His ability to keep my ripped-open memories sane is far more than Bjorn’s or Ström’s, with all the metaphysical firepower Mikkel’s packing, but it comes with a price.
A dark price, as my gaze flicks to Mikkel’s and I stare now, deep into his eyes.
Still fifteen paces distant, Mikkel’s not looking at Bjorn and Ström as he watches me in the fight ring. Mikkel has eyes like a snake, and I know I’m not wrong when I’ve compared his inner dragon to a deadly black mamba. He doesn’t care about right or wrong, not like Bjorn, Ström, and I do. He’s self-admitted he doesn’t belong in our little band of heroes.
Even though I know he has to be my mate.
I’m sure,I say through my mind now to Ström, encouraging him to go.
Ström doesn’t gainsay me, though I feel his unrest at leaving me alone with Mikkel. We’re not actually alone in this gargantuan amphitheater of vaulted white lightning-stone, however, with all these Storm Dragons everywhere.
Ström and Bjorn finally go, though Ström gives me one last wary glance, and Bjorn gives me a bereft one. It leaves me alone in the enormous sand-ring of the main floor with Mikkel.
We face off like two desperados of the wild west now, hands loose but ready at our sides like we’re about to whip out six-shooters and blast each other. I’m not certain we won’t, as we regard one another across that long, open space.
Waiting.
“Fight me or fuck me, drakaina. Your choice.” Mikkel speaks in hisalmost hauntingly smooth baritone voice. Though he put no effort into it, I hear his words like a barb inside me, spearing me across the gulf that separates us.
The inner black dragon of my Bone Magic flashes up at that voice, towering over my brighter Blood Magic. My brighter dragon is tired, almost as tired as Bjorn. Settling down, she lets my darker side take over as I feel my blacker-than-night drake stare out at Mikkel with its glittering star-bright eyes.
Black like death in the Void.
“Fight.” I choose suddenly, knowing that’s what I want. Mikkel and I have already mated now, in one incredible, disastrous life-mating that took us both by surprise, but this is what I want.
I want to fight him; I want to rip into him and test his strength. I want to make him best me, if he can.
And earn the right to be with me.
“As you wish.” Mikkel is quiet, though I don’t miss the eager smile that quirks his full lips. His eyes are all hard darkness now, even though their outer ring of dragon-copper flares. He knows this has been a long time coming. We’ve crashed into one another, we’ve torn at each other in our crazy frenzy to unite our power and fuck.
What we haven’t done, however, is prove to each other how strong we both are. He hasn’t proven to me he’s worth being mastered in this bond, and I haven’t proven to him he needs to play by my rules in this life-mating.
Or get the fuck out.
“Ready when you are.” Mikkel’s disastrously energetic mode is online now as he claps his hands, giving me a huge grin with an eager fire in his eyes. But the darkness is never gone, as he reaches up, ripping his nice shirt off over his head.
He casts it to the sand, bare now from the waist up; yet again, I notice an incredible Danish Blood Dragon tattoo on his lean, powerful muscles and perfectly balanced torso.
Ornate, the tattoo curls up over his left shoulder like the ocean, decorating his heart with raiding ships and a sea-monster dragon flowing over his shoulder with water, scales, and wind. Done in black and red, it has some sort of warding ability, as I feel an unknown magic emanate from it, just as I’ve felt before.
For the first time, however, I also notice intricate chartreuse-green lines blossoming out all over Mikkel’s lean, hard body. Those vicious lines are in his dragon’s patterns, deadly, as they course through his veins.
As I see his dragon’s literal poison come out upon his flesh, it raises everything inside me high for a fight. I roar up into my true dragon now, the two sides of my dual energies rushing into my united Bloodwalker power, though I don’t know which of my dragons will be in charge of this battle.
It’s almost always been my brighter crimson Blood Magic drakaina who’s dominated my power. But as Mikkel roars up into his towering black-as-night drake with its glittering lines of chartreuse green poison running through its scales, I know I’ve shifted up into not my red drakaina, but my own black dragon.
The black dragon of my inner Bone Magic, like Mikkel’s.
I’m not united in my power now, as I stand before Mikkel as my inner darkness and roar at him in a seething rush. I’m terrible, blacker than night, blacker than death, as I snarl now and rake powerful talons through the white sand at my feet. The wings I raise to the storm-thundering skies are devoid of color, except for a glittering in my scales like ancient stars, as I stare Mikkel down.
And I let myself be taken now by my inner darkness, rather than my united Bloodwalker power, to match his.
For the first time since we met, I finally see Mikkel hesitate. I feel him see me now—truly see me—as he is stunned by my might.
He’s a powerful Bone Mage, talented and ruthless, but I’m a Bloodwalker. I’m the thing thateats drakes, tearing all their power away to incorporate it into my bond, as I make it do what I need it to.
I finally see him register that as he sees my blackest nature and hesitates. But then the most disastrous, eager smile takes him as his poisonous black and green face cracks in a wide grin and he shows fang. In one powerful slap of his wings, Mikkel’s in the air.
