AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Pulling myself together, I gave him a sharp nod before writing, ‘I do,’ on the pad.
His smile lit up his face, and the tension eased between us before he stiffened and scowled again, remembering I was possibly his enemy.
It was rather adorable.
Don’t you even start!
“I’ll be back.” He touched two fingers to the top of my head. “I promise.”
I smiled and watched his sculpted backside exit through a tunnel and into the dark. The boom of a closing door never came. Although I couldn’t see them, the spells on this place must hide everything.
A shiver ran down my back. After blinking in the dim light, I stood and stretched. Like when I woke up in the dragon’s tent, not one of my injuries from rolling down the side of a mountain still marred my skin.
But I knew who healed me this time. Ogden. Despite the earth dragon's threat, I lightly walked down the tunnel he’d left through. A solid wall of stone closed me in after only a few steps. Backtracking to the main room, I explored the edges of his ‘lair,’ as he called it. I found nothing but what I’d already seen. No shower, no running water.
I sniffed my already ripe pits. A hint of Tyson filled my nose, along with BO and dirt. I just hoped it didn’t get too much worse.
Taking a deep breath, I cracked my back. I was physically trapped this time, but maybe with someone more helpful.
Fucking dragon shifters.
You like him!
Noooo.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
OGDEN
Slipping on my mandarin collar overcoat, I rested my hand against the opening to my lair and activated the final spell to keep it hidden. My inner beast whined like a beaten puppy and begged me to return to the woman trapped deep in the mountain behind layers of spellwork. A woman who had somehow weaseled out of giving me her name, though I gave her mine.
Rehan said his mate’s name was Jay. I should have come out of the gates swinging with that. Let her think I had knowledge she didn’t. Gah, I was not good at this.
I trudged toward my village, my dragon snarling and slowing my steps. My heart raced like it had when I first met Jay at The Social. Just her scent made the hairs on my arms rise, and my dragon surged forward so aggressively that I barely held him back. Never had I felt such intense emotion. Not even after my first and only attempt at sex, which resulted in the human promptly rejecting me and finding herself a nice, normal earth dragon.
Teenage me had reacted poorly but with unbelievable restraint. After ten months of celibacy, a base need I hadn’trealized dragon shifters still had surfaced. I rutted like an animal. My memories of those three days were a haze of aggression, need, and sex. I liked to think of myself as a logical human, but I shared my life with a dragon who now had a rigorous masturbation schedule to make sure I never rutted again.
I sighed. Now Jay, Rehan’s mate, was winding up my dragon. Rehan hadn’t been a big talker during our few days together studying the Ley Line. But every time I mentioned his new mate, he’d gushed about her beauty and brilliance.
If I hadn’t already, I now believed every word of it.
She’d woken up in a strange place, alone and probably scared. But she hadn’t shown any of that. With a smile, she accepted her situation and spoke to me as if we were old friends. How many languages did she know? She’d dropped her gaze at the end of our conversation, but until that moment, she’d toyed with me like we were equals.
I came to a stop, looking at the opening to my lair again, and let out a soft curse. With a shake of my head, I turned back toward my village and put one foot in front of the other.
Jay did not pique my interest. She was human, trouble, and she already had two mate marks.
Heat stirred in my gut, and my dragon purred. I stumbled, confused by my body's response to that thought. I pressed my hand to my flat abdomen and walked away from her faster.
Ash and smoke from the still-erupting volcano blotted out the sunlight. If an EM hadn’t already been called for the Ley Lines, a belching, no longer sleeping giant would have done the trick. I ran my thumb over the pads of my fingers, remembering the unnatural current in our Ley Line... which ultimately made me think about Rehan again.
I knew he’d only pulled me close to keep me from falling over, but I liked it—a lot.
The dense forest spit me out into a sloping valley covered in massive dirt mounds and smaller cave entrances leading toward the mountains. As the slopes went up, a few more extensive caves looked down. A sizable, low, round wooden and canvas building sat in the very center of all of it.
This building was my destination. Although all modern dragon caves had electricity, earth dragons thrived on magic. Our community center was a mix of both.
As I approached the door, the smell of food wafted along with the hum of voices. Unlike the other elemental clans, we’d managed to keep magic alive, maybe not thriving, but even most of our children could cast simple light spells.
