Page 176 of Ashborne Forged

I frowned. He’d curled his head down, his chin resting atop my head, his arms holding me to his chest, though he panted like he’d been sprinting.

“We’re already bonded, Voski,” I whispered, pressing my arm up to reach his jaw, to cup his cheek. “It’s not magic. It’s the dragonbond… from the Creator.”

He nodded, small, tiny twitches. ‘We were. We are,’ he corrected himself, and finally loosened his grip on me so I could straighten, and look him in the eye.

I cupped his face, meeting his eyes, pleading with him to look at me. To see me. To know I wasn’t doing magic or giving vows. I was just his.

But when our eyes locked, I froze.

There were tears in his. Yet he gave a small smile, through the torment on his face, the pinch of pain… his lips curled up at the corners.

“Voski—”

‘We have to do it now, Grace,’ he whispered in my mind.

“Do what?”

He swallowed, and stroked my cheek. ‘We have to face them. Beat them. Or die trying. Because your blood is alight. Whether you meant it or not, the vow took. Mother will see it the moment she lays eyes on you. And I won’t let her have you.’ His fingers curled into my cheek, his nails digging into my skin, almost to the point of pain. ‘She won’t win, Grace. She can’t.’

I took his hands from my face and gripped them, staring into his eyes that were slightly wild. “Just breathe,” I whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening, but, just breathe.”

He nodded, gripping my hands so tightly, my knuckles pinched. “I can feel you, Grace. I think… I think I know,” he whispered.

“You know what?”

“I think I know what’s happening. And how to fix this.”

“What is it?” His odd tone and strange eyes were alarming.

That little smile faltered as he lifted my hands, tore his gaze from mine to look down, right at my stomach. “Grace, is there any chance… are you pregnant?”

I went very, very still.

EPILOGUE

SOUNDTRACK: Burn it Down by Added Color

~ VOSKI ~

I stood in the bleak, midnight shadows, staring down at the slack mouth and half-revealed shining pate of the sleeping Lord who thought he had a right to lay hands on my mate. Moonlight angled through a small gap in the curtains left by a careless servant. It cast the room in a blue hue that turned Breckon’s skin near-gray.

I gripped the hilt of my blade so tightly my arm shook.

All of me shook with the unadulterated desire to kill.

He thought he could slap my mate like a bratty child?

He thought he could steal her?

He thought he had a right to her body—to her blood?

‘Darkness will never be defeated by deeper darkness,’ Kham rumbled in my head.

‘He deserves to die.’

‘And he will,’ my dragon replied, unwavering.

I imagined that I exhaled loudly enough that Breckon’s eyes popped open, and we shared that split second when our eyes locked and his brain registered that the shadow I cast was deeper, and darker, and blood red—