THE BLACK DRAGON MOVED fast, charging toward the Mist, his large size taking him closer to the in-between realms. He’d felt a connection to a lost part of himself, making him curious. He landed on the ground, making a sizeable crack on the surface. Never in all his thousands of years had he ventured onto this side of the Dragon Realm, but a yearning, almost as if his soul was being torn from his body, had made him continue flying until he’d found himself circling the desolate lands. “What could it be that calls me to this place?” he wondered.
A chill went over his scales as he thought he saw light pink fill his sight. The last time he’d seen the most beautiful thing, his one and only love, his spirit had climbed. He’d been so sure their souls had aligned, his heart had sprouted wings as if it had felt hers, soaring into the sky, only to plummet when she’d disappeared without a trace, taking his light and love with her. Everything he’d ever desired was gone, in one moment, one careless act, gone, just like she was.
He raised his snout to the sky, roaring the remembered pain, the betrayal at her and her loss. “Why did you leave me, Belle?” he roared, fire spewing from him. Before the embers fell to the ground, he took to the sky, flying back to his home, away from the memories of his loss, of what could’ve been.
Just before he rose over the mountain, he dared to take one last glimpse back, catching a glimmer through the Mist of a pink dragon, but not his pink dragon, not Belle, but a lighter one. One who made his cold heart warm. Fire flew from her, pain in the form of a blazing arc. A connection snapped into place. His dragon recognized the pink dragon as theirs. “A child. My child is alive,” he rumbled.
His dragon roared again, instinct that had pulled him to that Mist had him reaching for a link he’d felt snap thousands of years ago, a bond his family said couldn’t happen because she wasn’t worthy. He’d been young and foolish, and he’d listened. The heartache and betrayal on Belle’s face were ones he’d always remember. They’d been a true bond. Something the dragon elders said hadn’t happened in eons, yet he and Belle’s souls had weaved together. Now, he knew it had been deeper. A child. Had she been carrying their child? A pink dragon like herself?
The ramifications of what that would mean for him and his house had him pulling up short. Dragons prided their royal status on many things, their scales being one. He was King of Dragons because of his midnight scales. Having iridescent coloring meant he had more power than any others, just as his father had before him. His twin had been almost identical to him, except in dragon form. He had been a treacherous fool, unwilling to share the throne as they’d been born to do. Now, the elders were urging him to mate with a female who would complement his house, but he had no want for another. Of course, he had taken many lovers throughout the years, but none had his heart. His twin brother, rot his soul in hell, had tried to kill him many times. The last had been brutal and bloody; many lives had been lost. Even the female who had sworn her love to the bastard, only to try and seduce him. Foolish dragon, she should’ve realized he’d known all along she was playing games. Too bad his brother hadn’t comprehended that reality. Or maybe he had and used her to try and overthrow him. “It matters not, for he is dead by my claws.”
At one time, he might’ve felt remorse for killing his own kin, but that time was long past. The brother he’d grown up with, learned to fly and fight with, had changed into a beast their parents hadn’t recognized. In the last several hundred years, they’d vowed he needed a female to temper him. His brother had done his damnedest to show he’d been tempered. However, behind that mask, he’d been sadistic to his core. As his twin, he should’ve recognized the signs, should’ve felt his brother becoming twisted to the point of evil. But he hadn’t, not until the female came. After his own Belle had left him. He was broken, had no want of another. His family thought he needed to get back on the dating train, so to speak. None understood the connection was more than just physical, although that had been something he couldn’t describe.
When it came time for him to take the title of his house, there were murmurs he needed a queen. He was brutal and deadly. That was what they needed for a king, not some pansy-ass dragon who bowed down to all.
He didn’t need a female to hold his title. He didn’t have a heart to give to a mate and wouldn’t be so cold as to mate one, without being able to give her what was her due.
Belle, beautiful, uniquely perfect Belle with her shiny pink scales, who fought him with such sweetness, and had loved him with even more softness, that he found himself still aching for her every day and every damn night. Her name whispered through his mind as her image appeared before him. He saw her as she was the last time they’d been together. The hurt in her purple eyes, the beautiful hue swimming with so much pain it had gutted him, yet he knew his family would do worse had he not ended it. “I thought I was doing the right thing. If I’d known she was carrying my young I’d have...fuck,” he swore. “What could I have done differently?” He had only been the prince, not the king. His family would’ve had Belle imprisoned or killed. The young she carried would’ve met with the same fate, especially if she’d not been a royal color like him or her house color. His twin brother had been adamant she’d have been the death of not only him, but of their house since most twin dragons mated the same female. However, he had no plans to share Belle with anyone, let alone his brother.
Nikai spread his wings and realized Belle hadn’t responded to the call he’d sent. He knew she wasn’t dead, since his heart didn’t feel her loss. When she’d disappeared all those fucking years ago, he’d lost it. His fear that she’d been killed had driven him to near madness. His family had finally admitted they knew she’d left the realm but wouldn’t give him leave to follow. That had been the only thing that had kept him sane. Knowing she was alive was enough to settle him, or rather make him not the crazed dragon who burned everything in his path. It had taken him years before he could want another female, and even then, he never opened his heart or soul. His body was willing, but he had nothing else to offer them, not even a kiss—that was for his mate alone. That same feral dragon threatened to rip out of him and hunt down the female who belonged to them, but he was older, more in control this time. An image of the pink dragon from moments before slammed into him. She wasn’t his Belle, but their child.
Nikai was a planner, and a ruler. He wouldn’t go into a fight without ensuring he would come out the victor, and this was a fight he planned to win. Finding Belle, winning her heart for his own, and claiming her as his queen, was only the first thing he planned to conquer. The second was bringing his daughter, the pink dragon he saw through the Mist, back to the Dragon Realm where she belonged and finding her a mate was worthy of her. She was, after all, the daughter of the Dragon King.
Chapter Four
LULA SHIVERED AS A tug on her dragon tried to pull her back toward the Dragon Realm. Turning tail and running went against the grain, but a dragon had to do, what a dragon had to do. And Lula was most assuredly a dragon. Her first thought was to go to the Iron Wolves. Mainly because they were all kinds of crazy and fun, but then she really wanted to see her mom. Getting a hug and a little reassurance that everything would be okay from the female who was always there, well since she was born, had Lula appearing outside the kitchen in Fey. Familiar scents assaulted her, making her inhale deeply.