Page 31 of Beast of Blood and Ash (Drakarn Mates #6)

The early patrol was a special kind of hell. The air in the outer tunnels was hot enough to make a soldier’s scales burn, and the silence was so absolute it felt like a weight crushing my skull. I moved through it like a ghost, my claws making no sound on the stone.

The city held its breath. Somewhere in the black, the walls sweated, trickles of mineral water slipping down the carved faces, collecting in shallow pools only the desperate would drink from.

We’d bled in these tunnels not two weeks ago, Ignarath’s mark still fresh on every mind, a wound that wouldn’t clot but would be repaid.

The silence was an animal: crouched, teeth bared, waiting for the next snap.

Those Ignarath bastards had left everyone on edge. Darrokar wanted extra patrols, which meant less sleep for me.

Each step along the outer ring caught in the old nerves, a stinging reminder of why I wore the blades at my hip even off shift.

My scales itched where the heat crystals dimmed, flickering so weakly their glow could barely scrape the dust from the stones.

Above, the ceiling curved low and close.

The weight of a city full of bodies pressed down, thicker than the heat.

My duty was to keep this city from bleeding out. That job never ended.

But at least my shift did.

I let the tension slough away—or tried to. The job was a second skin. You kept the sharpness on, or you died. But the edge was blunted today, exhaustion grinding its way into my joints, a kind of restlessness that made me want to crawl out of my own scales.

Nothing helped. Not the patrol. Not the knowledge that we’d lived through worse. Not the promise of sleep when I made it home.

Not when the city was this quiet.

I was making my way back, cutting through a lesser-used market that smelled of stale spices and ozone. Most stalls were shuttered, their owners asleep in their quarters. But a faint light flickered from a stall near the back, one that dealt in repurposed tools and rare minerals.

I let the familiar rhythms guide me: the scrape of my boots on rough stone, the sweep of my tail to balance the heavy air, the routine scan for threats.

A flicker of firelight caught in my peripheral vision, drawing my focus despite myself.

The tiny market was a nothing place, half the tables abandoned, the others layered in dust, the air thick with the ghost of burned cinnamon and the sour tang of metal.

The silence lived there too. Too thick, too absolute. Not even a rat’s claw, or not even a trader’s mutter.

That’s when I saw her.

A human woman, leaning over the counter, bartering with a surly, green-scaled merchant. She was small, wiry, and had scars that traced a faint, pale map along her jawline.

She shouldn’t have belonged there, not in that slice of Scalvaris where danger came in shadows and silence and the wrong kind of glance.

But she did. She owned her space like she’d carved it out of the rock with nothing but nerve and pain.

Her hair was cropped close, bristling around her skull, shining in the sickly light.

Her hand braced on the counter, knuckles white, wrist trembling just enough to show the edge of brittle strength.

Her eyes were watchful, constantly scanning the shadows, her posture coiled with a tension that spoke of old dangers and a deep-seated lack of trust.

I knew that tension. I’d worn it myself, sleepless nights with nothing between me and an enemy’s blade but luck and a fistful of promises.

This woman’s wariness was different, carved in deeper, older wounds. Her gaze didn’t just flicker. It mapped every shadow, anticipating betrayal. She stood crooked, weight favoring one leg.

My instincts, dulled by routine, snapped sharp. A sudden coiling in my gut, a need to get closer, to see her. To smell her.

I didn’t know her name, but she had to be one of the human women who lived in the city, even if I didn’t recognize her.

Something ancient in me stretched awake. Not lust, not quite. Nothing so polite or manageable.

A predator, deep in the marrow. A coil of hunger and curiosity that bypassed reason, straight to the brainstem. My hands itched. I wanted to step out of the shadow and circle her, nose to skin, to drink in whatever scent clung to her battered, stubborn bones.

Who was she?

I stopped, melting into the shadows of a pillar. It wasn’t my business. But there was something about her, a fierce, bold energy that drew my eye.

I hadn’t come this way for drama. I was restless, sure, but not stupid. Not reckless.

The merchant sneered, gesturing dismissively at the small, glowing heat crystal on the counter. “The price is the price, human. Take it or leave it.”

Her chin lifted. “You’ll take ten talins, not fifteen,” she said, her voice low and surprisingly steady. “This thing is cracked.”

My lips twitched. She had nerve.

It wasn’t bravado. She named the game, called the bluff, all with a cadence that had seen violence and decided it wasn’t all that special.

Her hand flicked across the counter, counting coins, palms stained with an old burn, scars hidden and revealed by the movement.

The heat crystal on the slab between them pulsed faintly, dim but stubborn.

I drifted, pressing my body flat against the nearest stone column. My weight barely disturbed the dust, each step measured, predatory, deliberate. I didn’t want her to see me. Didn’t know why.

As she counted out the coins, her gaze swept the market one last time. It snagged on my shadow, and for a half-second, our eyes locked across the empty square.

Time didn’t slow. It stopped.

And her scent hit me.

I inhaled deep and was overwhelmed by her. It was a physical blow. Something potent, undeniable.

How had I not noticed it before?

It bypassed thought, and reason, and went straight to the oldest, most ancient part of my brain.

Mine.

The word was a shock, a brand seared into my soul. My fangs ached. My heart gave a single, brutal kick against my ribs. I had heard the others speak of it—Darrokar, Rath, even the stoic Khorlar. The mate-bond. I’d always thought it was an exaggeration, a poetic term for lust and possessiveness.

I was a fool.

She was staring, mouth parted, a flicker of confusion, of awareness, passing over her face.

Her scent, impossible, sweet with something sharp beneath, steel and sunrise and the ash of a world that wouldn’t die.

It crawled over my skin, invaded the cracks in my discipline.

Every old lesson, the Council’s drills, watching others fall into this madness, I’d believed myself immune.

Fate could burn.

Now it was inside me. A wound that could never close.

She looked unsettled, her hand tightening on the crystal. She snatched it from the counter, spun without another word to the merchant, and disappeared into a side tunnel.

For a moment, her absence was a physical pain. The world snapped back into motion, the silence louder than a scream.

I stood frozen, my carefully constructed world tilted on its axis. My patrol, the city’s security, the lingering threat of Ignarath, it all faded to a dull, distant hum. There was only the ghost of her scent on the air and the violent, undeniable certainty that had just rewritten my future.

I was a member of the Blade Council. A commander. My life was duty and discipline. I had no time for this. No room for this kind of chaos.

But the bond didn’t care about my plans. It was a hook sunk deep in my gut, pulling me in a direction I had never intended to go.

I let out a slow, shaky breath. I could still smell her. Sweetness and steel.

That scent burrowed under my skin, a secret only I could taste. My hands trembled, anger and awe warping together.

Who was she? No one.

Everything.

A human, lost and nearly invisible, and now I would burn a city to find her, to know the sound of her breath, the taste of her skin, the name she used when she was alone and afraid.

I didn’t pursue. Not yet. A hunt like this required strategy, not brute force. She was already spooked, a wounded thing ready to bolt at the first sign of a predator.

But the hunt had begun. Whether she knew it or not.