Page 226 of A Dance of Water

Without one glance back, the Temple Mother left, the stone door falling shut behind her, leaving Luella tied to the pillar in the middle of the cavern.

Her palm stung. She flexed her fingers where they were trapped between her back and the pillar, feeling the pointed quill of Graves’s feather digging into her hand. She clasped it with all her might, trying to ground herself.

Air roared around her from the dragon’s powerful wingbeats, booming like her heart, as he descended. The flames whooshed, threatening to extinguish.

Even in the shadows of the inside of the mountain, under the blanket of night, the powerful creature still cast a large, terrifying blot of utter darkness against the stone floors.

The very ground quaked as the dragon’s feet thudded against the ground, onyx wings spanning out, brushing the sides of the cavern.

Smoke filled the air, talons raking against stone as the dragon watched her with familiar green eyes.

Mine.

"H-how did… y-you…" Her voice shook so badly, she had a hard time understanding herself. Her arms strained against the coarse fabric of the rope, wincing when it dug into her already sore flesh.

The dragon snarled, revealing a gleaming row of sharp, dagger-like teeth.

No.

The voice was Vale—but not.

Her chest strained against the stiff fabric of her shift from her labored breathing.

"No?" she whimpered, flinching away as the dragon nosed the air before her.

So possessive, so utterly terrifying—King Vale, the male her soul was tied to, and now she was tied up for.

Don’t hurt.

Was he… was he telling her to stop straining against the rope because it caused her pain?

Her brow furrowed, even as fear made her head feel light. What was happening? How could he speak inside her mind?

Mine,hissed the dragon, tail knocking against the far wall as he watched her.

Mine, mine, mine.

Ours.

The words filled her head, making her breathless as pure ownership flashed in those green eyes. She suddenly remembered that dragons coveted their possessions with violence. Was that all she was to this beast—some glittering jewel or thing to be conquered?

Smoke drifted from the dragon’s nostrils as he huffed.You are mine.

She waited, and waited. For something to happen. Graves said she was supposed to survive, but survive what? His presence?

Luella did not know how long she waited. But her arms grew numb, her legs tingled from being forced to stand upright, and her stomach rumbled, not nearly filled enough after the meager amounts she had been forced to eat by Az and Bastian.

Her eyelids grew heavy, her lack of sleep catching up to her, but she did not allow herself to relax, could not with the dragon before her, so close his every breath ruffled the hair around her temples.

Every twitch or shift in the dragon’s movements made her flinch, afraid this was it, the moment he would lunge and rip off her head—she had seen it before, in the throne room, when hehad so proudly carried the decapitated dragon head between his teeth. Her head was like a grape compared to such a dragon’s size. He could turn her bones to ash with one snap of his jaw.

A dominating presence filled her mind, more territorial than the way Bastian felt when he stole inside her… The dragon did not riffle through her thoughts, merely settled in her mind with a curious possessiveness.

Mine—not a word, but a feeling, echoing inside her head and rattling off her skull from the pure weight of the emotion.

She ran a numb finger over the feather in her palm, the softness soothing her as she drifted and?—

Luella gasped, eyes popping open as she jerked her head upright.

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