this one as a commander, a male he had met during the recent war between the Third and Fifth Realm, one he had fought in on the side of the Third. The demon had put on even more muscle in the few months since he had been here, but apparently hadn’t thought to purchase larger trousers.

“King Thorne will see you.” The dark-haired male beckoned him and Bleu followed him across the courtyard, keeping one eye on the other demon so he couldn’t get the jump on him.

Thorne’s castle was nothing like Loren’s. It lacked the grandeur of the elf palace, with no conical towers to spear the dark sky. To Bleu’s eyes, it resembled a stumpy heavily fortified grey garrison. Stout curved walls enclosed the inner courtyard, with one arched gate off to his left. At intervals along the wall, square three-storey buildings intersected it, the final level at the same height as the battlements. The demons patrolling the walls walked through those levels and appeared out the other side, huge swords and spears resting on their bare shoulders. Another difference from his own home, where no one roamed the walls unless an alarm was sounded. Here, the demons seemed to actively await war, almost as if they were wishing it would come to them.

They probably never had to wait long. A century at most. Often less. The seven demon realms were always at war with each other over something, playing a constant tug-of-war for the lands they shared.

Bleu turned his focus back to the squat three-storey building ahead of him. This one had a huge arched entrance, and arched windows on the second and third levels glowed with amber light. It wasn’t square like the others. It curved with the wall, with what looked like an addition to his right, where the windows were smaller. They were the quarters of the officers and the king, a place where he had stayed during the war with the Fifth Realm.

The second level extended on the left too, but only to form a balcony, with an elegant stone balustrade that seemed out of place in such a roughly hewn castle.

Small fire pits burned around the walls of the courtyard with larger ones dotted around the centre, chasing back the darkness that passed as evening light this far from the elf kingdom. Hell would be a black place indeed without the light his kin brought into it. That light bled over into the demon realms and the free realm, giving them a sort of day.

For some damned reason, the demons called it night.

He never had figured out why.

His demon escort led him through the arched entrance of the main building. Torches protruded from the carved columns and illuminated the vaulted hallway and the corridors that extended off from it to his left and his right.

He followed the male through the second archway and into the grand hall of the castle. Two rows of three thick stone columns rose up on either side of the aisle, supporting the vaulted ceiling. The torches slotted into black metal brackets struggled to illuminate the huge space, their warm light catching on the twelve stone columns and casting shadows in all directions around the windowless room.

Another marked difference to the elf castle. This was more of a war room than a ceremonial one. Defensive. Not decorative.

Dull, if you asked him.

He preferred the brightness and beauty of the grand hall in his own castle.

There weren’t even any pews in this one. Nowhere for visiting parties to rest. Everyone had to stand to speak with the demon in charge.

The king that lounged on the elaborate black throne at the end of the aisle on a raised platform, two braziers on the back corners of it illuminating the huge tapestry that hung on the rear wall, a depiction of war. Typical of a demon to think war was beautiful enough to hang it on his wall.

Thorne lowered his right leg, removing it from his left knee, and the sound of his boot striking the black stone of the platform rang around the room.

Oaf.

Demons lacked finesse and grace. They stomped around, growled and roared, and lost their temper over the slightest thing.

The Third King sat up, his broad bare chest rippling with muscle and power as he straightened on his black throne and eyed Bleu with dark red eyes that rapidly began to burn crimson.

Case in point.

He had barely been in the demon’s presence for three seconds, hadn’t even opened his mouth to tell the brute why he was here, and the male was already on the verge of attacking him.

Movement to the king’s left drew Bleu’s focus there. A slender black-haired mortal female dressed in obsidian leather trousers, knee-high boots and a tight black t-shirt emerged from the shadows and patted Thorne’s shoulder in a soothing manner, her amber eyes fixed on her mate.

Sable.

The expected ache in his heart didn’t come. It no longer hurt when he looked at her, because it was aching to see Taryn again, and that yearning was far stronger than any he had ever felt for Sable.

The huntress had been right all those months ago.

What he had felt for her hadn’t really been love, because although it had hurt him when she had chosen Thorne over him, the pain he had experienced then would be nothing compared with how he would feel if he lost Taryn. If she rejected him, he wouldn’t be able to bounce back from it.

He would die.

The demon Sable petted growled low, a rumbling sound of warning that Bleu heeded.

As much as he enjoyed fighting Thorne, he wasn’t here to do battle. Nor was he here to fight over Sable. He was here to deliver a message. Two messages, one on behalf of his kingdom and the other on behalf of himself. He would deal with that one first.

And quickly, because that damned pool was probably almost full and he meant to keep his promise to Taryn.

“An angel has been sighted in the dragon realm,” he said and Sable’s golden eyes widened.

Thorne growled again, eyes blazing like fire as he leaned forwards, his dark claws emerging as he curled his fingers over the ends of the armrests of his throne.

“An angel?” The big male bared his fangs on a snarl. “What business does an angel have in Hell?”

What indeed. Angels never entered Hell. It stripped them of most of their strength and crippled them with pain if the rumours were anything to go by.

“The Echelon,” Sable whispered, a frown pinching her fine black eyebrows as she stared at the floor, gaze fixed but distant.