I feel him focus his masterful mind upon everything Mikkel is, as I do the same. Once again, I recall Mikkel and Baldur know each other; as Baldur’s understanding of Mikkel surges through me, along with my own, I feel how he and Mikkel have had a far longer association than either of them have had with me.
Dozens of years of knowing each other pour through me now, as Baldur and I work to find Mikkel. Because although Baldur was never closefriends with the twins, he used their clubs as his art-show space for a hundred years.
He knows them, as well as any artist knows their patrons; as I feel his imprint of Mikkel fill me, my understanding of Mikkel is right with him.
Daring, vicious, effete, Mikkel’s dark eyes sparkle through my mind now as I see them flare with both their ruinous chartreuse green and also their more brilliant, hopeful copper.
I feel Mikkel’s deep inner conflict, that some part of him still believes he’ll never be any better than the black beast of his inner drake. There’s also so much beauty in my gregarious pirate, however; so much goodness, despite how much he wants to believe he’s nothing but black.
As Mikkel’s essence bursts across my tongue and throughout my body in a wave of old-world cocktails and aromatic bitters, I feel my auric fire race from me again. It’s mine and Baldur’s combined now, however, as it singes through the mist.
Mikkel’s fire sears right back, colliding with ours as we find each other again. Our Bloodbond explodes all through me in a towering burst of copper-black midnight and chartreuse green viciousness. It’s everything Mikkel is, as he blazes into being on my left now, opposite Baldur.
Right where he was when we left the library.
“Mikkel!” I celebrate all through my bones and blood as my twin dragons heave inside me, thrusting me into his arms. Mikkel seizes my face, peppering me with kisses like I’m the most precious thing in the world to him.
As he gasps and pulls back—his dark eyes blazing with copper light.
“Gods! I thought I’d never find you,” he says as he kisses my lips again. “Even five minutes in this place was a nightmare… lost in the mist and silence.”
“I can’t imagine how others who couldn’t find their Bloodmates fared here, over the ages.” I shake my head now, as that horrible thought lances through me.
“I don’t want to know,” Baldur says as he and Mikkel clap shoulders before Baldur eyes me again. “Two left.”
“Let’s focus on Ström.”
Even as I say it, though, I feel Ström’s immense curse-breaking power already blazing through the mist, right towards us. I barely have a moment to think of him when his seething auric fire races towards mine, colliding with my power in a burst of bright green and crimson flame.
Ström’s essence surges through mine like glacial river water and high-north seas, his enlivening laughter pouring through me, even as his dark passion sweeps me. He still fears he’s a terrible person, for all the people he’s killed; I feel the goodness in him blaze through me now, however, as his powerful, cheeky fire races all around me.
As I open my heart to him, Ström is suddenly right there beside me, appearing through the mist. As auric fire clears from all around him, he laughs, then seizes me up into an enormous bear hug, lifting me off my feet and letting me slide down his leather-clad body until we meet, lips to lips.
Ström kisses me a long while, claiming me with his lips, body, and tongue. I kiss him back, as incredible goodness floods back into my life from rediscovering my best friend in our Bloodbond.
He laughs again, then hugs me tight. We heave twin sighs before we part. Because Ström and I truly share one heart; I feel it now as we come together.
Whole again, at last.
“Gods, this place is the worst,” Ström says now as he touches my face, his brimstone-green eyes beaming at me, even as he shakes his head. “For a moment there, I thought I was a goner. Then I remembered our mission, and that this was probably a test, to see if we could make it through. I’m glad we could.”
“Not all the way yet.” I nod at the mist still surrounding us. “We still have to find Bjorn. Focus with us now. Let’s gethim back.”
“Right.” Ström’s on it, as we all focus now on the essence that is Bjorn.
Bjorn is a conundrum amongst my drakes, however; contentious to a fault, rageful and possessive, not to mention argumentative in the extreme, he’s not a man each of us knows in the same way, at all.
For Ström, it’s a lifetime of being his comrade, never getting along but working together, despite how much they contested over me all that while.
For Mikkel, it’s a surging disdain for Bjorn’s extreme warrior’s pride and morals; though secretly, Mikkel seethes with envy deep inside, that he can’t be like Bjorn and do the same.
Baldur feels a strange contentiousness and a synergy with Bjorn, since they share the same rageful fury and blistering light. I feel attraction towards Bjorn inside Baldur, as well—as much as Bjorn feels for Baldur, strangely enough.
For me, Bjorn is a wellspring of misery and joy, as my entire heart races to him now. As his battlefield char and whiskey scent explodes across my tongue, full of peat and good cigar smoke, I know my First Drake is all of those things.
Because he’s the booming of cannons in war, and the mellow depth of the cigar’s smoke. He’s the sharp, got-you-up-the-nose scent of the whiskey, even as he’s the luscious, robust flavor that goes down your throat within.
He’s everything I want, holding me at night, growling next to my ear as he takes me. As all the hot, furious, and truly soul-wrenching memories I have with Bjorn come flooding back—the good, bad, and the ugly—I feel my auric flames race to him in a firestorm now, roaring to get him back.
