And she knew, better than anyone, that dragons had the Gift of transformation.
It manifested in different ways with different dragons, but every dragon could transform into something else.Someoneelse.
She knew of stories where dragons took human form to mate. Look at Ere and Sorin. She didn’t know their particular tale, but they were clearly Bonded Mates.
Wolfe’s story began with a dragon…it could not be coincidence.
“Eventually, she subsided,” he went on. “We buried him together in our back garden. She wept the entire time. I didn’t ask her who he was. I didn’t want to hear the answer.”
And then, he inhaled and exhaled deeply, as if fortifying himself.
“A few years later, I came home from a group hunt to the sound of my mother shouting. I burst into the cottage to find a man towering over her, his hands around her shoulders. She was in tears and beside herself with hysteria.”
“I drew my weapon and lunged at him, managing to catch him by surprise, wounding him. We fought as my mother screamed and cried. The men I hunted with must have heard the commotion, for they came running. We drove the man from the cottage and surrounded him. He had several wounds by now, his strength depleting fast. That was when I got my first good look at him.”
Rui held her breath. Even though she knew what was coming.
“It was the dead soldier buried in our garden,” Wolfe rasped.
“It was him as clear as day. But he was alive…he wasalive…and then…as we all rounded upon him, cornering him, he turned into a giant fucking dragon!”
She knew it.
She knew it!
“I’ll never forget what he looks like. His ugly, scaly, serpent face is branded in my mind forever. Suddenly, I felt imbued with an unnatural strength. I rushed at him, my sword skewering the fleshy part of his claw as he raised it. He swiped. The tips of two claws gouging into my face.”
Rui winced in vicarious pain.
“With two great flaps of his bat-like wings, he leapt into the sky and flew away. The men disbanded. My mother was herself again, or so I thought.”
Rui braced herself. This didn’t sound good.
“She tended to my wound and stitched me back together. If not for her healing skills, I might have lost an eye.”
He released a deep breath.
“But she changed after that night. I didn’t realize how much until the next time I went off to battle, and came home to find that she’d killed herself.”
Rui gasped.
“Slit her wrists and bled out. She was lying in the back garden, right where we buried the soldier, when I found her. I buried her there too, next to him. After that, I left the village. And never looked back.”
She took his hand in both of hers.
He was so cold. This warm, vibrant, strong man was so, so cold.
Suddenly, he raised his eyes to hers, those eerie yellow orbs burning with internal flames.
Flames of fury and vengeance.
For the first time, Rui was afraid. Not so much for herself as for the wrath and hatred that was eating through him.
“It’s his fault,” he gritted out.
“That dragon. It tricked her. It ruined her. She…She loved him. But it was all a lie. I have to avenge her. Her soul will forever haunt this earth if I do not.”
At last, Rui understood what drove him. Why he hated dragons so much.