Chapter 6: Chapter 6

SILVER

“But only because I was watching you this whole time, pipsqueak. I was always one flight away from taking you back under my wing.”

“I suppose coercing me into leaving was just another lesson for me, wasn’t it?” I ask, raising a brow.

“No. It wasn’t a lesson. You simply weren’t ready for me,” Storm says, contradicting my line of thought, which confuses me to the point that I have to blurt out all my curiosities and frustrations at once.

“What do you mean? You’re such a brute, ~all the time~. Why should I fight you? What am I protecting by staying away from you? Why are you asking me to—”

Storm doesn’t let me finish; he simply moves his hand through the air, and I see a cloth from the bedside table fly through the bedchamber and smack right over my mouth, stopping any further words from leaving my lips.

My eyes widen as Storm straightens his hand in the air, keeping the temporary gag in place.

“Are you confused, pipsqueak?” Storm asks me.

“I’ll say it more bluntly, then. You’re going to fight me, because I’m going to bend you over and fuck you until you squeal like a piglet.

“In even simpler terms, I’m going to have my way with you and then leave you in the morning so I can go back to Water Fallen Lakeside.

“I’m going to use you like a Dragon Lord’s little fuck toy and leave when I’m done having my fill of you… You pissed me off, Silver, so I’m going to punish you. Because you sure as hell deserve it.”

The cloth falls from my mouth as I burn it to ash with my fire.

“Will you miss it?” I ask as I raise the knife.

I am satisfied when he raises a brow, and I add, “Because if you put your hands on me, Storm, my knife is slicing your cock clean off…until nothing remains.”

“That’s more like it, pipsqueak. There’s some fight, just what I was looking for,” Storm murmurs in a satisfied growl and circles me with the blunt knife in hand.

I circle him too, feeling like a midget trying to face up against a giant Dragon Lord ~Legend~.

Lucky me.

“Perhaps this lesson is more about your sick desires than it is about teaching me anything,” I hiss at him, and Storm halts his sidestepping to shrug off his coat and slip off his shirt.

“You have no idea what I desire, baby,” Storm says, sounding too smug as he places his garments aside until he only wears his gray leather pants.

“To hurt me?” I ask.

“In a way you’ll like.”

“To take my virginity?”

“Stupid questions get stupid answers. Careful, pipsqueak.”

“Fine. Do you wish to never see me again?” I ask and drop the knife to my side.

“After you are done with me…do you wish I will leave you…so you may be alone and without love and live without a mate…a mate who lives on?”

“That sounds fine to me, pipsqueak; maybe you know me better than I know myself… Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony?”

Storm seems impressed by my question, and his long, flowing mane of burned-silver hair is pushed over his shoulder while his eyes and ears are, for once, eager for my continued assessment.

So I drop the blade he passed me, and I walk to the bed, boldly bending over it and clenching the sheets in my hands.

“Then hurry up and be done with it.” I look at him over my shoulder. “The sooner you finish taking my virginity, the sooner I will disappear.”

“Oh, really? But a Legend who loses his mate is no Legend at all,” Storm mocks himself and waltzes over to grab my elbow and force me to spin around.

I turn and my butt hits the bed, and I place my feet on the edges of the bed, keeping my legs spread, while an uncontrollable blush filters through to my cheeks, staining them pink.

“So, you do want me to be with you?” I ask, confused as he leans over me and places the knife by the side of me on the covers, as if he will use it later to perhaps tease me with the cool, blunt edges.

“You want to be with me, Storm…but you say things to push me away…to protect yourself from—hmm, perhaps pain?”

“Not at all.” Storm leans on the bed and leans over me until his hair brushes either side of my cheeks, and he looks down into my eyes.

I can’t help myself as I reach up and I press my lips to the corner of his mouth before I place another kiss on his lips directly, as gently as I can.

I take the opportunity with greed, as I have wanted to do that for a long time, and for three weeks I imagined it.

Me, boldly kissing ~him~.

Now, I close my eyes and lean back, waiting for him to kiss me in return.

Instead, I feel his gaze down upon me, and I feel his apprehension.

The same type of moment he would run, like every time in the past.

A weird sense of euphoria hits me for a moment as I think this…and then the answer seems to hit me too, almost subconsciously.

And now I know it in my bones.

This time…I will teach him a lesson.

“Perhaps the lesson you’re trying to teach me,” I whisper, and while my eyes are closed, my hand casually slides over the blunt knife, and I grip the handle in my palm, “is a lesson you are truly trying to teach yourself.”

I open my eyes, and indeed, he seems angry at my suggestion as my Heart Magic feels his exact emotions.

“Are you done talking?” Storm growls low as his hand comes up to cup my cheek and then runs back into my hair. “Because I no longer require words from you, pipsqueak—”

“Funny you say that, because I no longer require them from you either,” I whisper and then bring up the blunt knife, fast.

I lodge it into his side, into a place I know he’ll recover from.

As he hisses out a surprised and pained breath, I jerk out the weapon and I shove him off me as he pulls back to stand up in shock.

I jump forward and instinctually grab a hot poker by the fireplace.

I cry out with emotion as I spin and thwack it as hard as I can over his lowered head as he inspects the damage done to his lower rib cage.

My rod of iron knocks him right out, and the legendary Dragon Lord falls to his knees.

A sick satisfaction mixed with my heartache consumes me as I throw the rod back in the fire and then drop to my knees to lean down to his ear.

“You’ll never have me unless I allow it,” I whisper and then jump back up.

I decide to alert a healer in the Lost Horde, but after that—I am leaving.

I am leaving Storm, the Lost Horde, and the Dusk Horde.

I am leaving to find my own way.

I wasn’t born for it, but I will attempt to be a Rogue and to live as one for a while.

I will do anything as long as I’m free of Storm’s eyes and words and presence, so I will run, hide, and fight to achieve freedom.

Because, I swear, one more second near his toxically isolating way with words is another second he doesn’t learn what he hasn’t learned in seven hundred years.

You don’t just conquer pain through surviving it and overcoming it through “strength” or even patience.

You conquer it through love.

And, don’t get me wrong, much of me truly loves him as a mate loves another. But, I despise his way.

Most of all; I don’t understand it.

So, now I will shadow him; this time from afar.

I will learn about the Shadow in the Sky from the shadows themselves.

Until I learn how to understand him.

Before I leave, however, I turn toward the bench beneath the mirror next to the fireplace. I put the blunt knife down, and I glance into the reflective surface.

I feel a stickiness between my legs at the same time I see the color of my violet eyes.

The violet flickers from blue to purple…and back to blue.

I swiftly glance back to Storm, and I see him slumped and passed out cold… And then another feeling of happiness flows through me.

But my heart beats in confusion…b—because I don’t know if that’s me…if that’s ~my~ feeling…or my twin’s feeling from the other realm.

I am conflicted shortly as I see his aura, healthy and strong… He is simply sleeping through his injuries.

But what I have done is not in my nature.

~“I am not your enemy”~… I still as the soft voice floats through my head… ~“Please, listen to me.~”

“Get out of my head,” I whisper and stalk to the window, wrenching it open. ~“Risen,”~ I contact the female Dragon of the Lost Horde briefly.

~“Please check on Storm in his bedchamber and make sure he heals up okay.”~

~“Please, Silver, you don’t understand—”~

It is not Risen who answers my projected thoughts.

It’s Jinx.

I close my eyes and push her out by focusing on my strongest quality—my Dragon.

I connect to the monster, and I slip from mortal flesh, through the window into the air, to turn into my scales, fangs and wings.

I fly over the treetops of the Patter Forest, all the while praying I am still myself for the next twelve hours until the sun rises.

I pray that I stay myself, lest I hurt anyone else while Jinx is still in my head.

I don’t trust her, and I won’t until I work out if what I have done was my own intentions…or hers.

And what scares me the most, truly, is my number-one thought, that perhaps even if it was her decision to stab and knock Storm out so violently, that perhaps—perhaps it was still the right decision.

If it is my truest thought, it is also what will haunt my mind…and it will continue to do so until the sun rises, and I can work out who I am again.

Because right now, my identity feels broken…yet my actions feel right.