Page 11 of Scorched by Fate (Drakarn Mates #3)

ELEVEN

VYNE

The scent hit me first.

Hers.

Something darker hung in the air with it; blood, bile, the feral stink of fury unchained. Of Drakarn rage.

My muscles coiled tight, instinct sharpening into something closer to weaponry than thought. Something was wrong.

The ridge came into view faster than I should’ve managed—faster than the ache clawing at my wings could complain. My descent sliced clean through the air, every violent beat of my wings driving me closer. The landscape blurred, streaks of crimson and volcanic black giving way to brutal clarity as the plateau rushed toward me.

Selene.

If they’d— If she?—

No. Don’t think. Act.

I saw her as the details burned into place—a momentary impression, devastating for how quickly it tunneled into me. Cornered.

Her back pressed against the ridge’s precarious edge, knife raised in a desperate line of defense. Defiance painted every exhausted line of her battered frame, her small human form trembling on the verge of collapse but refusing to yield.

They circled her. Rogues.

Drakarn who’d traded honor for savagery, their movements small, calculated, cruel. Their tongues flicked, claws raking across stone as they prowled closer, vicious intent hanging heavy in the heat.

Not just death. They wanted worse.

The sky all but shattered when I hit them.

The gust from my landing sent two of them sprawling, their bodies slamming against the ridge’s unforgiving surface with sickening force. Stone buckled underfoot, splintering as shards cracked outward from where my talons anchored deep.

The third rogue—the largest of the pack—spun toward me, hissing out a sound that was equal parts rage and surprise. His movements were sluggish compared to my strike, his slick, too-bright scales catching nothing but failure as my claws drove deep into the heavily muscled curve of his chest.

The sound he made—a wet, gurgling screech—satisfied something cold inside me.

“You touched her. You die.”

My voice grated low, unrestrained. It didn’t simply echo across the ridge; it commanded. Final. Absolute. A promise etched into the rock beneath me.

None of them moved fast enough.

The smallest rogue lunged at the edge of my wing—but before he could strike, my tail lashed out, slamming into him with a crash that made him collapse. He dropped first to his knees, then fully forward into the dust, lifeless.

The brute recovered quickly, roaring as he lunged forward with a ferocity born of desperation. Massive claws swiped wide, aiming for my midsection—an attack too clumsy to merit caution. I didn’t pull back. Not back. Never.

Pivoting sharply, I darted to the side, the swing of his strike skimming the air I left behind. My wings hammered back fiercely, propelling me straight toward him as I slammed my claws into the side of its maw.

Something crunched. Fangs caught briefly on my gauntleted hand before I tore myself free with a force that sent gore splattering across the rock behind him.

He staggered, stepping back with a mangled snarl, his blood dripping thickly in rough streaks that sizzled against the heat of the ground.

I advanced. My arm shot forward, carving into the column of his throat with exacting force. My weight collided with his bulk, each motion deliberate, powered by bloodlust honed into something sharper than instinct.

The brute swayed, refusing to fall. His massive frame reeked of defiance, but it didn’t hold when my tail speared into the connective joint of his wing.

The scream he let out tore through the thick air, primal and broken.

My wings flared wide, anchoring me against his failed resistance as I drove him down. He buckled hard. Collapsing under the crushing combination of clawed strikes and raw, unrelenting weight. As his chest hit the ridge beneath us, he squirmed one last time—half resistance, half instinct pushing him toward survival.

The brute fell silent.

Behind me, the remaining rogue scrambled back, his panic-laced hissing scraping over molten air as he turned to flee.

Two steps.

That’s all he got.

My tail hooked sharply into his back leg and dragged it over the splintered ridge. His snarls turned desperate, sharp claws carving scratches into the agonized rock as he fought.

Futile.

“You don’t get mercy,” I said. My voice was quiet, almost thoughtful, but the edge of it could’ve cleaved the ridge itself.

My claws sank neatly into his throat. Twist. Tear.

Silence.

I stood over the remains of them, breath dragging through my lungs, the remnants of the fight settling low in my limbs. Scented with blood. With violence.

And underneath it all—her.

Selene.

The heat simmered around me, pulsing sharp and fevered as I straightened. Every inhale dragged currents of heated air into my chest, its weight clinging as though trying to anchor me in the aftermath. Her scent threaded through it all, sharper now, intertwined with the adrenaline and ash-slicked air pressing hot onto the ridge.

She was barely standing.

Her back was rigid, though exhaustion nearly buckled her frame. One hand gripped the hilt of the knife I'd given her, her knuckles white where her resolve tried to bleed into the steel. The way she held it—not raised in threat but trembling with raw defiance—was a testament to her. She wasn’t fearless; no, she was far too human for that.

But she was breathtaking all the same.

My knife. My woman.

The truth of it didn’t matter, not now with my blood running hot and battle riding high.

Even bruised with blood streaking the soft edges of her brown skin, she stood like a creature made of fire and spite, still ready—still fighting—even with nothing left to wield but that knife and whatever shards of stubbornness she could cling to.

Her dark eyes darted to me briefly, then away. She wasn’t shaking anymore, but her stance betrayed the truth—heels edging into bad footing, muscles braced too tight, her body locked somewhere between ready-collapse and survival instinct.

“You’re not hurt.”

Not a question. A demand.

Her gaze snapped upward, locking onto mine with a sharpness that would’ve made a weaker creature falter. Her lips trembled, but only long enough for her to bite down and press them tight against the emotion straining there. Her chest rose unevenly, breath catching before she answered with a force that nearly cracked under the weight of its own stubbornness.

“I’m fine.” Her voice was strained. Fractured at the edges.

I didn’t believe it for a single burning second.

“You’re shaking.” The words came out harder than I intended, sharp enough to strike the tension between us, and her response cut back with a biting force that tried masking the cracks beneath it.

“Adrenaline,” she said, her chin tipping upward, pride lacing every inch of the stubborn line she drew between us. “That’s how it works.”

It might’ve worked—on anyone else. But the brittle flame in her eyes, flickering right alongside every sharp inhale, told me otherwise.

I moved forward again, closing the space with steady steps. She didn’t step back. Not fully. But she stiffened, the knife angling between us, more barrier than threat.

I stopped just short of swinging range. Not that I was braced for a fight—no. I’d die before I raised a claw against her, but there was something about the way she planted herself there, stubborn and almost trembling, that made me tread carefully.

Softer. Not weaker, just quieter.

“You don’t smell like adrenaline.” The observation left my throat rough, my voice barely above a growl, and the way her skin flinched at the sound cut something low through me. “Your fear is soaked into the air. So is the blood.”

Her sarcastic laugh cut sharp across the heat, bitter and jagged. “I hadn’t noticed.”

But her bravado did nothing to mask the tremor trailing through her fingers. The trembling tip of her knife faltered again, though her knuckles stayed white from gripping too tightly.

My gaze swept downward, dragging over her weakening stance, the wobble of her knees where exhaustion rippled through her frame. I searched for blood, for anything hidden in the curve of her arm or the desperate rise of her breath that she might be trying to shield.

Because if she was bleeding unnoticed— If she couldn’t even tell …

“Stop.” Her voice cracked against me, breaking harder than the knife she still held like it meant anything. Her free hand rose suddenly, palm lifted toward me like she could push me back with a single word. “Don’t look at me like I’m about to fall apart.”

Her stubbornness might as well have been a current drawn straight from the molten vein of Volcaryth itself, snapping bright and furious against something more fractured underneath.

I blinked slowly, jaw clenching against the instinct to bare my teeth in a snarl. My next step was sharp, harder than I meant it to be, but precise enough to close the final stretch of space that separated us.

“Let me see,” I said, quieter now but still sharp. The low press of my voice coiled like heat breaking under pressure, and my claws flexed where they hung just within reach of touching her.

“I told you—” she tried, but I silenced her.

“Let me see. ” The growl came unbidden, rough and low, carrying the force of a command she didn’t have room to argue with anymore.

I wanted to say it was instinct. Or desperation. But it was neither.

It was something harsher, sharper, thrumming dangerously low in the pulse of my blood.

Her jaw tightened again, her lips pressing together as if she was fighting to anchor herself against more resistance. Her chest rose briefly, enough for her chin to tilt higher, but her defiance cracked under some unspoken, mutual weight that neither of us knew how to place.

She shifted. A step. Small.

Enough.

I moved closer, closing what little distance still lingered. My claws reached carefully—angling for the curve where her shoulder met the sleeve of her shirt even as my senses flared sharper beneath her scent.

Selene stiffened immediately, her muscles tightening, but she didn’t pull away. My grip steadied gently—not restraint, not fully, but angled enough to guide her. My gaze swept her shoulders, tracing over the flush of her skin, over the streaked minerals and ash scattered across her arm.

No punctures. No claw marks.

No blood. At least none of hers.

The coil in my chest—tight, suffocating—began to ease around the edges. Even as heat simmered dangerously low beneath each rasping breath.

“You’re reckless.” My claws uncurled, releasing the tiny sensation of contact they’d kept where her arm burned beneath them. I didn’t move far. Didn’t withdraw.

My hand remained there a moment longer than it should’ve, hovering just near the edge of where her steady defiance began softening into frayed exhaustion. “Reckless,” I muttered again, quieter this time. Something between relief and accusation wedged itself thick into my throat as every nerve threatened to fray. “ And stubborn. I told you to yell for help.”

Her strength—astonishing in its raw, stubborn humanity during the ambush—was fading. Here, under the suffocating quiet that followed the fight and the crushing heat of Volcaryth’s ridge, she was cracking.

My claws ached with the need to steady her.

“I—” she began, her voice uneven and splintered, barely piecing itself together. Her weight shifted, grounding slightly against the ridge beneath her feet—but just barely. “I didn’t have time to think. Those things …” Her words faltered, lost somewhere in the raw scrape of memory and the overwhelming chaos still clawing at her veins. “I didn’t?—”

“Stop.”

My voice came sharper than I intended, biting through the fragile space she’d carved for her protest. The flicker of softness lurking in her defiance startled into something wide-eyed.

“If you think I need an excuse, save it,” I growled, every syllable taut with restrained weight. “You’re alive. You fought back. That’s the only thing keeping this entire ridge from being painted with scavenger blood.”

Her lips twitched—the hint of a frown brushing against her brow before she leaned into a sharp, uneven laugh. Bitter, almost broken. “Then what's all that?” she nodded to the splatter left by one of the beasts before I cast him off the plateau.

The quip fell flat, though, trailing off somewhere beneath the heat stretching between our bodies like a fault line ready to rip wide open. Her gaze twitched downward briefly—not submission; no, not her—but something tangled and cautious. Maybe even strained. Her grip on the knife slackened before dropping entirely.

The blade clattered against the stone.

“You’re trembling,” I said again. Not accusing her this time, just noticing, just reading her the same way I read every shift in battle, except this war was entirely different. Entirely maddening. “And it’s not nothing.”

“I didn’t come out of that unscathed,” she replied, cryptic but unconvincing. The false strength wavering over the brittle layers of her voice only sharpened my awareness further. “I’ll be fine. I just need?—”

Her hand rose briefly, brushing across her face as though she could physically press the lingering panic aside. “I need—” She stopped again. Her line of thought broke with a sharp breath before looking back up at me.

Her expression was fiercer than I’d anticipated. Fiercer, too, than I was prepared for.

“I’ll deal with it,” she said, quieter now, but with every ounce of strength her emotions had left to offer. “My fear. My shaking. All of it. It’s mine.”

“No.”

The word came without thought—without restraint. Low but deliberate, sharper than the hiss of hot air pouring from the distant geysers below us. Every sharp instinct, every fraying edge of my mind burned in protest against her words, against the thin walls she attempted to build between us.

Her gaze snapped sharply upward, dark and unyielding as disbelief flickered there. “What?”

“Give it to me,” I murmured, claws twitching where they hovered near my sides. “Your pain, your exhaustion—it’s what I’m here for.”