Page 8 of Power of Draken (Fated to the Draken Riders #1)

Chapter 8

Kai

R owan and I stand alone in the commandant’s office, the light flickering through the window gleaming off the polished mahogany desk and playing over the neat stack of parchment that I should be taking the opportunity to read through. Instead, I’m staring at her. At the alchemist.

“Where is the commandant?” Rowan asks, her rich auburn hair spilling in luscious locks onto her shoulders. The blend of deep reds and warm brown tones whisper promises of what the curls lower on her body must look like. She wears my uniform shirt, the one I pulled off to give to her. It’s big and it slides over a bare shoulder, showing off glowing skin. She wears no pants. No boots. Just my shirt and that penetrating, infuriating, gorgeous look on her face.

Stars. The sight of her is already making me painfully hard.

“Not here yet.”

I stalk around the commandant’s desk to where Rowan is standing. Her eyes are large and she smells of fear and honey and citrus. Of me and Kyrian. The chill is hardening her nipples, which tent the fabric of her shirt. My shirt. I stop in front of her, and look down. She barely reaches my shoulder. I listen for footsteps, but no one is close.

I should send her away. To stand outside the office until the commandant c omes. So I can stay inside alone. And do what I should be doing. Reading intelligence reports. Memorizing maps. Doing whatever it takes to undo what’s been done to Lilith. And to so many draken. And yet, I don’t. Instead I’m standing here like a stars’ damned adolescent, unable to tear my attention away from the way Rowan’s lush lips part slightly. I want to devour them, to plunder her sweet mouth until she's breathless and trembling.

“So what should I do?” she asks. She wraps her arms around herself. She is here for discipline and she’s afraid. “Should I come back later?”

“No.” I swallow. “I can start your punishment now. What reason is there to wait?”

“W-what are you going to do?” Her voice hitches. She is afraid, yes, but she can’t keep her eyes off me. The scent of her growing arousal is escaping from her thighs, which she closes quickly.

This isn’t real. I know it isn’t. But I don’t care.

I step closer, pinning Rowan between my body and the commandant’s desk. I grip her hips, filling my hands with her delicious curves. Her skin is like silk, warm and inviting. I sit her atop the desk. A sweep of my shadows and all the books and papers fly to the floor, leaving the surface behind Rowan clear.

She gasps, a shudder running along her throat. The tip of her tongue jets out from between her lips.

My cock twitches in need.

“What punishment do you deserve?” I demand. I brace my hands on the edge of the desk, on either side of Rowan’s hips. Her thighs are parted slightly, her pupils wide.

She leans back slightly, strands of arousal weaving in with her fear and apprehension. She is at my mercy. So why does it feel like it’s me who is at her mercy?

My voice drops, becoming gravely. “You left without leave. Without asking my permission.”

“Would you have given it?” There goes that terrible mouth of hers, not backing down even when a wiser being would.

“No.” I put my knees between Rowan’s, pushing her thighs apart. She resists, her cheeks blushing furiously when her flesh opens with a wet pop and heat pours from her, mixing with my own.

My cock pulses painfully inside my britches.

“Please,” Rowan whispers. Her plea is breathless.

“Please what?” I question, enjoying as her color rises again. Her mind and body are begging for very different outcomes. “Please don’t punish you?”

Another small delicious gasp.

“Too late for that.” I reach beneath her shirt- my shirt—and growl in approval as I find her bare beneath. With a rough pull, I yank Rowan’s backside to the edge of the table, and grip the inside of each thigh with my hands. The intoxicating scent of her arousal makes my heart pound. I lower my mouth to her slick folds, right atop the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex for her sex and -

The flap of draken wings yanks my mind back to where it belongs. I step back, giving Kyrian and Arianda more space to land in the clearing. Arianda’s dark green scales blend easily into the night forest, but still, Kyrian shouldn’t have taken the risk of riding without a good reason—and I don’t know of any right now. Eryndor’s forests and cliffs are as hospitable to draken as flame is to fish. It’s not just the thin high-altitude air, the murderous air tunnels, or the damn weather that goes from clear to thunder to fog within an hour. It’s the wards themselves. Not only do they strip the draken of basic magic to defend themselves, they mess with the ley lines, disrupting the draken’s sense of direction and balance.

It’s dangerous. Too dangerous. Not that a lecture would stop him.

“There ye are.” Kyrian dismounts with his usual grace. “Have ye been waiting long?”

Long enough to stop thinking with your brain, Ulyssus’s mental voice chuffs in my mind. So, yes.

I shift my weight, trying to discreetly ease the pressure from the bulge pressing against my britches. Fortunately, draken can only mind speak with their bonded riders, so even Kyrian—who has an empathic gift with the creatures—gets none of Ulyssus’s overt commentary. “It’s fine. ”

Ulyssus chuffs again, and I tighten my mental shields to keep the nosy draken out.

“Logan here yet?” Kyrian asks, giving Ulyssus a wide berth as he moves around the clearing. If Arianda blends with the forest, Ulyssus is the night sky—black scales soaking up the darkness. Ulyssus tolerates Kyrian and Logan, but it’s never wise to push his goodwill. Especially since his wing was damaged getting into Eryndor two years ago. It healed fine, but his disposition soured. Not that he was gracious to begin with.

“He’ll show,” I say. Logan always does, even when it seems unlikely. “Probably found a way to slip into the Gloom.” The wards around Eryndor make contact with the Gloom—the shadow version of the world—nearly impossible. But Logan has unique talents. Ones he doesn’t always use wisely. “Why the unplanned flight?”

Not being able to soar through the sky together has been one of the mission’s harshest sacrifices. Not that I don’t deserve to suffer for what I’ve done. But the distance hurts Ulyssus too. That’s just part of being close to me—I hurt everyone who gets in my orbit.

I touch the pendant around my neck, Lilith’s smooth iridescent scales reminding me of the stakes. She was the first dragonling to hatch in centuries, and she soars no more because she trusted me. She is why I’m here. I have to fix things. For Lilith, I have to.

“Arianda thought she saw a draken get taken down near the Raven Raveen,” Kyrian explains. “Northeast quadrant.”

My jaw tenses. The auric alloy Eryndor put on their arrows doesn’t kill draken—it paralyzes them. Permanently if the arrowhead isn’t removed in time. Worse yet, the Spires have been sending covert contingents of soldiers to retrieve the downed draken. Retrieve them alive. I’ve seen the orders. We’ve not been able to work out where they bring them. Or to what end.

We’ve been doing what we can, when we can. Especially Kyrian and Arianda.

“Find anything?” I ask.

“False alarm. But there is movement at the wards. Flurry looks like it’s gathering another host. ”

I run a hand through my hair. I can’t fault any draken rider or shifter for wanting to wipe Eryndor off the map, but an attack now would be inconvenient to the mission Kyrian, Logan, and I started two years ago.

Not that anyone in Flurry, or elsewhere, knows what we are doing.

“Little to be done about it now,” I say bluntly. “We’ll deal with it if we must.”

“Aye,” Kyrian agrees, rubbing Arianda’s nose. The draken leans eagerly into the touch. Ulyssus, thankfully, isn’t nearly as tactile. Logan’s draken is worse, not letting anyone but Logan even come near her.

“So,” I say, tired of waiting for Logan to show. “We have our alchemist. And she’s an Ainsley, of all things.”

“Rowan isn’t what I expected,” Kyrian says. I wish he didn’t use her name. I don’t need another reminder of how real she is.

Your problem isn’t her name, Ulyssus informs me. It’s your cock.

Don’t worry about my cock, I send back to him.

It’s one or the other for you lot. Cock or brain. Can never use both at the same time.

I don’t honor that with a reply. Rowan might wake me inconveniently, but I know why I’m here. We’ve spent two years living and training among humans just to get to the alchemist we’d heard would be in this year’s enchanter class. I'll do nothing to jeopardize that.

It’s just that things were simpler before the alchemist had a name. And a face. Rowan. Gorgeous, mouthy and stars-damned suicidal.

The rage that swept through me at the Wishing Well Inn, when I realized our alchemist was at the center of murderous chaos, rushes back with a vengeance. That moment, right before Kyrian threw himself over her, when some burly human boar aimed his booted foot at her head, flashes in my mind again. An imprint, frozen in time. Because after that, I started killing. Anyone who so much as looked Rowan’s way fell within heartbeats of their mistake.

Two years of work infiltrating Eryndor would all be for nothing if that stubborn, reckless girl got herself dead .

“Doesn’t matter what we expected,” I tell Kyrian harshly. “She’s an alchemist. She’s why there’s auric steel. Don’t lose sight of why we’re here.”

“I’m not losing sight of anything, just saying I was expecting someone more like her mother.”

“It would be easier if she were. For one thing, we’d have less chance of her deciding to jump head first off a cliff to save a stranded kitten, or whatever else she’s planned for an evening adventure.” I sigh. “The plan’s not changed. We’ll need her cooperation, so get her trust as best you can. We both know I’m not the male for that job.”

Kyrian snorts his agreement. “Just wait until Logan meets her. Five gold says he’ll be between her thighs in under a week.”

“I’d rather you were that confident Logan won’t fail mathematics,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose. It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to drill into his thick skull. The humans will kick him out for failing academics, destroying everything we’ve worked for. We’ve come to blows over it, more than once, with no result.

It’s not like Kyrian or I could take the exams for him—glamor magic barely dulls our pointed fae ears.

“Speaking of the devil,” Kyrian says, nodding toward the forest. A pair of golden eyes blink from the darkness, followed by the whisper of rustling brush. A large gray wolf prowls forward on silent paws.

“Glad you could pause your rutting long enough to join us,” I nod at the wolf, who sighs dramatically before shifting into his fae form.

“When there’s no quality, I go with quantity.” Logan stretches, hands interlaced behind his head. “Which one of you idiots was flying? Because if we can take to the skies?—”

“Talk to Kyr. He’s the suicidal one today,” I say.

Kyrian flips me off. “We were talking about the alchemist. The one running a slum clinic under her mother’s nose.”

“And making a mess of it.” A small growl escapes. Reckless. So damned reckless. “Keeping the girl alive might be the hardest part of this.”

“Saving a few humans doesn’t make up for what she’s doing,” Logan says to Kyrian, but doesn’t come closer. It’s still strange, seeing a wolf insti nctively seek distance instead of proximity they usually crave. One of my fathers is a wolf shifter from Flurry, so I know more than a little about them. Paying Logan’s pack back for what they did to him is on my to do list.

“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” Kyrian says.

“She should,” I reply. “If you make a weapon, you better know what it does. Ignorance isn’t an excuse.”

Shadows leak around me, pooling at my ankles and around Ulyssus’s wings. Even with the wards muting my power, the forest hums with energy. Kyrian gives me a warning look.

Guilt lashes at me, and I make no move to shield myself. Lilith. Bright-eyed, energetic Lilith. The first dragonling to hatch in centuries—and the first to consume my heart. She should be soaring through the skies, scaring her parents with her antics. What happened to her is my fault. That I never intended for things to go down that way doesn’t matter. All I can do now is make it right. I have to.

“I’m just saying, it’d be easier if it was Collin Chambers who turned out to be the alchemist instead,” Kyrian says, holding up his hands.

“She’s an Ainsley. It’s not that hard.” Liar, I think to myself. You’re a damn liar. “Two more months, at most, and this is done.”

“I vote we grab her now and go,” Logan says.

“Which is why we don’t take votes,” Kyrian says with more patience than I’d have. It’s tempting to grab her now. We know exactly who she is, and we have her in our grasp. But we’re as deep in Eryndor as you can get without sitting in the queen’s lap. If we try to take off with Rowan now, we won’t make it to the city’s edge. Thankfully, Eryndor’s command is going to solve the problem for us soon enough when they send the cadets beyond the wards.

“Here’s what we do next,” I say, laying out the plan that will keep us moving toward our goal. “Get the alchemist’s trust if you think that’ll help, rut her if that’s what it takes—but don’t ever forget the truth. Rowan Ainsley is not our ally.”