She had passed out at some point.
It might have been shortly after the dragon shifter who had abducted her had hit a height that had made her vision do strange things, zooming in and out as she had stared wide-eyed at the thousand-foot-plus drop to the forbidding black lands below. She had certainly lost the contents of her stomach at that point.
Anais lay with her eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness, keeping her breathing light and even and her heart rate steady and slow. She wasn’t alone. She could feel the piercing gaze of the man who had snatched her from the midst of the battle.
A battle where they had been enemies, fighting on opposite sides. Her in the army of the Third Realm of the demons, and him on the side of the Fifth Realm.
When she had set eyes on him, laying in the middle of the mad fray, staring at her and Sable as if they were goddesses or something born of myth and legend, the last thing she had expected was him to transform into an incredible and enormous blue dragon, and she definitely hadn’t expected him to snatch her and fly off with her.
Anais breathed slowly, biding her time, waiting for her faculties to all come back. Years of training cycled through her mind, everything she had learned as a huntress for Archangel coming to the fore now that she needed it. Calm flowed through her and she clung to it, using it as a shield as she told herself on repeat that fear wasn’t an emotion she was going to allow herself to feel.
She was going to remain calm because she needed a clear head, one not clouded by panic, if she was going to find a way out of this mess. That same head ached as she tried to think, throbbing behind her eyes and around her temples. Maybe she had passed out from lack of oxygen. It was possible. Anything seemed possible in this insane realm.
When she had been told to assemble as part of Sable’s team that would be venturing into Hell on Archangel’s first mission to that new land, she hadn’t known what to expect. It was black and grim, and filled with creatures straight out of the nightmares of most normal people.
She was far from normal though.
She had fought vampires, werewolves, warlocks and demons. Even some fae and cat shifters. All in the name of protecting the unsuspecting humans and the good non-humans who shared the mortal realm from those who would do them harm.
She had never met a dragon shifter though.
Anais slowly opened her eyes.
They settled on a black-dust-covered pair of bare feet and tracked upwards, over smooth blue leather encased legs and a honed naked torso to the shifter who had abducted her.
He crouched beside her, his aquamarine eyes stunning in the weak light from the fire she could feel near her feet and hear as its crackles and pops filled the thick silence. That same golden light played on sculpted cheekbones and profane lips, a mouth made for wicked things. She quickly reminded herself that he had a killer set of teeth behind those sensual lips. Twin rows of tiny white daggers that he had flashed at Sable when her superior had talked about studying him.
He canted his head, causing a hank of wild blue hair to slip down and caress his brow. His dark blue eyebrows dipped low, causing his striking eyes to narrow. Curious. He had looked that way back in the battle. He had stared at her with a strange mixture of fascination, awe, and desire.
That final emotion combined with a sudden thought that she was alone with him and tapped into her deepest female instincts. They overruled the logical part of her that attempted to point out that she was unmolested despite being unconscious and at his mercy for God only knew how long and hijacked control of her body and mind.
Her calm shattered and her pulse spiked in response. She immediately went on the defensive, scrambling backwards across the pebbly black ground, her eyes swiftly darting around to take in her surroundings but never leaving him for longer than a second. Rock walls arched upwards to meet in a ceiling, forming a cave around thirty feet across. She hit one of those walls a few metres into her attempt to flee him and banged the back of her head against the jagged rock.
Her flinch of pain drew a darker look from the man and he rose to his feet and took fluid, silent steps towards her. Danger and sensuality rolled off him with each graceful stride, each shift of his lean hips that had her gaze lowering to his body before she could stop it, taking in how the muscles of his torso flexed beneath his pale skin as he moved. Her heart pounded harder. Her mouth went dry.
Anais shot to her feet and held her hand out. It was a feeble attempt to stop him when she had lost her only weapon, her favourite dagger, during the flight to wherever they were, but it seemed to work.
He halted a short distance away and even backed off a step.
He was incredibly tall.
The demons she had worked with, and the elves, had all been tall, and this man rivalled them. He stood at least as tall as King Thorne of the demons, an impressive six-foot-seven, but where the demon was broadly built, hewn with thick muscles, this male was more athletic, his build slighter but equally as honed.
Anais shook herself and pressed her back against the wall. She was meant to be escaping, not admiring her abductor.
She drew in a deep breath to calm herself and tried to remember all her training. It was hard when he was staring at her, his piercing blue gaze fixed on her with an intensity that shook her. She briefly closed her eyes, sucked down another slow breath, and then nodded as she finally found a sliver of calm, enough to allow her to look objectively at her predicament and search for a way out of it again.
Her gaze flitted to the fire off to her right, where it illuminated the opening of a dark tunnel, and then the cave mouth off to her left. It was dark out there too, a barely discernible difference between the black mountains and the near-black sky of Hell. Either looked like a good option over remaining in the cave with the shifter, but she would take the exit from the cave rather than risking heading deeper into it where she might end up trapped.
Her eyes drifted back to the beautiful male standing before her, his back straight and shoulders squared, and feet noticeably braced apart. He was a warrior all right. He had cut through the battle with ease, taking down demons with one blow of his curved blade. Now he stood in readiness, prepared to defend or attack if she made a move, his fierce gaze tracking her every action.
She knew from his interaction with Sable on the battlefield that he understood English, although she had a feeling she was about to test the limits of his knowledge.
She schooled her expression, steadied her heart, and shifted her feet further apart. His gaze dropped to them and his left eyebrow rose. She used his momentary distraction to assess him. He was far stronger than she was, probably faster too, and he had a weapon. A knife. Sheathed at his waist.
That was her target.
Somehow, she would get her hands on that knife. It wouldn’t level the playing field, but it would make her feel a whole damned lot better about her situation.
His aquamarine eyes lifted back to hers and narrowed again, shimmering with curiosity. Why was he so fascinated with her?
“Amazon,” he husked in a voice so deep and smooth it was like taking a pure hit of the finest chocolate, more than most girls could handle without melting into a puddle of bliss.
Anais shook herself again, forcing herself to focus.
On the battlefield, he had called her and her fellow huntresses Amazons. Sable had responded to that by pressing her boot against his throat and correcting him. He had to know she was a demon-hunter. Unless he hadn’t understood that part.
“I’m not an Amazon. I’m a demon-hunter. I work for Archangel.”
He frowned. “An angel?”
Anais resisted the overwhelming temptation to sigh. “No. Archangel. A hunter organisation. I work for them and believe me when I say that they’ll be coming to get me.”
He snarled, flashing white teeth.
That weren’t all tiny daggers.
She made a mental note of that. It seemed that like vampires, elves and demons, the fangs were under his control. She would have to tell Olivia when she got out of this hellhole and back to Archangel.
But they weren’t at Archangel right now. Her team were back in the Third Realm, fighting against demons, bear shifters and dragons. Her heart started a hard thumping against her chest and she looked back towards the mouth of the cave.
“Take me back,” she said and when he didn’t respond, she turned her focus to him, giving him her best glare. She didn’t dare hope he would do as she asked, but she had to try. He hadn’t laid a hand on her since taking her and he had kept his distance when she had warned him away. If there was a chance she could convince him to return her to her friends, she had to take it. “Take me back to the battle. I have to go back.”
His frown deepened, pinching his blue eyebrows together. Didn’t he understand? She spat a curse at him and his handsome face blackened into a scowl. Apparently he understood that perfectly well.
“Why?” he murmured with a glance towards the cave mouth.
Anais looked there too, heart aching as she thought about the why of it. “Because my friends are there. Fighting. They need me.”
Were they alright? Was Sable okay? Emelia and the others? Her team of hunters had been small and no match for the enemies the Fifth Realm had thrown at them, but the demons of the Third Realm and the elves had been helping them. She had to have faith that her friends were strong enough to survive to fight another day and that the Third Realm would win the war.
The dragon’s steady gaze bore into the side of her face, heating her skin, sucking all of her awareness away from the world and her friends and narrowing it down to only him.
She slid her eyes back to him and found him frowning at her, a confused edge to his expression.
“You fight… as a… unit?” His stilted manner of speaking confirmed that he knew his way around her language but it was limited, not his mother tongue.
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Strange.” He glanced towards the cave mouth again and then back at her.
Anais frowned this time and spoke slowly in the hope he would understand her. “I saw you with the other dragon warriors. You were fighting as a unit.”
His lips quirked into a half-smile that lit up his eyes with sparks of gold fire and heated her insides even when she tried not to let it affect her. “They were heading… in the similar… no, same… direction as me. Dragon warriors do not fight as a unit. Only weak species do.”
Anais folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. Her species weren’t weak. They were strong because they fought together. Only idiots refused to aid each other on the battlefield.
“Take me back.”
He didn’t look inclined to agree to that demand. “What species?”
Her eyebrows dipped together until it dawned on her that he was trying to find out what species she was. He moved on before she could answer.
“What realm?”
“The mortal one.” She looked up at the roof of the cave, trying to emphasise her point, even though she wasn’t sure that Hell was beneath her realm like the traditional interpretation of its position.
Sable had tried to explain to her and a few of their team that Hell was like a separate plane, connected to their one via a series of portals. It was beneath their world but not at the same time. Anais had been inclined to agree with her leader when she had called it a ‘mind fuck’.
“Impossible.” He canted his head to one side again and narrowed his eyes on her, giving her a look that part questioned her sanity and part demanded she tell him the truth. “What realm?”
She did sigh now. “The mortal one. I’m not from here. I’m human.”
He shook his head and advanced a step, and she swiftly raised her hands again, hoping he would halt as he had last time. He didn’t. He moved another step closer, narrowing the distance between them down to under ten feet, and ran his gaze over her, scrutinising every inch of her.
“An Amazon.” His expression was resolute, challenging her to deny what he had evidently decided was the truth about her.
Anais muttered a prayer for strength. “I’m not a damned Amazon! Look… just take me back. If you take me back, I’m sure Sable and Archangel will let you off with a warning.”
He just stared at her.
Her temper frayed despite her best attempts to maintain her calm air as per her training. Enraging an immortal was never a good move, and was definitely number one on the list of things not to do when faced with an enemy, but her emotions and her nerves were shot and she was beginning to feel a little enraged herself.
She was sure there was a saying about pissing women off but clearly this man had never heard it.
She straightened and looked him right in the eyes, refusing to let how beautiful they were distract her.
“Take me back.”
His eyes darkened and his lips compressed into a thin line. “No.”
Fine. He wanted to do things the hard way and she was good with that. If he wouldn’t take her back out of the kindness of his black dead heart, she would force him to do it at knifepoint.
Anais slowly shifted away from the wall of the cave, heading into the open area between the dragon and the fire. He countered her, turning on the spot, keeping his front to hers. A darker edge flickered in his eyes, one that warned he was on to her and knew she intended to attack now.
“Last chance. Take me back.” She was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to take her up on her offer. She knew stubborn when she saw it. She looked at it in the mirror each day. In a battle of stubbornness, he wouldn’t win.
He took a step towards her.
Anais kicked off, lunging towards him, her eyes on the knife sheathed against his left hip.
He snatched her wrist before she could reach it, his strong grip sending a hot bolt of electricity arcing along her bones. She twisted her arm in his grip, turning her back to him and coming around on his left side. She made another grab for the knife with her free hand and he whipped the arm he held her with forwards, shoving her away from him and making her miss her target.
His growl echoed around the cave and she ducked beneath his other hand as he tried to grab her.
She broke free of his grip but didn’t back off. She didn’t know what he wanted with her, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. He’d had his chance to play nice. Now she was going to play rough.
He stepped into her and she brought her knee up hard, slamming it straight into his balls.
He grunted and doubled over and victory flashed through her as he cupped himself, leaving his knife wide open.
Anais made a grab for it.
He reacted in an instant, his head coming up and his hands leaving his groin. In a lightning fast move, he had blocked her attempt, knocking her hand away. She unleashed a short noise of frustration and attacked him, swinging her fist at his face. He blocked again, and again, stopping every punch she threw or kick she swung at him. Her anger rose with each failed attempt to hit him, her temper fraying at the same time.
The bastard was humouring her.
It was there in his eyes as he blocked her, always defending and never attacking. Their bright jewel-blue depths shimmered with amusement. He knew he could stop her any time he wanted because he was far stronger and quicker than she was.
Son of a bitch.
She growled and went to kick him between his legs again, and he caught her shin with both hands, stopping her. She tried to take her leg back but he refused to let go.
Anais launched a solid right hook at him, lost her balance and almost fell. His hand on her upper arm stopped her. What the hell? She would have thought he would be pleased if she had landed face first on the black ground, humiliating herself, but he had saved her.
She had the strangest notion as she pulled free of his grip and faced him.
He didn’t want to hurt her.
His self-assuredness wasn’t the reason why he was only defending. He wasn’t doing it to amuse himself either. He was doing it because any other course of action might hurt her.
He cemented that feeling when she made another lunge for the knife and he grabbed her right upper arm. The cut beneath the sleeve of her black t-shirt burned and she flinched, biting her tongue to muffle the cry of pain that blazed up her throat.
He quickly released her and backed off, distancing himself.
“I am sorry.” He lowered his hands to his sides.
Anais wasn’t sure what to make of him, but she refused to let his behaviour sway her. He probably wanted that. He wanted her to lower her guard.
She rubbed her arm and he looked away from her, glancing down at the ground beside his bare feet.
Giving her one hell of a golden opportunity she wasn’t about to waste.
She made a break for it, her boots eating up the black ground between her and the cave mouth.
“No!” His roar deafened her and echoed around the cave and the mountains beyond.
Strong arms banded around her waist from behind before she could reach the exit of the cave. She caught a glimpse of a green-black world as he lifted her off the ground—a swath of thick forest that covered the valley below the side of the mountain she was in and the forbidding black mountains all around her. That view disappeared as he turned her in his powerful arms, twisting her to face him, and shocked her by pinning her to his very solid chest.
“Do not go that way, Little Amazon,” he husked, his deep voice strained and thick with emotion.
Anais shoved at his chest as panic burst through her, sending her pulse racing, and her mind screamed at her to escape his hold.
He didn’t fight her. He turned so she was closest to the fire and set her down. The moment he released her, she backed off, placing some distance between them again and breathing hard to quell the dizzying rush of her heart.
He remained where he was as she slowly pulled herself back together, towering over her, and she found herself staring up at his handsome face. He looked as raw with emotion as his voice had sounded. Why?
As much as she wanted to know the answer to that question, she wanted her freedom even more.
She tried to get around him again but he countered her each time, moving left or right to block her path, keeping her contained in the back half of the cave, away from the mouth.
“You cannot leave.”
Those three words chilled her to her bones and panic and fear surged back to the surface, an unstoppable force that she could no longer control. They shook her and she couldn’t stop them from chipping away at her strength, breaking down her courage and filling her mind with a thousand horrific scenarios she didn’t want to entertain but was powerless to shut out.
“What do you want with me?” she whispered, unable to find her voice as she stilled and stared at him, her heart hammering against her chest and her hands shaking. She curled her fingers into fists and drew down a deep breath, trying to steady herself when all she really wanted to do was collapse onto her knees and maybe even cry. “Why won’t you let me leave?”
“Others cannot see you.” He looked back over his bare shoulder, towards the cave mouth. “It is not safe for you out there, Little Amazon.”
“It’s not safe for me in here either.” She clenched her fists and narrowed her eyes on him.
He turned back to face her, his expression soft and a touch wounded. Bloody hell, she wasn’t sure what to make of him.
“What do you want with me?” She tried again, needing an answer this time, because she feared he intended to do something terrible to her, even when there was a part of her heart that said it was never going to happen.
He had been upset and had apologised when he had hurt her, and that reaction had been genuine. She had met enough good guys and enough bastards in her life to know them apart. A man who reacted in such a manner as he had wasn’t the sort of man who would then resort to physical abuse.
“I want to keep you safe.”
Of course, men who didn’t want to hurt women could also be dangerously possessive of them. He might be the type who was acting out an obsession, a deep need to nurture and take care of another person, despite how much it terrified that person or how little they wanted to be there with them.
“It’s hard for me to believe that when you kidnapped me.” She backed off another step and did a quick scan of the cave again, checking her options.
He had left the back of the cave open to her, which meant he didn’t think she could escape that way. Her only option was getting past him. Her hope tried to deflate but she refused to let it happen. She would get out of here and away from him.
It just might not be this instant.
His face softened again and he held his right hand out to her as his blue eyebrows furrowed. Like hell she was going to take it. He could want to comfort her all he liked, but she didn’t have to let him fulfil that need.
A flicker of resignation crossed his expression and he looked at his hand, smiled briefly, and lowered it to his side. “I had to. If I had not—”
Dread went through her like shards of ice.
“If you hadn’t… what?” Anais couldn’t stop herself from advancing a step towards him. She didn’t like how he had cut himself off or the flash of fear that had touched his face.
He dropped his gaze to the patch of ground between them and it turned distant. “Dragons have the gift of foresight. What I saw…”
A chill ran through her as she remembered how he had looked at her on the battlefield and how she had felt in that moment. A deep sense of connection had bloomed inside her and he had looked as if he had shared it, and then he had changed. The heat in his eyes had turned to darkness that had coloured his expression, making it grim. She had felt that same sharp stab of dread in that moment, a sickening sensation of her life draining from her.
A heartbeat later, he had grabbed her. No longer a man. He had been an enormous, and breathtakingly beautiful, blue dragon. He had tucked her against the paler blue plates of his chest, holding her gently in both huge front paws, as if he had wanted to shield her, and then he had attacked everyone.
Her side.
He had driven them all away from her.
Because of what he had seen?
“I cannot let you leave. Please, Little Amazon.” His blue eyes implored her to listen to him, flooded with sincerity, hope and a dash of fear. “I will return you… when I am sure you will be safe.”
Anais shook her head, reeling and trying to make sense of everything. It crashed over her, muddling her feelings and leaving her shaken.
“We were in a battle,” she said and shook her head again. “I knew the risks. You had no reason to save me. I wasn’t a damsel in distress. I was there to fight. Why save me? I was… am… your enemy.”
He stared at her, blinking slowly, unmoving as silence stretched between them. She couldn’t read him at all. She had no clue about how he felt or what he might say. His expression gave nothing away.
He held her gaze, his blue eyes locked with hers. “I did it because I had to.”
“That isn’t an answer.” She took another step towards him, growing frustrated with him and with herself. What was she doing? Did she want him to give her an answer that would sway her? Did she want him to say something that would make her trust him?
Hell, maybe she had been right on coming around. She had passed out from lack of oxygen and her brain had been starved of it, because nothing she was thinking or feeling was making any sense to her logical mind.
Something about the man standing before her had her throwing logic and all of her training out of the window, and listening to her heart over her head.
Anais shut down the softer part of herself and forced herself to focus again. She needed to get away from the dragon and this cave, but he was right. It was probably more dangerous out there. She needed to know what she would be up against and where she was in Hell. She needed a plan, or she would end up in an even worse position than she was now.
“It is the only answer I have,” he whispered and he looked as if it didn’t make sense to him either, but he had been unable to find another one to give to her. “I had a vision, and I responded to it. I had no choice. It was instinct. I wanted to protect you.”
Another sensation went through Anais, this one not altogether pleasant either, and it frightened her a lot more than the thought of dying.
She had seen how King Thorne of the demons had acted around Sable, driven by instinct to protect her at any cost because she was his fated mate. Some of the species of Hell had such mates, a person fated for them.
One in a lifetime.
She stared at the dragon where he stood with his back to the cave mouth, cragged black mountains as his backdrop and the light from the fire behind her shining on him, turning his skin golden as it flickered across his honed bare chest and arms, and his blue-leather-clad legs.
He was every bit as stunning as he had been on the battlefield.
A dark and alluring warrior who spoke to her on a deep and primal level.
The sense of fierce attraction and connection returned.
This time it filled her head with flashes of Sable and Thorne, of how they behaved around each other, driven by a possessive need of each other, a hunger that went beyond mere attraction and desire, defying all logic and reason.
Bloody hell.
She refused to allow herself to believe that the man standing before her, a dragon shifter, was such a thing for her. He was a means to an end. A source of information. She would bide her time, gather knowledge, and once she was ready she would escape and return to her world, the one that made sense to her. The one filled with logic and reason, just how she liked it.
“Swear you won’t hurt me and that you’ll return me to my people.” It never hurt to have a few assurances that she could use to quell her fears. He was a warrior. He wasn’t a team player by his own admission, but warriors always had a code. He would keep his vows.
He pressed his left hand to his bare chest and bowed his head. “You have my word. In return, you will swear you will not attempt to leave.”
Anais nodded. “You have my word.”
His hand drifted downwards, drawing her gaze with it, over honed muscles that delighted her eyes and heated her insides. His voice was rich and warm, as deep as an ocean as he spoke to her, cranking her temperature up another few degrees and making her forget she was meant to be afraid of him not attracted to him.
“Will you stay, Little Amazon?”
Anais raised her eyes back to his. They were bright, spotted with gold fire, entrancing her as much as his voice and his body.
She nodded, and for some reason it wasn’t as reluctant as it should have been.
Heaven help her.
She wasn’t sure it was such a great idea after all, because she was certain there wasn’t enough willpower in the entire planet that she could draw on to stop herself from succumbing to the desire that swept through her whenever she looked at him.
