Page 2 of Beast of Blood and Ash (Drakarn Mates #6)

REIKA

My lungs ignited, each bitter mouthful of air a rasp of volcanic glass down my throat.

Blood. Cold. The acrid reek of my own fear.

That’s all I tasted. The world above the mountain’s ridgeline: pure shadow and silhouette, jagged black slopes tearing at a bruised, starless sky.

The wind was a fistful of needles through my clothes, carving into the raw flesh of my arms and my shins.

I had to run. Because when I stopped, when the pain bloomed hot and ugly, a pulsing knot beneath my skin, the guttural voices behind me swelled.

Closer and closer and closer.

Wings beat high above me. Claws scraped stone. Alien. Wrong. The sound vibrated somewhere deep below my ribs, a place only nightmares and old, cold panic could touch. They weren’t trying to be quiet.

The monsters who ruled this world didn’t have to be quiet when they hunted.

A shard of rock bit my ankle. My blood seeped through the torn fabric of my pant leg. I had to ignore it. I pumped my arms, my body a traitor, screaming weakness back at me even as I willed it forward.

I tripped. I caught myself. Hands scraped raw, stinging, the smell of copper, metallic and sharp as a freshly whetted blade, filled my nostrils.

Keep going. Don’t look back. Don’t fall.

But falling was all I’d done since the crash. Down. Down. Down. From sky to rock. To cages. To the suffocating darkness behind my own eyes.

A gash across my knee shrieked with each stride. Behind me, the rhythm of pursuit stuttered and one broke off, circling.

Herding.

Sideways, into even rougher terrain. I couldn’t fight them and the mountain.

A flicker ahead, a wedge of deeper black. A narrow cut in the rock. Shelter? Or a trap? I veered anyway. Feet skidded, palms dragged across rough, unforgiving stone. Wind snatched my breath. This place was hell.

I wish I had died in the crash. At least then it would be over.

The voices grew. That guttural Ignarath lilt, sharp edged with laughter that wasn’t human. Too deep. Too sure. One word found me, slithered like a snake through memory. Little prey. A name their kind used when they wanted me to flinch.

No. Not again. Not. Ever.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I dove, scraping sideways into the crevice, knees first, shoulder striking stone hard. Stars exploded across my vision. The world shrank to a pinprick. A prayer. A desperate, burning hope. If I could just make myself small enough. Quiet enough?—

An arm that was all scale and bone and hardened calluses snaked around my chest. Massive. Immovable. A cage of flesh and strength.

A hand clamped over my mouth. Air ceased. The reek of Drakarn heat, of copper and something old and burnt, suffocated me. I thrashed and got nowhere.

He was a wall. A mountain. A fate carved in scales and ash. My scream died in his palm. My life shrank. Became the thunder of my own pulse, the grit and taste of dirt on my tongue.

I kicked. Bit. Fought the sob tearing at my throat.

My vision flooded with scaled red, fierce, impossible in the utter dark.

A glimpse of eyes. Burning gold. He leaned in.

His breath a furnace blast against my cheek, stinking of ash, of raw hunger and old, cold metal. His fingers flexed. Once. Just enough.

Blackness surged and swallowed me.

I landed back in my body with a jolt so violent the world splintered around me.

A scream tore itself from my throat. Too loud. Far too loud in the stifling dark. My back slammed against stone. Legs tangled in rough, coarse sheets. Sweat, glue sticky and chilling, clung to every inch of my skin.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

The slab of stone that passed for a bed here felt like a coffin. The blanket, a noose cinching around my knees. Air thickened with sulfur, with the remembered stench of panic.

My heart thrashed, trying to claw its way out through my teeth.

Mouth gaping, lungs seizing, refusing to drag in air.

I groped for the wall. Stone. Just stone.

Not scales. My hand scraped over the uneven surface, knuckles throbbing as if they’d been flayed.

No crevice. No mountain wind cutting through me. Not the mountains. Not their hands.

Then there was movement beside me. A soft thump.

Bare feet on stone. The crumple of a blanket yanked aside.

I twisted, vision blurring, a nauseating swirl of shadow and a soft glare of light.

The heat crystal on the far wall burned like a distant, dying fire, its faint glow lining sharp cheekbones; hair shorn close, a human face. Not a Drakarn.

“Reika, hey.” Kira’s voice. Human. Familiar. Small and gentle around its edges, nothing like the guttural thunder of my nightmares. “It’s all right. You’re safe. I’m right here.” Her words were a tentative balm, and this wasn’t the first night she’d had to utter them. “It’s all right.”

Safe. Such a goddamn lie.

At least I’d only woken her. Kira had her own nightmares to keep her awake.

Whole-body shudders knocked my teeth together, breath coming in ragged, tearing gasps. My terror ricocheted inside me, refusing to be silenced. The world pressed in, stone on one side, Kira’s presence a fragile barrier on the other.

I was burning. I was frozen. Veins flooded with icy pain and scorching memory.

I jammed my fist against my mouth, swallowing back more noise. I didn’t dare call it a sob. If they heard, if anyone heard …

Oh god, they’d send me back.

Kira’s hand found my shoulder, warm against the clammy skin above my collarbone. She didn’t squeeze. Just settled, light, present, patient. I flinched, a purely instinctual recoil, then froze.

Guilt, hot and sharp, burned up through the panic. Touch used to mean pain. Always pain. But I wasn’t there anymore. Kira was my friend. She wouldn’t hurt me.

“It’s just me.” She shifted closer, her small warmth pressing near. “You’re in Scalvaris. Your room. You’re with us.”

For a moment, her words were just sounds, bouncing off the inside of my skull without sticking. My body screamed otherwise, every nerve ending, every muscle fiber wired for flight, for hiding, for the snap of teeth coming through the dark.

I stared at her hands—broad, callused fingers, nails chewed to the quick. Human hands. They brushed tangled, sweat-damp hair off my brow. Her skin, dry and warm. Not slick with scales. Not carrying the old copper stench of Drakarn blood.

“It was just a nightmare. That’s all.”

Just a nightmare. As if the line between dreams and memories meant a damn thing anymore. As if old pain didn’t keep scoring new, deeper grooves inside me, making it impossible to breathe.

I blinked, forced breath into my chest. Choked on it. The room pressed in, all dark stone and the lingering tang of sulfur, the sick-yellow glow of the heat crystal casting monstrous, dancing shadows.

I tried to see it as refuge, not cage. Failed. Miserably.

My legs jerked in a frantic attempt to twist free of the sheets. Kira’s hand dropped away. “Hey.” Her voice, a soft anchor. “You’re okay. Nothing’s going to hurt you here.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and willed the demons away. The panic ebbed. Barely. I managed a nod, and Kira backed off.

That was good. I didn’t need to bother her with my craziness.

The dream clung to me. Sticky and too bright.

I could still smell the phantom scent of blood on stone.

Still tasted metal, coppery and foul, on the back of my tongue.

My knee throbbed where it had slammed into rock.

I brushed a trembling hand along my leg, only to find smooth, unbroken skin.

No blood. Only a ghost of an old pain, a deep ache shadowed by memory.

The old terror flared, sharp and biting: What if this was the dream and that was real?

What if I woke up somewhere worse, chains, blades, that deep, knowing laughter in the endless dark?

Any of them could walk in. Drakarn, with their slow, predatory gazes, with claws that could pin you like a beetle to the stone, dissecting your fear.

If you made noise, drew attention— No. No. No, no, no.

I hugged my knees tight to my chest and pressed my mouth hard into the silky fabric of the blanket, fighting back new tears, new screams that clawed at my throat.

The dream skittered at the edges of my vision.

Every time I blinked, every time the darkness in the room thickened, it tried to wrap itself around me.

I tasted fear, metallic and thick, a bitter poison all the way to my toes.

You’re safe. You’re here. You’re safe.

But safety was always an illusion. A cruel, fragile thing. And I’d learned the hard way, what happened when illusions broke. So I stayed curled in on myself, holding back the storm that raged inside, begging my body and my fractured mind to believe the lie just for one more night.