Page 53 of Curse of the Midnight Dragon (The Moonlight Dragon #2)

Soren

I rubbed my chest with my fist hoping to soothe the knot of panic that had settled there as I crouched on the side of the mountain overlooking the queen’s encampment. “Something is wrong.”

For one thing, I never panicked during a battle.

But then again, I’d never watched the love of my life fly into danger while I remained behind the lines to coordinate our defenses. Fuck, she’d looked magnificent as she’d claimed her power.

But now, panic clawed at my chest. “Something is definitely wrong.”

“No shit.” My brother pointed to the sky. “The wyverns are turning on us.”

On the opposite side of the peak, the small dragonesque creatures moved like a well-organized flock of birds. They’d been following Amaya’s lead, heading toward the undead army slaughtering my warriors. But before any of the wyverns had breathed their first burst of fire in that direction, they’d shifted like the wind. And sent a wall of fire to blast the troop of warriors Raya had been leading.

“Where’s Celestina?” I demanded, burying the worry I felt for Raya. There wasn’t anything I could do from here to help her. I was perched too high on this mountainside to be of any use to any of my friends.

I’d last seen Celestina flying like a glowing apparition into the smoke-filled valley below me. But when she’d dipped lower, she’d disappeared into the thickest part of the smoke and had yet to emerge.

Cullen closed his eyes as he communicated with Amaya. Almost immediately, he started shaking his head.

“Dammit.” I stood and made my way down the steep slope, heading toward where I’d last seen Celestina.

“Something is blocking Amaya’s connection with your princess. She says it feels like blood magic,” Cullen called out as he started to follow me.

“Stay here. We still need someone with eyes on the three fronts to direct our troops.”

“She’s not hurt,” Cullen shouted. “You’d already know through your bond if she was hurt.”

His reassurance didn’t slow my pace. Celestina might not have been physically injured, but that didn’t mean she was safe. Queen Beatrice’s violent character was known throughout the continent. And while I’d given Celestina a few self-defense lessons, she still had plenty to learn before she’d be skilled enough to protect herself.

My gaze skirted across the valley. Where was she? I could barely see anything thanks to the smokey fires still burning down in the encampment.

Celestina . If only I could communicate with her like Cullen could with Amaya.

Rocks tumbled down the steep side of the mountain as I slid and ran toward the valley. I’d made it halfway down when I felt a tugging in my chest. I was going in the wrong direction.

I wasn’t sure why I knew that. But I could feel the wrongness of my path as sure as I could feel my heart as it slammed against my ribs. Maybe I sensed I was going the wrong way because Celestina was my fucking heart.

And she wasn’t down there in that valley. She was over… there . My gaze zeroed in on a dark spot on the side of the mountain not that far below me.

“If you feel your life is in peril, Celestina, you have my permission to run from me. I’ll fetch you,” I’d once told her. It was a promise I intended to keep for the rest of my life. I’d lost my mind when I’d tried to let her go.

“You need to pull your shit together before you get yourself killed!” Gray had screamed at me over a week ago after a close call in a skirmish that had nearly left us both dead. He’d then punched me in the side of my head so hard that my neck still ached from the whiplash I’d suffered from the blow.

He hadn’t been wrong. I had been reckless.

Honestly, I hadn’t wanted to survive this war.

Not without Celestina.

I punched the side of the mountain, cracking stone and splitting open my knuckles. I squeezed my hand over my bloodied knuckles as I continued to pick my way across the rocky terrain, blindly trusting that my instincts could find her when my eyes could not. Soon, I reached the opening of a dark cave.

I stood outside, listening to the echoing sound of voices coming from within.

“Stop,” came an angry growl. I felt frozen in place even though the command hadn’t been meant for me. I’d never been happier to be struck by a compulsion. It meant Celestina had found a way to fight whoever was holding her. No muting spell had ever been able to block her from using her power to compel other magical creatures. “Stop the wyverns from attacking the Fein. Make them follow Amaya’s lead and attack your undead army.”

“I…” a soft voice whined. Queen Beatrice’s voice. “I don’t want to.”

“But you already have,” Celestina said as if bored by the interaction. “I can feel the pull of my magic move through me as the wyverns are being redirected.”

I broke free from Celestina’s compulsion and peeked into the cave’s opening. Two burly warriors from Earst were holding Celestina’s arms pinned to her side. To her naked side.

I bared my fangs.

Those two men touching what belonged to me were dead.

They might be breathing now, but their lives had ended the moment they put their hands on my Sky Girl. I’d personally make sure of it.

Silently, I pulled my sword from my sheath.

Celestina started to command Queen Beatrice to do something else, but barely got the first growly word out of her mouth before the queen slapped her hand over Celestina’s mouth. The sound of the blow reverberated through the cave.

No. Fuck, no. No one hits my mate.

Spurred by an ancient instinct to protect what was mine, I spun into the dark, damp cave. With an elegant arc, the sharp edge of my sword sliced through the queen’s neck. She was dead—her head on the ground—before her mind registered the sting of my blade, before her eyes could register a look of shock, before her mouth could form a scream.

But I wasn’t done. I kept moving, letting my sword sing through the air as it sliced through the arms that had dared touch Celestina. Two more swings and the Queen’s guards were on the ground. Dead.

Well, hell. I’d been planning on tearing their throats open with my own teeth. More personal that way. But…dead was dead.

Celestina’s startled, indigo gaze met mine. (The color change still surprised me.) Her eyes widened as she looked down at the three dead bodies lying at her feet. She slid her foot away from the queen’s severed head. “She’s really dead,” she said as if the reality of what I’d done was just now taking hold. “Just like that, it’s over. I’d pictured her end would come with a great struggle, and that when we finally succeeded it would feel…more momentous.” She shook her head. “This happened all so fast.”

“A life taken in violence is never momentous. I’ve taken more than my fair share and know this from experience. Battles are messy and violent. There’s no glory in it—just one life ending while another survives to fight another day. It’s up to the storytellers to compose a tale with weight and meaning. But for the warriors on the ground, the story is simply about who gets to live.”

Our gazes held. And my breath froze in my throat. My princess, my better half, my mate was strong and brave and glorious. How the fuck did I get so lucky to find her?

The gods must have had a hand in this. Or fate.

Celestina reached out to me. “Momentous or not, what you did just now was impressive.”

I stepped over a dead warrior to pull my beautiful dragon into my arms. Her body molded to mine as I grabbed her shapely ass and pressed her snug against my already rampant cock. “You were impressive.”

I loved that she didn’t have a stitch of clothing to keep me from touching her everywhere.

“I killed,” she whispered as she dropped her head to my chest.

“I know, sweetheart. You had no choice. They would have killed your wyverns if you hadn’t. That is the trouble with war—the need to kill warriors who are merely following orders that fulfill the whims of their leaders.”

She shuddered, and I tightened my grip on her. She turned her head and nudged a wooden black box with her toe. Magic sparked as she pushed it away from us. “That’s what the vampires used to defeat the dragons during the War of the Magics. It mutes a dragon’s powers, rendering us helpless.”

“Not completely helpless.” I kissed the top of her head. “I heard how you used your compulsion to stop the wyverns from attacking my warriors. You could have ordered the queen to free you, but you traded your one opportunity to save yourself to rescue my warriors.” Even after being dragged into the musty cave and pushed around, Celestina still smelled like berries. I could get drunk off her sweet scent.

“It’s still muting me.” She nudged the box with her toe again. “Do you know how to turn it off?”

I (reluctantly) let go of Celestina’s ass to reach down and pick up the box. As soon as it was in my hand, I could feel the hum of old magic. “This isn’t a vampire invention. It’s fueled by blood magic, a power anyone can use to tear the earth’s magic from the core of life itself. If a vampire had made this, I’d be sensing a darker magic. It doesn’t even feel like the same magic that had been wrapped around you from those binding spells. This is clearly something else.”

“Queen Beatrice told me that it’s been in her family for generations. Do you think she lied?”

“Maybe. This feels like a Tiburnian invention, which would make sense. Queen Beatrice was a capricious and impulsive ruler. And everything that has led up to this invasion—the war with the Tiburnians, building an undead army, using you to gain insight on the Fein, using you as a potential weapon and a means of sparking a war between the Fein and the dragons—feels carefully planned.”

Celestina shook her head. “That’s not something Queen Beatrice would be capable of.”

“I agree.” I dropped the box and used the flat side of my sword to smash the vile thing. It exploded in a blinding flash of red.

“Better?” I asked, blinking rapidly to get my sight back.

I felt rather than saw Celestina nod. “I can hear Amaya shouting in my mind. As Cullen suspected, the undead army has collapsed. I bet it fell at the same time you removed Queen Beatrice’s head from her body. The wyverns are burning the dead to ashes now so there’s no chance of them coming back.”

“Hmm, it sounds like everything is under control then, and that we’re not needed out there. Which means I can do this.” I spun my princess around, so her backside was pressed against my front. I lowered my mouth to the nape of her neck and savored the honey-sweet flavor of her skin.

Celestina

I stood frozen by lust. Goddess, this vampire knew how to drive me wild. He’d turned me so I was staring at Queen Beatrice, lying dead at our feet. Her body to the right of us, her head directly in front of us. Her cold, blue eyes staring sightlessly at me.

It should have disgusted me, but I’d spent enough time around such gore in Queen Beatrice’s court that I saw the blood and felt nothing.

“Thank you for coming for me,” I said as he nuzzled my neck.

“I will always come for you,” he murmured against my skin.

“Queen Beatrice would have won if you hadn’t struck when you did. I—I’d been rendered helpless.”

He nuzzled my neck a little longer before answering. “You would have figured out a way to defeat her. I merely hurried things along.” He nipped my neck’s soft skin. “I had to. I was getting impatient for this.” He sank his fangs into my neck.

I hissed a breath at the sudden sting. But my blood sang as he drank it warm from my body.

“I’m going to make you come next to the body of your dead queen. I’m going to make you scream my name so loudly that your lovely cry of pleasure will be all the queen hears as she rots in the Great Beyond,” he lifted his head long enough to promise.

As he drank some more, he eased his hand between my legs and teased me with his talented fingers while the ridge of his arousal pressed against me from behind. I rubbed up and down over his leather pants, stretching my back, loving the heat his hands and mouth were igniting in my core.

Still kissing me, he moved to stand in front of me. His beautiful green eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. His gaze remained locked on my face as he knelt in front of me. He had me widen my stance before pressing his lips against my throbbing heat. He licked and sucked until my legs were trembling. I dug my fingers into his thick black hair, holding on as if my life depended on keeping his head there while I struggled to take a steady breath.

“Look at her,” he whispered against my heat. “She and her mother tried to keep you controlled and powerless. But look at you now. You have something she coveted. You have a continent on its knees for you, my beautiful Celestina.” He swirled his tongue against my center. And that was enough. While staring at the dead queen who had terrorized a kingdom, I screamed Soren’s name as I came apart.

“Queen Beatrice’s kingdom is now yours.” He rose to his feet just in time to catch me. My limbs had turned boneless, and I collapsed into his embrace. “As am I, my queen. I’m yours to command.”

Goddess. Is this happening? Is it true? Earst has truly fallen. And its fall has paved the way for the return of the dragons.