Chapter 32: Chapter 32
Julian traced the beautiful crest on Erin's shoulder blade as softly as he was able with his fingertip.
His Erin was fast asleep in his lair. God, he’d never seen anything more beautiful. Wild, red hair curled in waves over the pillow under her cheek. Her full lips were swollen from his kisses. Her skin flushed from the heat he radiated. Her freckles stark against her fair skin, creating constellations more beautiful than the night sky. Those delicately arched ruddy eyebrows that told him every emotion she experienced.
His stunning mate didn’t know it yet, but she’d wrecked him for eternity.
The first time he’d brought her into his bedroom, he’d been so scared she would find it cold, just like him, but she hadn’t. She’d accepted it, just as she’d accepted him in ways that had slashed him open so wide, he would never be able to completely tuck away his emotions again.
What had she done to him, this siren? She’d bewitched him completely. She’d dispelled his fears long enough to curl into his softened heart and beg him to keep her safe and warm there, and now for the rest of her life, he would love her without abandon. It was too late for anything else. Too late to hide from her or keep his walls up. Erin had laughed at the barriers he’d erected around himself and destroyed them with a single kiss.
Some mighty dragon warlock he was, instantly falling to pieces for the fair maiden.
Erin smiled in her sleep as he ran his finger down the ridges of her spine to the swell of her hip. He’d been with many, but none had touched what he’d just experienced with Erin. She’d been so open with him, so vulnerable, when he’d made love to her. He knew what she was. Deep down inside where she tucked the fiery power that wasn’t afraid of anything, she was a warrior. But with him, she let her guard down. She invited him to see the pieces of herself she’d hidden away to protect herself from the world. Against all reason, she trusted him. He could see it in her eyes when she’d slowed their rhythm, intertwined his fingers with hers and lifted her chin to look into his eyes as they moved toward release together.
He’d never believed in magic. A legendary shifter like him knew the truth. People looked to creatures like him to believe in something more than the black and white, but for him…there was no magic. He’d hatched and was raised in a rocky cave by his father. He blew fire because he could make gasses in his lungs when he was angry, and he’d honed the use of his firestarter. He could eat ash because that’s what his animal required, and he could live forever simply because that was his chemical make-up. He was a prehistoric monster that had refused to go extinct with the rest of its kind.
No, he’d never believed in magic, but when Erin had looked up into his eyes as they’d finished with those tears of happiness streaming down the sides of her face, his way of thinking had shifted. When he’d felt that blinding sensation as the bond strengthened between them and had experienced the feeling of utter belonging with her, when he could see the make-up of her soul because his had suddenly awoken after so long being dead, for that instant, magic had existed.
He was going to love her every second for the rest of her life. And when she went gray, and her beauty faded in her own eyes, she would only become lovelier to him because he would know her time on earth was fading and his time with her even more precious.
And when she, his tragically mortal Erin, passed to the next world, he would spend eternity paying homage to her with his heart.
She would be his last mate.
She would be the only one who was real.
She would be everything.
***
The ink of Erin's tattoo moved and morphed until the ring of fire dissolved into the tiny black dragon, and the little creature moved as if the drawing was twitching to life just under her skin. Her gasp echoed loud at first, then grew softer. The drip drip of the cave wall was constant, but she couldn’t see anything other than the tiny dragon who reached forward and stretched its miniature claws. There was a prickle of pain, as if the nails were needles in her flesh. Slowly, the dragon dragged itself across her skin to the tip of her collarbone, then over the slight swell of her bicep. Erin froze in fear as it circled her arm in the blink of an eye, then slowed again. It’s tiny tongue flicked out of its mouth, scenting her skin, or perhaps tasting it. She wanted to rip it from her body. She wanted to claw and slash until the ink was gone, but she was helpless to move as it turned its spiked head toward her. The scent of smoke filled her nostrils, and the flash of a man’s face ricocheted off her mind.
His skin was gruesome and gray, sagging as if he’d been left in the desert to dry out and die in the sun. His eyes were black and soulless, and the smile that twisted his lips was so terrifying, her gasp echoed again, though she wasn’t breathing now.
“You can’t hide from me, seer.” His dry, cracked lips moved a moment too late to match his words.
This wasn’t real. Wake up!
His face faded to reveal the dragon tattoo again, poised over the middle of her forearm.
The man’s hollow voice whispered out, “We’re bound, you and I.”
And then the little tattooed dragon dove into the tender center of her arm. Black tendrils of ink unfurled from where it had disappeared, the darkness snaking up her arm like poison polluted streams. Pain grew brighter and harsher as the rivers of black stretched up her neck and through her chest. And just where the dragon had disappeared, in the darkest part of her body now, her skin turned to stone and cracked with the deafening sound of fault lines shifting.
Terror clogged her throat as her arm began to turn to ash, and she screamed the only name she wanted on her lips at the end. “Julian!”
***