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Maksim had lost most of the time since his awakening, but he came back to himself as the sun sank toward the horizon. He was flying through the clouds. He retained only scraps of memory that brought more questions than answers. The agonizing truth of Nadya’s death clouded his mind. In fragments, he recalled his throat constricting with thirst as power surged through him. He remembered gorging on the first thing he found with a heartbeat and stumbling into the snow as an inferno smoldered beneath his skin. Recalling the agony of his bones breaking and reforming brought back echoes of the pain.
Wind. Wings. Power.
Maksim’s mind contained chaotic splinters of images and emotions. His soul battled for dominance over the beast, though both burned with the same dark purpose. He tried to clear his mind and sort out the sequence of events, but everything that had happened since he awoke was obscured by a mental fog he couldn’t penetrate. He was soaring through the sky in his enormous dragon form, but he couldn’t remember leaving the ground.
The pain of the transformation lingered, however. Maksim ached everywhere, but nothing compared to the torment of losing Nadya. One image was seared into his mind, and it fueled his fury with the fire of a supernova. He saw the blonde woman with the blazing copper gaze every time he closed his eyes. He’d felt the traitor’s pleasure and relief at Nadya’s death when she ripped his love’s heart from her chest.
Maksim twisted and rolled, reveling in his new freedom and physical power as his mind struggled to adapt to the changes. His dragon shape felt so wonderful that he couldn’t understand why his father had forsaken this side of himself.
Exiled or not, Father, why deny yourself this kind of power?
While he didn’t understand the scope and limits of his new abilities, Maksim couldn’t deny the strength coursing through him, the power of the beast’s muscles, or the deadliness of his new claws and teeth. With such deadly attributes to support his strikes, how could he not succeed? He burned with the need for revenge, and he embraced that black pit.
Maksim vowed to find the blonde woman and rip her apart for killing his queen. He would avenge his love and take up her righteous cause. The Therians needed to die. Everything else was just details.
He didn’t understand his connection to Nadya’s killer. He knew things about her that he couldn’t possibly know, like her feelings at the moment of his mate’s death. Maksim had a vague sense of the ties that bound him to Nadya unraveling as another bond formed.
The bitch had thought she was protecting her people when she killed his queen, but Maksim was past caring about her motivation. The triumph in her copper eyes had seared his mind, sending hatred coursing through him. He vowed that he wouldn’t stop until he stood triumphant over her corpse.
Maksim felt a much stronger connection to Nadya’s children, and he understood that one. With her dying breath, the vampire queen had transferred something to Maksim. He didn’t know if it was a facet of her magic or a preloaded spell, but she’d named him as her successor. The compulsion to take his place at the head of the vampire race and guide Nadya’s children as they avenged their queen’s murder drove him.
He would gather Nadya’s children and combine their strength with his. They were his family now, and together, they would vanquish the foes who’d taken her from them.
The dragon was the size of the average two-story house. Black scales covered his powerfully muscled body, and red spines ran down his back. He’d discovered he could shoot the spines as projectiles, and they would regrow after an hour or so. Many birds had fallen as he tested that skill.
Sunset painted the world in vibrant hues, and his vantage point let him see to the horizon in every direction, but the beauty meant nothing if he couldn’t share it with Nadya. Everything led back to her. He had no one to go back to, not anymore. The dragon snorted and turned toward the vampires he sensed at Nadya’s base.
After a long life bound by the limitations of humanity, Maksim reveled in his new size and strength and his formidable well of magic. He now possessed more power than he had dreamed possible. This wasn’t the life he’d envisioned when he’d agreed to let Nadya change him, but it was what he now had.
His sweet love had only wanted peace. She and her children were not the evil beings the Therians believed them to be. The damned shapeshifters were so hell-bent on bloodshed that they couldn’t allow the vampires to live peacefully.
Nadya’s savage death proved it.
Before she’d left on the mission that had led to her demise, Nadya had confided that she wanted to make a treaty with the Therians. After Nikoli’s death, she wanted to extend an olive branch to end the long war and live in peace. She’d only taken the extra soldiers in case they refused to listen to reason, and she had to defend herself. Maksim had never considered another explanation. He’d loved Nadya with everything he had and believed the fantasy she presented to him.
You were too good to ally with them, my love. I will guide your children, but we will never make peace with the Therians.
He spent some time imagining what it would be like to use his powerful jaws to shred any dragon that stood between him and the traitorous vampire bitch, and the thought kindled a burning thirst in his throat that consumed his senses. His vampire side craved blood, and the dragon hungered for flesh. When he acknowledged that gnawing emptiness, it was all he could feel.
Maksim caught the scent of something large and furry in the dark forest below. Without consciously deciding to do so, the dragon dove toward the ground, forgetting that he didn’t know how to land. Flying had been instinctual since he launched into the air, but landing proved to be another matter.
He crashed into the canopy at speed, clipping one wing and flipping over as the force of the blow threw him off balance. Maksim roared in pain and smashed several more trees into splinters before he came to a stop on the ground. He rose slowly, taking inventory of the injuries he’d sustained in the crash. He didn’t feel as powerful now, and his ravenous hunger was his only motivation. He sensed the life force fleeing the cacophony he had created, and the dragon gave chase. The pain was inconvenient, but his hunger overtook all other concerns. The wounds would heal.
Blood. Flesh. Hunger.
As he drew closer to the life force, Maksim recognized the scent of bear. His senses had expanded from his former human awareness, and he let the dragon take control as it hunted their prey. His vampiric and beast-born natures agreed that he would eat that bear.
The hunt was more difficult than he’d thought. The trees grew too close together for him to find an easy path, but he used his massive body and the bony ridges of his wings to force his way through to a small rocky clearing next to a cave. He could sense the bears. There were two, and both were aware of his presence.
The wary creatures watched him from the cave’s entrance, growling defensively at the invasion of their territory. Maksim snapped his jaws in warning, and the larger of the bears roared his protest before charging the enemy. It had barely cleared the rock wall of the cave before Maksim darted his neck forward and viciously bit its heavily muscled body. The bear’s screams of pain devolved into gurgles as blood filled the creature’s airway.
Maksim had a significant advantage in size and strength. The bears didn’t stand a chance. His powerful jaws tore through the animal with little effort, and he swallowed half its body in a single gulp. Upon seeing her mate cut down, the other bear roared her fury from the shelter of the cave. Maksim finished the other half of his snack and turned his hungry crimson eyes toward the only other living thing in the vicinity.
More. I need more!
He moved closer to the cave, and the female bear growled, then lunged forward to swipe at Maksim with her claws. The furious attack would have devastated any other creature, and it had worked on everything the bear had ever encountered, but it just irritated Maksim. His body still ached from the unskilled landing, and he had no patience for a lesser being’s anger.
Tired of the bear’s growls, Maksim twisted to shoot one of the sharp spines at her. It pierced the creature’s chest, and she howled in agony. It took three more strikes before the bear stopped moving. He could already feel the spines regrowing, draining more energy from his healing body. Maksim used the spike on his tail to retrieve the bear since he was too big to fit through the cave entrance and devoured the second course of his meal without interruption.
