Page 26 of Ink Sworn (Greatdrakes #3 | The Fae Universe #24)

V alentine pulled up his pants but left his shirt off.

The sun was beating down on him, and if it was cold, he didn't notice because fire coursed through his veins.

He should have been freaking out about his dragon having three heads, but Yelena wasn't worried, and her calm acceptance was keeping him stable.

Valentine touched the scars on his chest, a feeling too big building inside of him. He thought his dragon would take over, that there would be no more Valentine, just a creature that could wield too much power.

For the first time in a long time, Valentine felt like just maybe he wasn't going to lose his mind after all.

It had a lot to do with the belief of the female beside him. He had one memory from the shift, and that was the single focus on her. He didn't know what was happening to him. He had never been this relaxed and easy with anyone.

Yelena seemed to know things intuitively about him, like when he didn't want to be touched or when he was spiraling in his own mind.

She is the balance . That thought kept returning to him because he could feel the truth of it. He didn't feel unsteady when he was around her because she was on the other side of the scales, keeping him even.

Yelena got to her feet, completely comfortable in her naked skin. She held out a hand, and he took it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"I have come to this place since Taranis took me in. It's so peaceful and quiet. It's hard to be in the city and around the knights all the time, and while I love them, sometimes I just need everyone to shut the fuck up. Does that make sense?" Yelena said as they walked through the soft grass.

"Does it ever," Valentine replied. “It's like how my family is. They have always worried about me, and sometimes it is smothering. I can see why you like it out here. I dealt with it by making really good silencing wards."

Some strange magic pulsed through the ground, and he caught sight of a tall monolith of black stone on the edge of the forest.

"What is that? Can you feel that?" he asked, the thrill of new magic dancing through him.

Yelena laughed softly. "I can. It was why I was first drawn here. I have asked Taranis about it, but he says it was here long before him. He doesn't know who raised the stone, but it feels... Well, I'll let you see what you think."

Valentine loved that she wanted to show it to him, and that she didn't want her ideas about it affecting his impressions of it.

He placed his hands on the stone and closed his eyes.

There was a current running through it, a slight vibration that set his magic humming.

It was ancient, and it almost felt alive .

Valentine rested his cheek against the stone, trying to get more contact with it. He had studied psychometry and was good at it. Not Auntie Ella’s level of good, but good enough.

"Huh, it refuses to be read. Did you try?" he asked Yelena.

"Many times. I don't mind that it's a mystery. Well, some days it drives me crazy, but mostly I just accept it," she said and placed her ear to the stone. "I like how grounded I feel when I let my energy sync with it. I need that some days."

"Me too," Valentine admitted. "I get so deep on a thought pattern or a project that I dissociate clean out of my body, and it always takes me a while to feel like I am back in it."

Yelena opened her eyes, and they were full of understanding. "That is exactly it. Valentine, you do understand that I'm not like the other fae dragons, don't you? That I am really a dragon that is masquerading as a fae? I'm...backwards? I had to learn to be this as you see me?"

"I do. Taranis told me how he found you, and what you went through, to the best of his knowledge. I won't pretend I understand how that would feel, but I know you are true dragon first, and everything else second," he replied, not quite knowing why she had brought it up.

Her fair brows drew together. "It doesn't bother you?"

"No," he answered without hesitation. "You acting like I was going to turn evil bothered me.

You being disgustingly sweet and perfect bothered me.

When I look back on it, I think I sensed that it was an act, and that's why it got to me.

I've never cared about you being a wild dragon, playing human.

Somedays I feel like I'm playing human too. "

Yelena's smile was achingly sweet. "Then I will show you what I am, and what I can do.

I don't know why I am so different. I know I came from the north.

Far, far from here, and I was abandoned.

I don't have many memories of that time.

It means I never fit with the wild kind, and I'll never really fit with the fae kind. "

"I understand that feeling too," Valentine said and dared to put his hand over hers. "We can not fit in together."

Yelena kissed the top of his hand before stepping away. "You might want to stay there."

Valentine watched her walk back out through the grass, her lovely body and hair glowing in the sunlight. The gold turned to silvery white as her magic surged to the surface, and she shifted.

Yelena was all the colors of a glacier. Greys and whites and blues.

Valentine smiled when he saw that her silver hand had indeed changed into a silver paw.

He couldn't wrap his mind around that and had to stop wondering how the transformation magic would work.

Nothing about Yelena's magic was normal.

She turned her diamond-shaped head toward him and looked at him with the same pale blue eyes. The white horns atop her head curled back almost like an antelope's, ending in sharp points. She stretched out her wings, and their color was a pale blue and purple.

The dragon painted on her chamber door was her own. And Valentine had been drawing her for weeks and weeks. How was that possible?

Valentine dared to walk closer and placed a hand over the sudden yanking feeling in his chest. "You are stunning, baby girl."

Yelena opened her mouth, and he saw her fangs, which were sharply pointed and looked almost translucent like diamonds. Valentine had never seen or read about any dragon like her.

She turned back to the trees and opened her mouth. Instead of fire, what came out with her roar was ice.

Valentine stumbled back in surprise, tripped, and went back on his ass. "So that's how you could freeze yourself and not die."

His heart was pounding so loudly, he could hear it in his ears.

Yelena's wings and tail began to lift and move in a mesmerizing dance.

Magic hummed in the air, and ice gathered on the grass around him in swirling, strange patterns.

When she opened her mouth again, it was to make sounds in a calling of high notes like she was a large exotic bird.

"You are...singing?" Valentine couldn't believe it.

He somehow knew that this was something no one had ever seen her do before.

The patterns in the frost around the glade began to pulse with light and power, and her song made the ice crystals start to vibrate until they were singing a song of their own.

Valentine's eyes filled with tears, overwhelmed by the magic of the moment. He could feel the song as it vibrated through his body. The dragon side of him rolled to the surface, and it watched Yelena's beautiful display.

Mate , it said, full of yearning.

It had been trying to tell him since she had almost cut his throat, and he had tightened the bindings around it so he wouldn't hear the truth.

Valentine pressed his hand harder to his sternum, crying for the first time since his mother had died. Yelena's song was breaking through all the parts of him that had been numb and closed off for so long.

He gasped, struggling to get a big enough breath through the sudden wave of pent-up grief and new longing. He couldn't fight against it. His magic had always risen to protect him, but it couldn't protect him from Yelena. He just sat there, tears tracking down his skin as his world fell apart.

Mate. Balance , the dragon insisted, solving the mystery of why their magic worked together for him, too.

Valentine knew he should be panicking. He had always looked at his brothers and other family members mating and thought it would be like just another noose around his neck that was designed to choke the life out of him.

This didn't feel like a rope around his neck, but around his heart. As soon as the thought formed, the silver line of light he had been following to find her flared to life.

"Oh, that's what that is," he whispered, feeling like the biggest idiot in all the worlds. He had always been confused about how he was drawn to her. Even masquerading as Caelan, he had yearned to come to Faerie and see her. She was his friend, his magical balance, and his mate.

Yelena was his everything, and he had been too stubborn and caught up in his stupidity to realize it.

Valentine wiped at his cheeks before Yelena could see the tears and climbed back to his feet. She had stopped singing, and he strode through the grass towards her. With no clue what else to do, he climbed up on her clawed foot and hugged her leg.

He didn't know how he could bring up the fact that she was his mate, or how someone as alpha and independent as her would react to it. He only knew that in that moment, he wanted her to see that he wasn't afraid of what she was.

"Thank you," he said, his face pressed to her cool scales. "Thank you for sharing this with me. It was... You're the most beautiful dragon I have ever seen."

Yelena's paw shifted so she could hold him. Her head lowered to sniff him, and he placed his hand on her snout. This was her real form, not the human-shaped one.

"You are amazing, you know that?" Valentine told her, looking into her large eyes. "You learned to live and shift and do magic with no one to show you the way. You are a miracle, Yelena."

Yelena's paw lowered him back to the ground, and somehow, she shifted at the same time, so by the time his feet touched the frost-covered grass, she was in his arms. Her arms and legs were wrapped around him, her face pressed into his neck.

Valentine held her tighter to him. He inhaled her scent, and the numb pieces of himself flooded with warmth.

"Thank you for accepting me," Yelena said, her lips on his skin.

"You are incredible. I don't... I don't have words to describe what I'm feeling right now after seeing that. Thank you for trusting me enough to show me," he stammered, struggling to find any words at all.

Yelena slid her legs down his until she was on her own feet. She held his cheeks in her hands, just staring into his eyes. She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped herself. She kissed him instead, soft and sweet.

"We should be getting back. Taranis will be expecting us at the meeting with Midir," she said when they broke apart.

Valentine nodded, a lump in his throat. He ran a thumb over her chin, not wanting to let her go but knowing he had to. "Lead the way, baby girl. I'll be right behind you."

Valentine needed some time alone to think and get his head on straight before he could play politics. Most of all, he needed to think about how he could eventually convince her to accept him as her mate.

He had failed everyone he loved. He had failed as a son and a brother so many times over the years. He had failed her as a friend. He didn't deserve to be her mate.

It didn't matter what his dragon said. Valentine wasn't going to ask her to be his until he had proved to her that he could be a good mate. That meant protecting her first and foremost.

Valentine shifted into his dragon with no pain and a new plan. The meeting with Midir was no longer about politics. It was about standing face-to-face with the male who had tortured and mutilated his future mate .

And then, Valentine was going to figure out exactly how to kill him in every way he feared most.