Page 51 of Flameborne: Fury (Emberquell Academy #2)

~ DONAVYN ~

It was the first time Kgosi had ever shown me something I wanted to refuse—as Bren’s voice whispered and hitched, she saw the memories in her head.

She shared them with the dragons, and Kgosi shared them with me—yet, she shrouded the faces of the monster who’d done this to her, as well as his friends .

No matter how I concentrated, or reached, their faced remained blurred.

She carefully avoided thinking his name, and any time they called to each other, their voices were sucked into the void.

I had to watch her, violated and exploited, without a target for my rage. I pounded fists against the confines of the memory, desperate to see them, to know them, to identify them and hunt them down—but I couldn’t leave her there alone.

So, I lived it in her head, in her body, and in her soul.

And it was devastating.

Watching her sweet, pure love used against her as a weapon. Her na?ve trust and childlike desire for approval turned on her as a weight… I wept for her. Roared for her. Would have burned down the fucking world for her.

And the Bren of now, the woman, the Furyknight, the one who’d sprinted up a tower and thrown herself into the air to be caught by her dragon, that woman shrank in my arms. I felt her flinch when the memory grew sick, and I grasped for her, panicking, holding on, begging through the tears, promising her everything.

Never again.

No one will ever touch you again.

No one will ever use you.

Ever.

My soul recoiled from what she showed me, yet my heart expanded to fill that void in my chest, and the pain of the severed bond slowly eased away—but at cost to her.

Bren’s heart surged. Rose like a tide, then a tidal wave. Sucked her in and down until she was a shivering mess, reliving those torturous hours and unaware I was even there.

And no wonder. No fucking wonder.

I pulled her into my chest and held her so tightly her trembling became mine.

“I’m here, Bren. I’m here. And they’ll never touch you again. I vow it.”

But even when it was over, even when I saw the image she held of herself, spent and sobbing and curled like a child into the corner of a bed against a wall, one possessive, masculine hand spread on her hip, it still wasn’t over.

Because these things never were.

I watched her walk in a trance for weeks. One moment convinced those awful memories were nothing but a dark dream. The next, her body convinced that the monsters had returned.

She stopped feeding the barn animals after dark.

Stopped leaving the farmhouse for anything but crucial chores—and only then after her father’s anger sparked about her sudden laziness.

She stopped speaking if she didn’t have to, because any time she cracked her teeth she feared she might start screaming and never stop.

And then, two weeks later, she started bleeding.

Body wracked with pain, unable to stand straight, unable to work. Sullying clothing, then sheets so desperately, her mother panicked and forced her father to drive the wagon to get the physician.

A physician they couldn’t afford.

A perfunctory man, not given to shock or scandal, but as subtle as a hammer.

It was a miscarriage, he said. She’d lost a pregnancy, but her body struggled to expel the waste.

Either the bleeding would stop in a few days, or she would die. There was nothing he could do that wasn’t as likely to hurt as harm.

Her memories of that time were little more than hurt and fear.

But eventually, the bleeding did stop, though the pain didn’t.

A month after her parents left her at the farm alone she could finally walk, slightly hunched. A week after that, she resumed chores.

And a few days after that she somehow found the courage to mention to her parents that she expected her love to be back on day shifts and he might visit. He was leaving soon—

Her father’s slap snapped her head to the right so hard, she saw stars.

“If that bastard ever steps foot on my farm again, I will remove his heart with my hunting knife. He already stole my daughter from me. He won’t take my pride, also.”

She begged. She pleaded. She lied. She confessed. Her mother wept with her, but her father was unmoved.

“You’re both fucking na?ve if you believe that man will ever touch her again. He’s had what he wanted, and now he’ll ignore his shame and find it somewhere else.”

Bren shuddered in my arms. Akhane gave a high, mournful cry.

Kgosi roared. The four of us were linked in a staggering braid of bond-light—Bren’s mind cracked open like an egg, shoveling the memories out as fast as she could because they picked her up like a leaf in the wind and tumbled her, flipped her, flew her away.

But Kgosi groaned and shared them with me.

And I held Bren.

And slowly, slowly, the cord between us peered out of my heart like a sapling reaching for the sun.

No blazing light this time. No earth-shattering link. No white-hot heat.

The light fed from my soul, through my heart, into my veins. And as I curled my mate within my arms and sheltered her with my body, as the dawn sun peeked out from behind the mountains and the whole world shifted on its axis, the bond grew.

That cord I held so lightly, that braided through my limbs and would breach my skin, shivered and I ached for her to stop and let me help her when I watched the Bren of months earlier determine to herself that this fucking monster of a man hadn’t abandoned her.

When she openly defied her father for the first time, and was left bruised and belittled.

When she broke nails clawing the tiny bedroom window open that had been shuttered for years, and crawled out of the only safety she’d ever known, to walk through the night to the Dragon Keep.

The one place she knew he would be, because he was a fucking Furyknight.

Bren felt me tense and she drew in on herself.

Shame…

Shame flickered in that cord that still hadn’t found its way back to me. Guilt, shame, embarrassment. The cord in her pulsed with it—darkened, deadened, withered by it.

“Bren,” I breathed, my chest no longer hurting, but now pressured. Needy. Frantic. “I’m here. I’m still here.”

She sobbed and trembled. And then she showed me her despair.

I roared, screaming for her not to leave me when she walked to the edge of the Dragonmaw Cliffs certain she had nothing left of value to offer anyone but the darkest of men.

The golden cord of the bond, weaving in my blood like a coiled snake, struck and held the moment Akhane caught her in the air.

I sucked in a panicked breath as the cord ignited.

Outside, here and now, both Dragons threw back their heads and screamed, and the herd responded, from miles around.

The Keep echoed with the cries and calls of dragons riding the air around us as the bond grasped for her, pulled her back to me, and tied our souls.

Bren’s nails dug into my back. Her tears wet my chest. We both shook, the world disappearing in the wake of that blaze of light and pain.

And as I ached for her, the cord cauterized. Igniting in fire to burn between my ribs, stealing the strength from my limbs, and every thought from my head except that she be safe.

And when every final fiber of that precious thread between us had rejoined its pair, when the lava rode my veins and threatened to blister my skin from head to toe, when the dragons screamed their fury at the pain we were forced to share, it was done.

I came to, laying naked on my side, on the floor of my sitting room, Bren curled into a ball against my chest, my body spooned around her. Both of us shook like newborn foals.

I blinked and took an experimental breath.

No pain.

Thank God, no pain.

But then it all came crashing down.

That beast’s violation and manipulation.

Her father’s rejection and shame.

Her naivete and despair.

How had she survived it?

When the world had finally righted itself and the dragons stopped screaming, Bren raised her head, her gaze pinned down on at my chest at first, but when I lifted her chin, she reluctantly lifted her eyes to meet mine.

I didn’t give her time to ask.

“I love you, Bren,” I rasped. “I love you. You’re mine. And you will remain mine to eternity. Never question that. Do you believe me?”

She blinked and swallowed, but she nodded slowly.

“Good. Now tell me: Who the fuck was it? I’ll kill the bastard with my own hands.”

“I can’t,” she breathed.

“Bren, you must!”

She shook her head vehemently, looking warily at Kgosi, but then back at me, her reddened eyes so sad, but also determined.

“I can’t. Because if you kill him, they’ll kill you,” she whispered, her eyes flicking to Kgosi looming over us through the ceiling above.

“Remember, Donavyn? If a Furyknight murders another Furyknight, the dragons will execute the killer. I can’t let them take you from me. ”

I blinked, freezing as she took my face in her hands and kissed me with such passion, I lost my breath again.

Then she buried her face in my neck, threw her arms around me, and broke down, clinging so tightly I could barely breathe.

And I wept with her shamelessly.