Page 9 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

T hick smoke tickled my nose. A stench of death hung in the air that choked me, cloyed my nostrils.

The smoke was black and oily. It poured from the city walls like blood from a wound too wide to close.

Screaming echoed down the cobbled streets, humans and Leanders both.

The ground shook with each impact. Like thunder. Like war drums.

Somewhere far away, I was aware that I was dreaming. But it was so vivid, so intense, I felt the galloping beat of my heart, smelled the smoke, and heard the cries of warriors as they were dying.

Hide . That word pierced everything. Like a blade driven into the silence.

Hide now, Daphne. Don’t make a sound. Not a single breath, you hear me ?

It was my mother's voice. I ducked into the crawlspace under the butcher’s stall.

The scent of iron and rot and yesterday’s meat curled around me.

I pressed my hands over my mouth as the doors to the inner wall shattered like brittle glass. The gates of our city had fallen.

Vissigroth Kennenryn's Dragoons filed through the city like smoke given flesh. They wore black armor and shields identifying their planets. They moved like predators. Precision and thunder.

Death had arrived at our doors a few cycles ago when the dragoons laid siege to our city.

We were all hungry by now, starving, really.

And I was sure the dragoons wouldn't be pacified with victory alone, now that they had entered the city.

Rumors of what happened to towns holding out against Kennenryn's troops and those of his supporters had spread throughout the Fourteen Planets.

There was talk of rape and murder. Plunder and devastation.

Sometimes they wouldn’t leave behind buildings or bones. Only ash and silence. I wasn't sure what I was more afraid of: something happening to my mother, death, or the violence? At eighteen rotations old, I had always thought myself invincible. Not so much that night.

Not when I heard the sound of boots crunching over the shards of blown-out windows. Not when a seffy wailed three doors down. Not even when I saw the merchant across the square gutted by a blade that glowed silver-black in the firelight.

Not even when I saw him .

Mallack. I knew who he was, even if I had never seen him in person before. Images of all fourteen vissigroth were everywhere. If memory served, he was the Vissigroth of Hoerst, a planet I had never been to.

He rode a massive nicta, a rare, white-furred, silver-horned beast. Its muscles bunched beneath ceremonial warstraps.

The part of me that was conscious of my dream state recognized that its rider was younger than the male I had met today, but knew it was him.

His jaw was tight, his expression unreadable, and his eyes were blazing with darkness.

Even from where I hid, I felt them. Like they could see through stone. Through me.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The dragoons followed his lead with the kind of obedience that didn’t come from fear; it was born from deep respect.

Gods, he was terrifying.

And beautiful.

And I—I was nothing. Just a ragged girl inside a bloodstained crawlspace, heart beating too loud, too fast. In that moment, when he rode into my world like a death sentence, I remembered thinking: He looks like he belongs to the sky .

I woke with a gasp.

"Daphne? Are you alright?"

It was him. The male from my dream. Older, but that made him look only more handsome to me.

My heart was still beating in a rhythm that was too fast and too terrifying.

Even as the memories of the dream faded like the smoke I had seen and smelled, I could still feel him .

I could still feel the impact he had on me back then.

I scooted back on the bed, unsure if the vissigroth was going to kill or kiss me.

My body buzzed with residual fear and memory, though I couldn’t grasp the dream anymore.

It had broken apart too fast; fragmented impressions were already slipping between the cracks of my waking mind.

Smoke. Blood. A nicta leaping over fire. Eyes like carved obsidian.

And him.

He was the only thing that remained sharp.

Not his voice. Not his name. Just the weight of him.

He stepped forward carefully, slowly, as if I were a wounded animal who might bolt or lash out.

His movements were impossibly controlled for a male his size, every shift of muscle honed and deliberate.

He looked like he belonged in armor and blood, not in the quiet space of my confusion.

“Daphne,” he said gently. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

I tried to smile, but my muscles didn’t quite remember how. “I’m alright. I had… just… a bad dream.”

The smile felt forced. It felt false. I wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe I was fine. But I could still feel, even though I had no memory of the way the city burned, the way the stones trembled beneath war-shod hooves. My hands were shaking under the blanket.

He stopped at the edge of the bed, his steady gaze took me in, his eyes searching for lies while his voice dropped to a low hush. “You don’t have to fear me. I swear to you, I will never hurt you.”

Something about the way he said it made my throat tighten.

I didn’t think he was lying. But I couldn’t stop watching him like he might break me open anyway.

He crouched, his posture made him smaller, not less dangerous, but less looming.

Like he knew how large he was. How much space he took up.

Like he was trying, somehow, to give me back a little space of my own.

"Want to talk about it? The dream?" He asked.

"I don't even remember it…" I tried for a wry smile. That seemed to be the theme of my life right now. Not remembering. Not even a dream that had shaken me to the core five minutes ago.

He didn't reply, just gave me time to gather myself. I took a deep breath and looked at him for a long moment. “You said you’re my mate.”

He nodded once. “Zyn.”

“Why don’t I remember you?” My voice cracked. “I don’t remember anything.”

His expression didn’t shift, not much, but something behind his eyes faltered. “I know,” he said quietly. “It’s alright. You don’t have to remember right now.”

I looked away, down at my hands, then out the large panoramic window that showed stars slipping past like shards of cold light.

“How long until we reach Leander?”

“We'll get there tomorrow.” He promised.

I nodded, biting my lip. The question surged up again, harder to resist than ever. “When will I see Myccael?”

He hesitated; it was faint, but I caught it. Something about my wanting to see Myccael made him uncomfortable. He rose back to his full height, but he kept his voice steady, the way he would if he were trying to tame a scared nicta.

“Once we land, it'll be a three-day ride to Bantahar,” he said. “You’ll see him then.”

Three days. It felt like an eternity.

I wasn’t even sure why it mattered so much, why Myccael's name burned on my mind, urging me to get to him. I didn’t know him. But something in me did. Some thread I couldn’t name kept pulling me toward him, tighter every day.

Still, when I looked at the male before me, the male who claimed I was his, my heart stuttered.

"You said it was a long story…" I fished.

He ran his hand through his hair. "Zyn."

Reluctantly, I patted the spot next to me on the bed. I wasn't sure if he would think the gesture too intimate, but my mind was going crazy. I needed to know. "Will you tell me now?"

The hammering inside my chest increased.

I didn't know what to make of this male.

He claimed I was his mate, but if that were true, why did I wake in a glass shrine, far from the city?

I didn't want him to see my apprehension, though.

If I was going to figure out what was going on here, who I was, who he really was, I had to gain his trust. That much I knew.

He hesitated, hand still tangled in his hair. The light caught on the silver at his temples. For all his strength, he suddenly looked… tired.

But when I patted the bed beside me, he didn’t flinch or question it. He just sat, slowly and carefully, as though he thought the mattress might break beneath him.

Or I might.

“Zyn,” he said at last. “It's a long story.”

I waited.

We both knew he was stalling, but I didn't push. I waited for him to find the words. "Where do you want me to start? How we met, or how… it ended?"

"Let's start with why I woke up in that shrine," I decided, ignoring the shudders running through me.

But the glimpses I remembered from the dream were enough not to ask about how we met, how we got mated.

For now, I wanted to know why I needed to see this Myccael.

What was so special about him? Why did I feel the need to see him and not Mallack, who claimed to be my mate?

He exhaled through his nose and stared at the floor for a moment. “More than twenty rotations ago, you gave birth to our child."

He lifted his head and looked at me. There was so much grief in the dark pools of his orbs that I instinctively reached out and took his hand. The contact was like an electrical jolt. I forced myself to keep my hand there. I started this. Pulling back now would be… if not rude, cowardly.

At the contact, a spark moved through the obsidian darkness of his eyes, and a slight smile tugged at the corners of his full lips. It was as if his entire body sighed.

"The entire time during your pregnancy, you believed the child you carried would be a girl." With his free hand, he rubbed the back of his neck, something like regret mirrored on his expression.

"You are a vissigroth?" I already knew that, the Kiss of the Dragon, the scales on his shoulder and arm didn't leave any doubt about that, but somehow, I needed to hear him say it.

"Zyn. Do you know what that means?"