Page 21 of Beast of Blood and Ash (Drakarn Mates #6)

OMVAR

My mate was made of a fire few could see.

Her newfound strength was a dangerous, beautiful thing.

To cage her now would be to smother that flame, and I would rather be burned alive.

I would gladly spend days with her in our rooms, making love until we remembered nothing else.

But two days of mating frenzy was already more than we deserved with the threat of Ignarath still hanging heavy over us.

She needed a weapon.

Not just a wooden stick for drills, not the bundle of brittle human courage Scalvaris called training. I watched her cross the cavern’s dust with a look on her face that was almost calm.

Only almost. She hid the exhaustion that painted bruises under her eyes, burying it behind that stubborn set of her jaw. A survivor, yes. It was written in her knuckles and the way she never quite unclenched her fists.

But surviving wasn’t enough. Not now. Not with Skorai’s killers tasting the city air, hunting at the edges of Scalvaris territory. And the city could not protect her, not forever. I was done caging her. She needed a blade built into her bones. My lessons, not theirs.

I pulled in a slow breath. Scorched iron, old sweat, and sulfur pressed tight in the heavy stone air. “Take your position.”

She flinched before she got control. The practice staff twitched in her hands—small, battered, the wood bearing a smear of her dried blood at one end.

She gripped it like a lifeline, not a weapon.

I saw it in her eyes, the old panic fighting to the surface, spine ramrod straight. Her mouth thinned in distrust.

“We don’t have to do this,” she said, her voice so tight it might snap. She met my gaze, chin stubborn, feet planted as if rooting herself in the sand to hold out forever.

I kept my bearing neutral, not yielding an inch of the space. My shadow, immense and molten with heat, fell over the lines she drew in her mind.

“What you know is not enough,” I said. My voice came out a low rumble, the kind used to command soldiers in Ignarath pits. “Not against Ignarath. Not against what’s coming. This is not a duel. You will forget your pride, or you’ll die.”

A flicker of something shone through, not quite anger, not quite fear. She squared her shoulders. “You saying you won’t give me a choice?”

“They won’t," I said.

She looked away, the silence thickening between us. Grit scraped the soles of her boots. I waited for her to run. Instead, she squared her shoulders, raised the staff until her pale knuckles stood out stark against the wood. “Fine.”

Pride. Anger. Fear. All of it fuel.

I felt it coil in my chest like a living thing.

Now I meant to forge her into something that could not break. Even if it meant shattering the last clean pieces she had left.

I took a staff longer than hers, heavier, scuffed from decades of use by Drakarn muscle. My claws creaked along its length.

“Attack me. As you would anyone who means to kill you. Hold nothing back.”

She charged without a second’s hesitation, a flicker of desperate speed that would have tricked a fool. Not me. I let her come, didn’t even move to block the first wild swing. The staff clipped my hip with a hollow slap that barely stung. Her breath was ragged, rhythm breaking already.

“Again,” I barked.

She circled, staff held up, sweat darkening her brow.

I saw her scan for an opening that a smaller opponent could exploit.

She jabbed at my thigh, then my ribs. Fast, faster than I expected from someone who shook every morning, who woke with her mouth choked full of screams. Anger powered her, and the staff moved like an extension of her own need.

But not enough. She still held back.

“No,” I snapped, catching her staff and wrenching it aside.

Too gentle. “You’re trying to win a sparring match.

You should be trying to end a life. Stop thinking.

” I jerked her weapon further, spinning her off balance.

She stumbled, heels scraping in the sand, and righted herself with pure, ugly determination.

Her jaw was tight. “I thought you were supposed to be teaching me.”

“I am,” I said. “Lesson one: there’s no honor on the dirt of Ignarath. If your enemy stumbles, you end them. You don’t let them stand.”

I didn’t let her catch her breath. I lashed out, a controlled blow with the butt of my staff that she blocked, barely, the shock traveling up her arms.

“Don’t stand tall. Your center of gravity is too high. Bend your knees!” I struck again, this one feinted at her shoulder, then slipping low for her thigh. She blocked, but the staff slid in her sweaty grip, and she barely kept it from dropping.

The air in the cavern thickened, echoing with the steady clack of wood and the grunt of effort. Heat crystals flickered above, throwing monstrous shadows against the black volcanic walls. Every misstep bounced around us, louder than a battle cry.

“Again!” I barked, because letting her rest was no mercy. The sound of her harsh breathing, the grit of sand under our boots, the sting of old fear sharp in her scent, every detail hammered into my brain, a map of her limits, her will.

She spat sweat from her lips, glared, and charged again.

This time, I let her connect. The blow caught my forearm, a jolt of pain more satisfying than any easy win.

I let the force knock my guard aside. In battle, holding ground gets you nothing.

Surviving means yielding, striking back at the right moment.

“Good,” I grunted. “Use your weight. Use surprise. This is not about trading blows until someone falls. It’s about ending it before you bleed.”

And then, when she staggered, breath hitching, hands shaking, eyes gone glassy with fatigue and shame, I pressed the lesson home.

“The most dangerous moment is when you’re pinned,” I said, circling her. “When your attacker is sure he has you and you think you’re already dead.”

She paled, the memory of every time she’d been held down flickering across her face, but nodded once. Absolute, fatalistic.

I moved in. Slowly, telegraphing every bared inch of threat.

I didn’t reach for her like a monster. I let her see me, let her brace, let her decide not to run.

Then I swept low, my weight brute and unstoppable—her staff went one way, her body another.

In a heartbeat, I caged her on the sand, one forearm pinning her shoulders, my chest pressing down.

Just a technique, one that had saved my life a dozen times in Ignarath’s pits.

But the stink of old fear erupted in my senses.

I smelled it before she even moved. Pure, animal terror, hot, sharp, chemical.

Her whole body went rigid beneath me, her eyes wide and lost, not looking at me but at something far away and terrible.

I heard her breath snag, high and broken.

Not resistance. Not anger. Just pure panic.

My own reflex screamed to finish the maneuver, to hold her down, force the lesson, make her fight through it. That was how Ignarath taught. Pain. Shame. You learned or died.

But I was not Ignarath.

Not anymore.

I released her. Slowly. Every movement open, hands showing, my body melting back off her before she even had to breathe. I pulled away, sat back on my heels, and forced my voice into something soft as sand after rain. “Deep breaths, thravena . Center yourself.”

She blinked, a broken bird floundering back to the world, eyes darting across stone and shadow and finding me, still above her, but not a threat. Never a threat to her.

The tremors in her limbs broke to shame, then fury, then brittle exhaustion. She glared at me, burning with a pride that I would not break by force.

I sat and let her come back to herself. The silence rang, full of everything I did not say. “That’s right,” I said. “We’re not in Ignarath. It’s me,” I managed, aware of my claws digging so hard into my palms that I smelled blood. “You survived. That is more than most can say.”

Her chest heaved, a wild flutter of breath. Her jaw worked, grinding back everything she wanted to say.

Then, raw and ragged, she shoved herself to her feet, bravado a shield of filth and fire. “Again,” she rasped.

The demand was a gift.

I nodded once. If she wanted, I would give her the world all over again.

I pinned her. Not gentle, not slow, just enough to force the terror back, to make the lesson real. She didn’t freeze. She snarled. The fear in her scent sharpened, laced with rage.

She exploded beneath me. Hips twisted, elbow slamming into my side in a move I’d shown her earlier. Pain cut through nerve and bone, a precise shot to an old wound. I grunted, shock scattering my thoughts, and she was out and gone, scrambling clear, staff up again.

A survivor forged in fire. Mine.

She stood over me, panting, forehead shining with sweat, her body trembling from effort and adrenaline. Her eyes didn’t hold terror. They burned with the victory of someone who had clawed their way out of hell and wanted witnesses to the scars.

I bared my teeth, a twisted smile. “Good.”

The wariness never left her body, but her chin lifted. She had tasted power, and it was more intoxicating than any honey or gift. For a moment, we stood, two feral beasts, neither willing to break that new, tenuous peace.

I moved to the wall and slid down, passing her the battered waterskin. She took it, hand bumping against my claw in a flash of accidental intimacy. Her breath rasped, still hot with fighting, but the panic was gone. In its place lingered something sharper—resolve.

We passed the waterskin in silence, shoulder to shoulder. I noticed a fresh scrape along her arm, a thin line beaded with blood. I tensed, fighting the urge to snarl at myself. Blood always found her, even by accident.

She caught me looking, her mouth twisting as if she expected a lecture.

Instead, I nudged her arm. “Let me.” I drew a clean cloth from my pack, something I always carried, a habit from years of patching up allies and rivals in the pits.

She let me tend the wound, my big hands awkward around her delicate skin, but I kept the touch careful, reverent.

I wiped away the grit, pressed the cloth to stop the bleeding, wrapped the cut with a strip torn from my shirt.

Her pulse beat against my fingers, rapid but steady.

She leaned in closer. That small surrender flickered through me like hope, brittle and wild.

“Has there been any more news about those assholes from Ignarath?” Her voice was a ghost of the fire she’d shown moments before.

The frustration was a bitter taste in my mouth. “Nothing. The ones we captured remain stubbornly silent. The Council debates their next move, but they will not act.” And every day they waited, the humans back in Ignarath suffered more.

Maybe they remained so impotent because they hadn’t seen it.

Maybe they just didn’t care.

Anger threatened to surge until my mate put her hand on top of my own and squeezed. It settled something wild deep within me.

“Come on, let’s clean up our mess.”

I began gathering the weapons. I hated the waiting. Hated the not knowing. It felt too much like my time in Ignarath, watching and helpless.

A cold prickle skittered across the back of my neck. Old instincts flaring.

We weren’t alone.

I straightened, weapon gripped hard enough to crack the haft.

My eyes scoured the far wall, found nothing but pools of shadow where the light didn’t reach.

But I knew that feel, the way prey felt in the moments before a fight.

The way I’d learned, from too many years of being the last beast standing, that you are never truly safe.

I stared into the dark until the silence hurt. Someone watched. Someone hunted.

But there was nothing there.

I stared for several long moments, but nothing moved except dust motes in the air. I gave the darkness a final glare.

If the shadows wanted a monster, they’d find one waiting.

This fight wasn’t over.

Not by a long stretch.