Page 2 of Dragon King’s Bullied Mate

“Mik!” Dag’s voice cut through the chaos, but it was already too late.

The world dropped out from under him.

Snow and sky and stone spun together as Mikael tumbled down the mountain as his body struck the slope hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs before momentum seized him. It dragged him down in a violent descent as the mountainside itself seemed to unravel. An avalanche roared to life around him with a deafening fury.

He tried to anchor himself or grasp at anything but there was nothing except the relentless pull downward. The crushing weight built with every passing second as the snow swallowed him whole and buried him in cold so absolute he felt it burn the skin now exposed.

Something struck his side and pain flared white-hot through his ribs. Another blow glanced off his shoulder and his head snapped back as darkness flickered at the edges of his vision. Still he fell while the mountain refused to release him.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Or rather, he did.

The avalanche surged past and left him half-buried in its wake. He was pinned head down with snow packed tight around his torso and hips. Luckily, his arms were trapped around his face which created a small pocket of air. He used his trembling, frozen fingers to carve out a larger pocket. He took small, shallow breaths as everyone felt like knives in his lungs.

For the most part, he could not move at all.

The cold seeped in mercilessly until he was numb. The snow felt like it packed tighter with each breath. Mikael forced himself to focus and push through the haze of pain and shock. He tried to catalogue the damage to keep his mind busy. Ribs likely fractured, shoulder dislocated or worse, head injury possible, and beneath it all the slow, creeping realization that he was alone.

There were no voices except those in his head. Worse still, his dragon was silent. Normally a little burst of heat would have greatly reduced his current predicament.

But he felt nothing.

“Dag—” he tried, but the name came out as little more than a broken exhale. He wiggled his fingers to carve out more of the snow away from his face, but they would no longer respond.

His dragon finally stirred, but it felt distant and muted, as though whatever force had torn the mountain apart had reached inside him as well.

Something was wrong. More wrong than the fall, the avalanche, or the injuries that made every breath an effort.

A burst of adrenaline mixed with anger jolted through him. He tried to wiggle to free himself, but the movement sent a sharp spike of pain through his body that stole what little strength he had left. He sagged against the frozen weight and exhaustion crept in.

This is how men die. Don’t fall asleep.

The cold deepened and his thoughts slowed.

But then, a presence surrounded him. Almost like warmth.

It was faint at first, like a contradiction so impossible his fading mind could have imagined it. But yet it grew steadily and pressed against the edges of his awareness like sunlight through his closed eyes.

Mikael stilled, what little breath he had caught in his chest as he strained to feel it again, to understand it, because there was no warmth in the Silver Snow Mountains.

And yet, it came closer.

His vision darkened further and the world narrowed to that single, impossible sensation as it drew near. With the last fragment of consciousness he had left, Mikael understood.

It’s her.

Chapter 2

Lyra

The morning had broken cold and quiet over the outskirts of Iskavard. It was the kind of cold that turned every breath into mist and every sound into something louder than it actually was. Lyra walked the narrow path away from her cottage nestled near the base of the Silver Snow Mountains.

She carried a woven basket hooked over her arm while four-year-old Beckett stumbled along at her side. His tiny mittened hand clung to the edge of her long cloak as he struggled not to slip on the ice as they searched for winter flowers.

“We have to hurry, sweetheart. Once it starts snowing, it’s not going to stop for a while.”

Beckett reached eagerly toward a brittle stem that poked through the snow, its petals already curled and chipped.

“Not that one,” she murmured, her voice low and warm despite the bite of the air. “We only take the ones that are still fighting.”