Page 18 of Beast of Blood and Ash (Drakarn Mates #6)

OMVAR

I’d lost her.

The fact settled with the quiet, grinding finality of a tomb sealing shut. After every broken vow, every bloody mile, I’d lost her anyway. I sat hunched in the cold hollow of my quarters, my back braced against the wall.

The air was thick with the stink of my own failure.

Above, a heat crystal sputtered a sickly yellow light, its glow too weak to push the darkness from the corners of the room.

Ignarath’s shadow circled closer with every passing hour, a storm on the horizon with its claws already outstretched for my throat.

She was gone. I hadn’t been enough.

The truth was a crushing weight. All the rage I’d carried from the desert, every righteous snarl, had only left me caged here. I was alone except for the ghost of her scent on the air. The mate-bond burned in my chest, a hot, twisting ache that stole my breath, but it didn’t matter.

If she didn’t want me, didn’t want this, then no bond could force her to stay.

But that didn’t mean I would stop protecting her. It only took a moment to send a runner to Vyne with the details, stripped of all pleading. If I knew her—and despite it all, I thought I did—she would go to the river.

Vyne knew the city’s veins, and he was mated to Selene, the only healer I trusted with Reika’s soul. If anyone could help her, it was them.

If anyone deserved to, it wasn’t me.

I forced myself to my feet. Every muscle coiled tight with the urge to destroy something, to rend stone and flesh until this poison of helplessness had somewhere to go.

But there was nowhere left to spend it. The beast I’d kept caged for so long stirred under my ribs, ready to strike anything that came too close.

Except there was nothing left worth striking.

Just the silence.

Hours of silence. Pacing. And something I refused to call fear.

I wasn’t going to see her again.

Except she was there. Standing in the rough-hewn arch of my doorway like vengeance made flesh.

The door scraped open, and she slipped inside.

She wasn't small. She wasn't cowering. The air in the room changed, growing heavy and charged, every shadow holding its breath.

She crossed her arms, a challenge carved from stone and unshakable will, the kind of force that survives a hell like Ignarath and every torment that comes after.

I was a statue frozen by pain. I didn't dare speak, didn't dare move. The bond between us snapped inside me, a visceral tug that seized my heart and groin, a thrum that followed the defiant line of her body. It was more wound than gift. Painful. Hungry.

With a low groan, the door shut behind her. My entire world shrank to her silhouette against the gloom. The space between us vibrated with unspoken things. My heart hammered in my ribs, my scales prickling with every breath she took.

She took a step deeper into the room. I watched the tension in her shoulders, the white-knuckled grip of her hands on her arms, the hard set of her jaw.

Fragile control hung over her like a thread stretched to its breaking point. Her eyes, wide and dark and bruised with exhaustion, found mine and held me pinned. I knew that look. It was a challenge. And it was a plea.

“Those sweets …,” she started, her voice a low, scraped sound that was still somehow steady. She shook her head sharply, as if trying to dislodge something soft. Then she changed her question.

“What’s so special about me?”

It was a battering ram to my chest. How could I explain?

How could I tell her about the bond, about the way her name burned on my tongue like a prayer that would only drive her away?

If I told her the truth, would she run again?

Run for good? My heart spasmed at the thought, a terrible kick of terror and hope.

She stared at me, waiting. The silence stretched until it was nearly painful.

“Answer me.” Her voice cut like a blade.

I had to give her something. Anything but the whole, unbearable truth.

“I saw you,” I forced out, the words tasting like ash. “Hundreds of people in the arena, but it was just you.”

Her mouth twisted. “You’re talking about Ignarath.”

It was the place that bound us. That haunted us.

“When your ship crashed, Skorai had his claws so deep in me I thought I’d never get out.

I was his pet champion. The monster on his leash.

And I accepted that.” My own confession was poison, admitting I’d survived by being cruel, by turning a blind eye.

“Until I saw you. I couldn’t do anything.

If I’d shown you the tiniest scrap of favor, he would have used it to hurt you. Or worse, given you to me.”

Her eyes flashed. “So you just left me to suffer?”

Shame, hot and thick, rose in my throat. My claws bit into my palms. “I did what I could to protect you.”

I made myself meet her gaze, laying out the truth stone by stone, each admission worse than the last. “Extra food, when I could get it. Cleaner water. I made sure the worst of the guards, the ones who hurt for sport, never worked your corridor again. I took two of them out. Made it look like a drunken brawl.” My voice had gone flat, defensive.

Empty. She’d been locked in a cage, and all I could offer was cleaner water and a sliver of chance.

“I created an opening in the patrols. I was coming to get you out.”

I had to move, to pace, or I might explode with the emotion simmering underneath.

“I should have torn down the walls of that pit to reach you. And I didn’t. For that, I have no excuse.”

She sucked a breath through her teeth. I watched understanding flicker in her eyes.

The unlocked door, the food, the moments of calm she knew she couldn’t trust in that place. Every tiny mercy, revealed. The ghost in the dark, the one she’d never seen, now stood before her as flesh and scale and shame.

She took a shaky step closer. Her courage was a living thing in the curl of her hands, the rigid set of her jaw.

“But why?” The question was a whisper, wrecked and fierce, yet it echoed around the bare chamber as if the stone itself demanded an answer. “Why risk everything?”

The question ripped me open.

Because you are my mate. Because you are the only hope I have left.

But the words were a chain. Sacred to my kind, but for her, just another cage.

I couldn’t stop myself from taking a half step forward, closing the distance. I kept my hands open, palms out. Surrender was written in every line of my monstrous form. There was nothing left but the truth.

“Because you are my mate,” I said.

The word rang in the air like a struck bell. Sacred. Damning. Everything I’d tried not to say.

She flinched, a tremor that ran through her as if the word itself were a brand searing her skin.

I struggled to explain, my voice raw. “It’s not just biology. It’s a pull. A certainty in my blood. I knew you the moment I saw you, the first time I caught your scent in that pit. It’s why I defected. Why I tracked you here. It’s the reason I would burn this city to nothing to keep you safe.”

I let her see it all: the desperation, the hunger, the shame.

“I would have died in Ignarath, but I couldn’t let Skorai have you. So I watched. I waited. I did what little I could. It was never enough.”

I looked at her then, really looked, the bond a line of acid under my scales. “I gave you the tools. The unlocked door. I gave you everything I could. If you want my life, you can have it.”

I braced for the blow.

She choked on a sound, her eyes glossing over, tears brimming but not yet falling. Her body trembled, caught between reaching for me and recoiling. I saw it all in her face. Shock, disbelief, old wounds cracking open, and something helpless and incandescent fought its way out.

“So this is all just … biological imperative?”

Something snapped inside me. “No. Never. Not just that.”

My denial came out as a ragged snarl. I let every defense I had fall at her feet. “You are not a compulsion. You are not just fate. I would choose you. In any world, any body, any life. It’s you. It has always been you.”

She took a step, then another, until she stood directly before me. The space between us was charged, the heat a living thing. My chest ached with a pain so sharp I thought it might split wide open.

Her hands lifted, trembling, and hung in the air between us. Not a caress, not a refusal. Her face was a ruin of pain and hope, the ghost of her old life warring with the burning edge of something new.

I remained perfectly still. Open. Waiting. I would not touch her until she chose. I would not be her monster. Not now.

She was the one who moved.

Her hands lifted, hovering in the air between us. Not to push me away. Not to pull me closer. Just … there. A question.

One I couldn’t answer alone.