Page 44 of Destined By Dragonblood (Blood Born #2)

Ashley

I held my face in my hands and sobbed, my heart torn as though a serrated knife had hacked its way through the tender flesh.

“It’s okay,” Vanni murmured, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me onto his lap, but I couldn’t stop the tears.

Surely, he experienced the same pain that I did—how could he stand knowing— feeling —Dolyn’s energy leaving us again?

Our beta’s awful words were just as distressing, but his absence was ten times more painful now that our energies had become more strongly wrapped up together.

Vanni rocked me back and forth, clutching my cheek against his chest until I quieted, the soothing thump of his heart beneath my ear reassuring.

“He’s gone,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“What should we do?”

Vanni heaved a breath. “Long term? No fucking clue, but I wouldn’t mind a shower right now.”

I pulled back slightly, and he swept his lips up my neck, finding my mouth. With more gentleness than I thought him capable of, Vanni poured his love into our kiss, trying to ease my heartache by giving the kind of tenderness Dolyn had fulfilled me with.

I wished Vanni’s sweetness, his caresses, could fill the part of me that needed more, but an aching emptiness remained deep inside me.

“I’m not enough,” he whispered, tipping his forehead against mine, the hurt in his voice and through our growing bond causing my eyes to sting again.

“Same as I fall short for you.” I pulled back and cradled his whiskered cheeks in my hands. “It’s not that we’re less?—”

Vanni’s snort cut me off, his brow furrowing and thunder filling his eyes. “Fucker needs to get that through his goddamn brain.”

“Try to see things from his perspective, Vanni.” I knew it was hard.

I struggled to do the same, but thinking about past royal human lines of blood, rarely did a mere peasant take the throne alongside them.

I expected Dolyn felt the same as those from ancient times did, but how could we help him overcome a sense of superiority he’d known as truth for four hundred-some years?

“We should go back to New York,” Vanni muttered.

“No.” I shook my head, the idea of abandoning the cavern turning my stomach to rock. “He’ll return. We’ll find a way to make him see we are worthy of his love. That bonding with us, regardless of our lesser blood, is what he’s longing for.”

Vanni grabbed the bloody shirt off the floor, wrapped his arms around my nakedness, and groaned while standing.

“Put me down.”

“Never.”

I grumbled, but wrapped my legs around his waist like he desired and laid my cheek on his shoulder as he started back the way we’d come in our search of Dolyn.

He grabbed the lantern, easily carrying my much smaller frame with one arm.

Relaxing against his rock-like chest, I closed my eyes, breathing a little easier.

“Hold onto me, sweetheart,” he whispered, and I knew he meant beyond the physical.

The next morning, showered and in fresh—somewhat—old clothing from the fifties, we made our way to the kitchen and ate the sourdough bread Primrose had left out for us the day before. With only a wood stove’s fire burned down to ash and no sign of matches anywhere, we were unable to make coffee.

I peered at Vanni across the table from me while Tiggy pigged out on a bowl of dog food we’d found in a lower cabinet. “Should we go look for Dolyn?”

Vanni’s gaze shifted toward the windows. Swirling eddies of white hid the far expanse beyond. I’d never been in a blizzard before but expected what happened outside counted as one. “He’s too far away.”

“What about the SUV? Think you can find it again after this snow stops? We’re going to need supplies if we stay here for any length of time.

” I glanced around the outdated kitchen.

“I don’t know how to cook on a wood stove.

” A small stack of firewood lay beside the empty fireplace.

“How is it warm in here? There’s no heat source right now. ”

Vanni glanced across the cavern and shrugged.

“We should go exploring.” I eyed the oil lantern between us, the glass base of it more than half-full. Vanni had lit the wick earlier with a pack of matches in the bedside table drawer, but we’d left them there. “Shit.”

“What?”

“We didn’t bring the matches with us and turned the lamp off. How are we going to light it again?”

Without a word, we both stood and started rooting through every cabinet and drawer for a way to create flame, coming up empty.

Vanni rubbed a hand over his jaw, glancing around the vast cavern.

Tiggy eyed us from where he sat by the front door, head resting on his paws. We’d let him out after he’d eaten, and even though he’d hesitated to brave the snow, he’d gone onto the veranda to do his business and was scratching to be let back in seconds later.

“The night we got here, Dolyn started the fire with dragon flames from his mouth,” Vanni said, releasing a heavy sigh.

“Of course, he did,” I mumbled, hands on hips as I turned to glance over the main living area of his home. “We’re lucky there’s a pack of matches. Dragon shifters wouldn’t have need of them. What do you think, Tiggy?” I turned to ask the dog.

He stared at us, and while he hadn’t been aggressive or seemingly upset we’d invaded his home, he seemed…sad. But what creature wouldn’t be when first Primrose then Dolyn had left him alone with two humans he didn’t know?

I made my way over to him, and he thumped his tail without lifting his head. Bending, I petted over his head. “I’m hurting too, Tig. But we’ll take care of you until he comes back, okay?”

Tiggy gave me a little lick, huffed, and closed his eyes.

Standing, I peered down the hallway.

“We have to go to our room.”

I huffed at Vanni’s statement I’d been about to make, anxiety over the pitch-black heightening my pulse.

He gathered up my hand and squeezed it tight. “With every day that passes, I swear I can see more than humanly possible in the dark. And even if I can’t see enough to get us there, I’m pretty sure I remember the twists and turns.”

“And if you don’t, maybe our inner beasts do?” I suggested since I hadn’t paid attention once while meandering the branching hallways that led to the sleeping chambers.

Yessss .

Both of us let out shaky laughs as the hissed assurance echoed between us.

“Let’s go.”

Within a dozen steps, we rounded a bend, and the darkness claimed my sight. I clutched to Vanni’s hand, our steps slowing. “Tell me you aren’t as blind as I am,” I whispered, my voice seemingly loud in the stifling stillness.

“I’m not?”

“That sounded like a question,” I hissed, grabbing hold of his upper arm with my free hand.

“Here,” he said, and the lantern’s handle brushed against my knuckles. “Hold this so I’m free to run my fingers along the rock.”

Shivering, I took the oil lamp and dangled it by my side. “Do not let go of my hand.”

“I won’t. Promise.”

We started out, moving slowly, the soft scrape of Vanni’s fingertips along the rock wall accompanying the shuffling of our feet.

“I can actually make out the shadow of branching hallways ahead.”

Left .

Relief flooded through both of us.

“That’s what I thought,” he murmured to the voices in our heads. “Thank you.”

One branch led toward the master chamber as well as Primrose’s, the other to a few guest quarters that hadn’t been occupied in centuries.

“Come on.” Vanni’s footsteps moved faster, and I followed with a little more confidence. “We made it,” he said, his breath leaving in a rush.

The sound of a door pushing inward met my ears, and sudden light from the window in the far wall made me blink.

“Thank God,” I muttered, rubbing at the goose bumps on my arms that had nothing to do with cold.

Ten minutes later, matches in Vanni’s back pocket and oil lamp lit, we descended into the bowels of the cavern.

“Which way?” he questioned at the first fork, and I pointed left since we already had been to the right and library beyond.

“Let’s explore down there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the pantry.”

“Fuck, what I wouldn’t do for a juicy steak right now.”

I giggled even as my heart ached.

“What’s so funny?”

“We won’t need a grill with a dragon for our mate.”

Vanni snorted. “Hopefully he gets his fine ass back here soon.”

“What if he doesn’t return, Vanni? Seriously—what are we going to do?”

He tugged me into his side and kissed the top of my head. “I don’t know, Ash. One hour, one day at a time, alright? Primrose said something about being stocked up for the winter, so there’s got to be a dragon hoard of food around here someplace.”

I smiled but couldn’t find the ability to laugh over his intended pun.

If Dolyn stayed away from his ancestral home as long as he’d done after last he’d visited, according to Primrose, we were doomed.

Shivering, I followed Vanni down the hallway, my throat tight and aching.

We searched the endless cavern high and low, exploring countless rooms hewn out of stone, the masonry areas so well-made not a lick of mortar showed in the cracks.

The first and most important finding was a large pantry-type room below the kitchen.

Primrose had stocked up for the winter like a true prepper, so at least we wouldn’t starve.

There were boxes of matches, candles, and batteries, so we wouldn’t go without light either.

Off the back of the pantry lay a decently stocked wine cellar that held dusty bottles, and we enjoyed two of them while eating canned beef stew we heated over an open fire Vanni managed to start.

We never found the source of heat, but the air did get warmer the deeper into the endless caverns we’d gone.

Tiggy had laid by the entryway all day except for when we let him outside to do his business, and his sad puppy-dog eyes felt like what Vanni and I experienced deep inside.

A yearning for what we didn’t have, a desperation that grew with every hour.

Darkness fell outside, and rather than wasting oil or candles, we crawled into Dolyn’s huge bed and held each other close, desire swirling between us—and reaching out for our third both our hearts ached for.

At least Tiggy had followed us down the hallway and curled up at the foot of the bed so he wasn’t alone in the main living area.

I told Vanni all I knew about Elijah and how he and Dolyn had been together before meeting us. Vanni worried he’d pushed Dolyn too hard to submit and that he’d gone back to his ex.

A hard knot grew in Vanni’s stomach, causing my own to tighten, but on the heels of his hurt came a sense of comfort.

I slid my leg between his and smoothed my hand over his brow in the darkness, the cloud-covered sky outside the window not allowing a single moonbeam to illuminate the bedroom.

“Your emotions just jumped from pain to pleased. What’s going on?

” I asked, my voice no more than a hushed whisper in the stillness.

“I was envisioning another man touching Dolyn. Tasting him. Fucking him.” Vanni shifted, repeating his thoughts intensifying the unease in his guts. “Then I realized I can see you better than I could this morning while finding our way back the hallway to get the matches. Can you see me at all?”

I huffed the annoyance he probably already felt, considering how the bond between us had strengthened even in Dolyn’s absence. “Not a damned bit.”

“Maybe I’ve got more dragonblood than Dolyn believes.”

I heaved a sigh and snuggled closer against Vanni’s chest, head tucked beneath his chin.

He ran his hand over my hip and back up, tugging me so we pressed tight from chest to thigh. “Do you believe he at least misses us?”

“He’d better,” I grumbled.

“He must, I mean, he’s our fated mate, right?” Vanni hadn’t really asked a question but spoke to assure himself. “He’s got to feel what we are. That goddamn energy between us isn’t imagined.”

Our emotions—shared and singular—swirled between us as real as Vanni’s fingertips drawing circles on my lower back. “It’s definitely not,” I murmured.

Tomorrow will be better.

Believing the voice in my head, I closed my eyes and allowed sleep to claim me.