Chapter 2 Get Her Off Him

The word hadn't even fully faded before the king’s chest violently expanded against my palms.

Heat radiated off him in a suffocating wave, like opening the door to a blast furnace.

Underneath my fingers, his skin hardened. Obsidian scales split through the fine fabric of his black clothes, dark and iridescent, spreading up his throat and across his jawline in a rapid march.

"Control it, Vyrn!" a sharp, commanding voice shouted from the far end of the stone table.

Vyrn didn't hear him.

His golden eyes were blown wide, fixed entirely on me as his spine arched.

A low, guttural roar vibrated in his throat, deep enough to make the stone floor tremble beneath my knees.

"Get her off him!" another voice barked. "Before he tears her apart!"

Panicked movement erupted around the circular chamber. Armed guards in armor surged forward, swords flashing under the sputtering braziers.

Near the high archway, a thin man in deep red robes stepped forward, his hands weaving intricate circles through the air.

A thin thread of blue, glowing magic shot from his fingertips, spinning into a shimmering pull meant to bind and immobilize me.

The magical thread struck my left shoulder.

Instead of wrapping around my limbs or sinking into my skin, the magic flickered once and slid right off me like water on hot grease.

It dissolved into harmless sparks against the stone floor.

In the rising chaos of shouting lords and drawn weapons, the warder was already casting another spell at Vyrn, missing the fact that his binding magic hadn't taken hold of me at all.

I didn't have time to process it. A hand as broad as a dinner plate locked around my upper arm.

"Move, girl!" Torin roared, his bear-like shoulders surging as he pulled me backward off the king's lap.

His grip was strong, lifting me clean off my feet. I gasped, my fingers slipping from Vyrn's chest.

The moment skin-to-skin contact broke, Vyrn lost whatever fragile thread of humanity he was holding onto.

A deafening, inhuman shriek shattered the air. The glass lanterns hanging high above the council table exploded, showering the chamber in a rain of glittering shards.

Massive wings ripped through the back of Vyrn's cloak with a sickening tear of fabric.

The span of black, scaled skin snapped outward, knocking two armed guards straight off their feet and sending them crashing into the stone pillars.

"Dragon!" someone screamed from the back of the hall. "He’s shifting! Clear the floor!"

The council chamber collapsed into bedlam.

House lords backed away, weapons raised, as the king’s form expanded, dark scales armor-plating his chest and arms, long black talons extending from his knuckles.

Torin stumbled backward, trying to drag me behind his huge body, but Vyrn’s golden eyes tracked my movement through the chaos.

"Mine," the beast rumbled—a voice that was no longer human, but a chorus of grinding tectonic plates.

Before Torin could pull me another inch, a scale arm shot forward with terrifying speed.

The clawed hand didn't strike or tear into my flesh.

Instead, Vyrn’s wide hand curved gently around my waist, his long black talons carefully tucking inward so the sharp edges didn't touch my skin.

With a powerful jerk, he yanked me out of Torin's grip and pulled me flush against his hard, heating chest.

Torin raised his battleaxe, his eyes wide with shock. "Vyrn, drop her!"

Vyrn didn't drop me but he didn't attack the court either.

With a thunderous sweep, Vyrn folded his black wing straight over the two of us.

The span of scales snapped shut like an iron curtain, wrapping around us and cutting off the entire chamber.

The shouts of the royal court, the clatter of steel, and the flickering light of the braziers vanished, replaced by darkness.

Swords bit into the outside of his wing. Sparks flew with a clang as guards hit the scaled membrane, trying to cut through to reach the king, but Vyrn didn't flinch. He didn't move an inch. He simply stood there in the dark, his body serving as a living, impenetrable shield around me.

I was trapped against him, my hands pressed back against the heat of his chest.

No one in the Beast Realm had ever seen the Cursed King protect anyone mid-shift. The stories whispered in the streets swore that when the dragon took over, Vyrn became a mindless, violent monster that slaughtered anything in its path.

Yet here he was, taking sword strikes against his own skin just to keep me from getting cut by flying swords.

"Why..." I choked out, my throat raw from the ozone-heavy air trapped inside the wing. "Why are you doing this?"

Vyrn didn't answer with words.

A deep, steadying rumble echoed in his ribs—a sound almost like a feline purr, vibrating straight into my bones.

The heat inside the wing was intense, sapping the strength from my legs. My head throbbed with a vicious, dull ache from the drop through the portal and the sheer, violent pressure of the magic saturating the room.

My knees gave out.

Vyrn’s clawed hand shifted instantly, supporting my lower back, keeping me upright against him. His chest heaved in rhythmic cycles, the sound of two distinct heartbeats echoing in his chest—one fast and wild, the other slow, ancient, and heavy as a mountain.

"Stay," he rasped into the dark above my head. His voice was ragged, torn between man and monster. "Just... stay."

"I don't... know you," I managed to whisper, my vision swimming with dark, creeping spots. My fingers clutched at the torn collar of his tunic just to keep my balance.

The world was spinning.

The noise outside his wings sounded distant now, like waves crashing against a far-off cliff. The heat, the exhaustion of the past three months, and the shock of falling through a split in reality finally caught up to me.

My eyelids grew heavy as lead.

I slumped against his chest, my chin dropping against his collarbone.

As my consciousness drifted away into blackness, a sound echoed deep behind my ears. It wasn't a voice spoken aloud. It wasn't a sound that traveled through the air.

It was a low, dark vibration purring directly inside the cavern of my mind, smooth and possessive:

Ours.

I squeezed my eyes shut as the dark swallowed me whole, silently blaming the word on a very bad concussion.