Page 9 of The Ice Prince's Fated Mate
“But there was pain anyway. Wasn’t there?” Anna asked softly, guessing.
Anna and Milly both knew I hadn’t cared to be with a man in the decades we’d known each other. It wasn’t common for either of them, but neither had they shied away entirely like I had. So they had become overprotective of me anytime a male had directed interest my way.
I looked away, which was answer enough to her question.
“Where?” she asked.
I gestured at my right side. Anna reached for the hem of my shirt gently, even though it didn’t hurt now. It hadn’t hurt since I’d had an orgasm after the pain.
My cheeks burned at the memory. Who did such a thing?
“I heard the party was over here,” a third voice chimed in, startling both of us and causing Anna to jerk and lift my shirt higher than intended as Milly entered the area around the pond. “Do you—”
Her voice ended in a hiss of surprise while Anna stayed entirely silent.
“What?” I asked, alarmed, looking back and forth between them.
“You didn’t mention you two were mated,” Milly said, gesturing at me.
I sat up straight. “I didn’t say that.” Had they been able to read my mind back at the chalet? Hear the thoughts of my dragon as she showed off for Dirk?
“You didn’t have to,” Anna said quietly, the gravity of her tone forcing me to finally follow her gaze down and look at my right side.
Starting just above my hip bone, a series of marks had been etched into my skin. They swirled and rose along my ribcage, all sharp points and soft curves that disappeared under my shirt. I pulled my collar out, and sure enough, the marks continued over my right breast and shoulder. They even covered a bit of my upper arm.
And they were all bright blue. The exact color of Dirk’s eyes.
“What thehell?” I hissed, jumping to my feet and brushing my side as if I could somehow erase the marks like they were a toddler’s wall drawing that didn’t belong.
Anna looked up at me, her face twisted in confusion. “Why are you mad? This is a good thing, El. It means you have a mate. A dragon. You’ll be able to shift one day too!”
“That isnotwhat this means,” I said, shaking my head and working hard to keep my breathing under control. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t. Neither of them could.
“Then what does it mean?” Milly asked, looking back and forth between Anna and me.
“It means,” I said through gritted teeth, trying not to lose my composure, “that he put these here. On my body. Without asking me. Without my permission.”
“Ella,” Anna started to say, but I cut her off, unable to handle both my friends and the rise of my dragon as she stirred to life once more, elated about the mate marks.
Of course she would be. She wasn’t there when I needed her. How could she, or any of them, understand why I needed those marks gone.
The agitation of the lizard-beast was blending with old, long buried but never dealt with emotions from that time, mixing together in a cauldron of pressure and chaos that pounded against my temples. My dragon was confused and wary of the walls I’d erected to hold back the horrors of my past.
I walked away from the pond, back among the wildflowers and grasses, trying to let their serenity wash over me once more. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. I …
Teakwood and freshly washed flannel. That’s all I could smell. The scent was so particular and delicious as it flooded my body that there was no mistaking it. A part of me knew it was meant to be calming, to soothe my stresses and help me relax. A scent just for me.
But my dragon had the opposite reaction. She got a whiff of it and lost her damn mind, breaking through my hold on her and rushing for the surface.
“Ella?”
I spun to look at Anna wide-eyed as she came up behind me. “Get back,” I whispered in horror, assuming the beast was about to come exploding out of me.
But instead of shifting, my legs began to churn, guiding me back through the field, back to the crack in the landscape, back to the source of the smell.
Mate!My dragon roared as she sent us hurtling toward him.
Five
