Bianca, mate.
I shifted on my paws, my wings tightening along my spine, my tail lashing in the piles of snow. She was my mate. The storm called to me, urging me to ride its fierce winds and sow ice and snow with every stroke of my wings. My mate called to me just as strongly—with the desire to guard her, covet her, and add her to my hoard.
No, I couldn’t. My powers weren’t safe. I had to get away from her. With a shudder that shook me from the tip of my snout to the point of my tail, I backed away. My wings spread, caught the wind, and I flung myself skyward. The storm welcomed me like an old friend. I swung through the air in a spiral, low above the trees, then opened my mouth and roared into the storm. It didn’t help. This was normally a time of play, a moment to release who I was, unseen in the thick cloud cover, my powers blending with those of nature herself.
I could not bring myself to fly too far, circling back, over and over, to my cabin. To where she rested, as if her dreams called me back to her. Torn in two, I fought the impulse to protect her by staying close, and protect her by leaving.
I wanted to protect her, shield her from the storm, from the man who’d abandoned her, from anything that could harm her. But the greater danger was me: my own magic coiled and snarled, never fully under my control. What if I touched her and frost spread over her skin? What if I pulled her close, and she froze in my arms? What if loving her turned her into ice?
Despite those desperate fears, the dragon side of me was winning out, no surprise. I became all instinct and feral wildness when I was the beast. The beast, this time, was certain he’d never hurt his mate.
As the storm swirled around my scales, easing the heat pounding in my chest and belly, I flung myself into a rapid descent. My landing was rough, thudding into the snow and vibrating through the earth. I didn’t care; my body was heavy with the storm’s weight, and my heart heavier still. I nosed around the cabin, checked that all was secure, and then I curled up in the snow, right there, and—with one eye open—settled in. Rest and guard, I could do both.
Sleep pulled at the edges of my mind, and I let it take me, sweep me into the currents of dreams. These were usually safe places to explore, to think about the might-bes and envision what they’d be like if they were real. I definitely wanted to imagine what it would be like to woo Bianca, and to fly out and find the bastard who had put her life in danger today.
If I could trust myself, I’d have stepped into that bedroom with her. I might have told her that the night would see the temperatures plummet even further; she’d need my heat to stay warm. Would she have come willingly into my arms? Blushed as I kissed her? Underneath that pretty snowflake and blue yarn of her sweater, would her curves be small or lush? I found myself trying to imagine the sound of her moans but couldn’t.
It was pleasurable to picture unwrapping her clothing, piece by clothing piece, though. I spent my time doing that, revealing each inch of her skin, wondering at her taste. My tongue flicked at the frozen air, and I sighed as all I tasted was the storm. SoI twisted deeper into the snow, burying myself until only my horns rose like pale spires. I let one eye stay open, scanning the storm’s shifting white. The rest of me gave in, sliding further into dreams that felt more solid than fantasy.
At first, they were sweet. Her hair spilled across my pillow, her smile soft, her body warm against mine. My hands on her waist, my mouth tasting what I hungered for. Then the dream soured. Her warmth bled away as her skin shimmered blue, then glassy. Her eyes froze wide, her lips caught in a breath that would never leave. She was ice—a statue in my bed.
In the dark of my dream, a voice cackled—low and vicious, seeping into the cracks of my mind. This is inevitable, it whispered. You’ll kill her. Like you kill everything you touch.
Dark and insidious, it whispered more, evil things, bad things. Things about death and blood and destruction, and how good it would feel to do all these things once my mate was dead and gone. Dead by my hand, frozen in time like a statue to be admired but never touched.
Rage split me open, harsh and furious, it crashed through me like the force of the storm above. I roared, twisting in the snow in my sleep, fighting to surface and wake, but trapped in a nightmare world. Still, the voice whispered, and it laughed—full of glee and satisfaction at my pain and anger. You were banished, shunned, but I’ll welcome you, destroyer! That’s what it said, and it was like fire splashing down my spine. Destroyer? No, that was not my name. There was another with that name.
My breath came out in a great exhale of icy fumes and crystals, settling across the snow in front of me like thousands of paleblue shimmers. I would find this voice. I would hunt the thing that dared whisper such things. This wasn’t just a dream, I knew it. This was something else, something real, and it had invaded my territory, invaded my sleep. It had made a mistake trying to reach me at my weakest moment, but I was not making that mistake again.
Destroyer? No, that wasn’t me. Another dragon whose territory bordered mine had that name, and he was the guardian of… My thoughts abruptly took a bad turn then. A guardian of nothing, because the evil had vanished without a trace. But it hadn’t, it was speaking to me in my dreams.
Fear struck harder than the storm.
What if it wasn’t just me hearing it? What if Bianca lay inside that bed, dreaming the same dark dreams? What if the thing in the dark was already reaching for her? I curled tighter into the snow, ice burning through me, my breath sharp enough to cut stone. I wanted to burst inside, to check, to be sure. I stayed rooted, torn between fear for her safety and fear of myself.
Chapter 5
Bianca
I fell asleep with the quilt drawn tight around me, its weight and warmth too comforting to resist. His scent clung to it—clung to me—smoke and snow, pine and something sharper, like a cold wind that could cut. I breathed it in as I drifted deeper into dreams, all the while wondering about him: about his name, the horns on a helmet that might not be fake, the way he’d looked at me with eyes like pale ice. I told myself I would ask him his name tomorrow, then I was elsewhere.
Dreams spun me high above the world, into skies white as marble. I was flying, though I couldn’t see wings or feel them beating. It was the kind of flying you could only do in dreams. The air was clean and sharp in my lungs, each breath filling me with joy, with freedom. Snow clouds swirled around me, curling like waves breaking against cliffs. The world below was hidden in white, endless and soft. I laughed, or thought I did, and the sound scattered like tiny bells across the sky.
I had never had a dream like this, and though I was still a toy adrift on a tide I could not control, I never wanted it to end. The light dimmed. The clouds thickened and pressed closer; heavy, dark, unpleasant. My lungs struggled, heaving as they tried to pull in air, but it was thin now, ragged. The world flipped, cracked, and then darkness fell, so fast, so heavy, it was like being dropped into a pit.
One moment, bright skies and fluffy clouds of snow and cotton, then nothing. Only black.
I blinked and tried to make sense of the total blackness. When I reached out, I couldn’t see my own hands. It was just black, no stars, no moon, no clouds. There was nothing, and it was the worst feeling in the world, clawing at my throat with panic. There were more senses than sight, though, so I tried to focus on the others. The first thing I felt was wetness beneath my feet, soaking into my socks, the cold seeping upward in a strength-sapping chill. Snow; I was walking through snow.
Why was I walking? I’d been flying; I’d been dreaming. This, I didn’t want, didn’t choose. My body moved without my conscious command, dragging me forward into nowhere. Breath burst white from my lips, each exhale quicker than the last. It was the only thing I could see, those puffs of condensate curling like smoke in front of my face. Panic rose, hot and fast, strangling me. This was like before: lost on the hillside, the storm closing in, the sick certainty that I’d die out there if I didn’t find shelter.
Then the air stirred, and the trees began to groan. It wasn’t right, these weren’t branches swaying in the wind; this was not the familiar creaking of old wood. These sounds were too rhythmic, too intent, like the forest itself was speaking in long, low sighs. Or maybe it wasn’t the forest I couldn’t see; maybe there was something else out there.
Then came the whispers. Threads of sound weaving through the blackness, curling into my ears. They overlapped, breath against breath, hissing in voices I couldn’t pin down: male, female—hundreds or just one?
Come to me.
Get up. Don’t stop.
