13
Rhuron
My wings were heavy with use and strain when I finally arrived back home.
Carrying him all those miles in the open wasn’t ideal, but I couldn’t just wait for Tierner to regain consciousness and shift back. As I approached, a throng of castle soldiers came out to help. Half of them shifted, while the other half prepared a large metal box on the back of a truck, ready to take him wherever the guards deemed fit.
I lowered us down slowly, my body eager to stop flying.
Carrying a dragon equal to my own body weight wasn’t anything I’d ever tried to do before, much less for the endless miles I did. I craved sleep and rest, but above all, I needed to see my Izzy.
Karr had told me briefly that she’d come to help and was with the girl.
I could smell her there.
I wanted nothing more than to take her in my arms and get away from all of this. That wasn’t a good idea at the time, and now I was so far away from her that it felt like death. I’d never needed someone that badly before. When I didn’t know who she was, I hadn’t felt this calling; rather, I’d believed having a mate was just a matter of having a woman in my bed to mother children.
It was more now.
She rewrote every inch of my mind, filled it with caring for her and wanting her to be okay. I needed her near me, craved her like a hot meal after a long day.
They pulled him from me, and I shifted back to my human form.
The servants gave me clothing to wrap around myself. I pulled it over my back, which ached from where my wings had been.
“Rhuron!” My youngest brother ran out of the castle to me.
“Rhaef.”
“Do you need help?” He walked beside me as I moved heavily towards the castle.
“You’re bleeding through your cloak,” he murmured.
Looking down, I could see a deep splotch of red above my right hip. The adrenaline must have saved me from feeling it, but the mark was clear.
“I’ll call on the castle witch,” he offered.
“No, it’s not that bad.” I shook my head. My ribs ached with every breath, and I rethought that statement. “I might have broken a rib, actually. Summon her for me.”
He ran off quickly to find her, and as I walked through the halls, I saw the storage room that Izzy had locked herself in. It was all supplies for celebrating the birth of a royal child. It had been seventeen years since the last one, a young princess that now probably worked within this castle.
I kept walking until I made it to one of the multiple sitting rooms, where chairs were abundant and I could assess my damage.
Pulling open the cloak, I hissed in pain as I shifted.
A bite mark was deep and angry on my hip. Bruises were starting to blossom across my skin with scratches and cuts here and there. I could feel one beneath my jaw that wasn’t bleeding enough to worry about. He could have killed me if he’d dug in his claws a fraction deeper.
He’d been out for murder.
For anything, if it meant he could get that poor woman pregnant.
Izzy’s look of terror when I snatched her away that first night thudded deep in my chest, and I felt like a complete moron. I really let her deal with so much fear and stress just because I wasn’t seeing her as a person.
I was the same as Tierner before I got to know her.
No, I wasn’t sure anymore.
Would she even want to stay with me after all of this? She had only been around me for less than a week, and the amount of drama she’d had to go through was impossible.