Page 61 of Blood Singer

Verrater paused with his hand on the door handle. For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. Then he turned back to face me, and something flickered in his golden eyes, something old and bitter and sad.

"My brother took a human mate," he said quietly. "Three hundred years before the hibernation. She was beautiful, kind, everything he'd ever wanted. They were happy together for fifty years." He paused, his jaw tightening. "And then she died. A simple accident that would have been nothing to a Drakhoni killed her almost instantly. My brother—my strong, proud brother—couldn't survive losing her. He flew into the sun in his dragon form and let himself burn."

The pain in his voice was real, and despite myself, I felt a flicker of sympathy. But then I remembered Marion, remembered how easily he'd confessed to orchestrating her death, and the sympathy died.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said carefully. "But that doesn't give you the right to decide who Kavan loves. It doesn't give you the right to murder innocent people."

"Doesn't it?" Verrater's expression hardened again. "I'm trying to save our king from the same fate my brother suffered. I'm trying to protect our people from watching their leader destroy himself over a human."

"That's not your choice to make." My voice rose despite my best efforts to stay calm. "And Kavan will kill you when he finds out what you've done. To Marion. To me."

"He'll never know," Verrater said simply. "And even if he did, he would eventually understand. He'll see that I did this for him, for our people, for the future of Drakhone."

He opened the door, revealing guards in the corridor beyond—Drakhoni warriors who apparently shared his twisted ideology.

"I'll return in a few hours," Verrater said. "I suggest you use that time to make peace with whatever gods you believe in, Lady Hunter. Because when night falls, we'll be taking a trip. And you won't be coming back from it."

The door closed behind him with a soft click, and I heard the lock engage.

I was alone in the beautiful prison, bound and helpless, with a madman planning my murder.

And somewhere out there, Kavan was looking for me. I could feel it deep in my soul.

I just had to stay alive long enough for him to find me.

Chapter 18

Kavan

The northern wastes stretched beneath me like a frozen scar across Drakhone's surface. Ice and rock and endless white that reflected the sun until it hurt to look at. My wings cut through the frigid air with powerful strokes, each beat driving me forward with desperate speed. Sanyra flew beside me, her silver-white scales catching the light, and behind us came the guards—six of my best warriors, their dragon forms dark against the pale sky.

But all I could think about was Leila.

The terror that had gripped me when Binwee told me she was missing hadn't lessened. If anything, it had grown with every mile we'd flown, expanding in my chest until I could barely breathe around it. My dragon senses stretched to their limit, searching for any hint of her scent on the wind, any whisper of her blood song in the air.

Nothing.

Just ice and stone and the bitter cold of the northern territories.

Someone had taken her. Someone had drugged her with hibernation gas and stolen her from right under my nose while I'd been sitting in a meeting about fishing hatcheries, my mind full of her smile and the way she'd looked in my bed that morning.

The rage that burned through me was unlike anything I'd felt in seven hundred and fifty years. Not since Marion's death had I experienced this particular brand of fury—the kind that made my dragon roar for blood, that made my mind calculate exactly how much pain I could inflict before allowing death to be merciful.

Rhucard had been in the village the day before. And Rhucard had made no secret of his desire for human mates. He'd openly challenged Earth's restrictions at dinner and flirted with Leila right in front of me.

If he'd taken her—if he'd dared to touch what was mine—I would burn the northern wastes to ash and scatter his bones across the frozen tundra.

The thought should have given me pause. Should have made me question the possessiveness that had taken root in my chest, the certainty that Leila belonged to me in a way that went beyond politics or attraction or even the pull of her blood song.

But I was past questioning. Past denying.

She was mine. And I was going to get her back.

Rhucard's compound came into view as we crested a ridge of ice-covered mountains. It was a fortress carved into the side of a glacier, all dark stone and sharp angles built to withstand the brutal northern winters. Smoke rose from several chimneys, and I could see figures moving in the courtyard below—warriors training, males going about their duties, the normal rhythm of life in the wastes.

I didn't slow down. Didn't circle to assess the situation or wait for my guards to catch up. I just folded my wings and dove, the wind screaming past my scales as I plummeted toward the courtyard with the single-minded focus of a predator who'd found his prey.

I shifted mid-dive, my dragon form transitioning into my human shape just before I hit the ground. The impact sent cracks spider-webbing through the frozen earth, and I rose from the crater I'd created with my fists already clenched, my vision edged in red.