CHAPTER 17
Darkness surrounded him.
The pained roar that echoed around it resonated within him too, but he wasn’t sure it had come from his soul. Fierce and fiery agony blazed in every inch of him, rolled to new heights that seemed to rip pieces of him away, and this time he was sure the roar that rumbled through the inky black like thunder had issued from his lips.
Had been dragged from the pit of his weary soul.
The flames scorched his bones. Seared his flesh.
Felt as if they would burn all of him away and leave nothing.
In the wake of the fire, came light.
It rolled through the darkness, a beam that cut through the endless black and drew him to it.
As the pain began to fade, a voice reached his ears.
Calling to him.
Speaking his name.
Lyra.
He strained towards that voice, reached for it and pushed forwards, determined to shake the midnight tendrils that tried to pull him back, that snagged his legs and wrapped around his arms.
He was coming.
He could feel her fear, her pain, and he was coming to take it all away.
The inky vines holding his legs and arms snapped as the beam of light reached him and he sank into it.
His eyes fluttered open, revealing more darkness.
And then that ray of light.
Lyra.
She leaned over him, tears wobbling on her long black lashes and her blue eyes overflowing with happiness he could feel in her.
“What happened?” he croaked, and grimaced at how tight his throat was, and the ache that reached right down to his marrow and filled every molecule of his body.
“Brink helped us… he brought you back.” She tried to smile, and tears skated down her cheeks, cutting through the ash and the blood.
Gods. His beautiful Lyra. He had been sure that it had been the end for him, and rather than being calm and taking comfort from the thought of running with his ancestors, he had been filled with cold and fear, with terror that he had known would live on forever inside him.
All because he had thought he would never see her again.
Because he couldn’t bear the thought of being parted from her.
His beautiful mate.
The first and only female he would ever love.
She clutched his hand above his stomach and brought it to her chest, pressed it there and held it so tightly that he knew she felt the same way about him, that the thought of being parted from him had been destroying her.
He wanted to drown in her, to stare at her forever and never stop looking at her, but he owed a dragon a great debt, one he felt sure he would never be able to repay.
He tilted his head right, towards Brink.
The black-haired warrior sat on his haunches, breathing hard, his skin ashen and slick with sweat. Exhaustion echoed in his dull obsidian eyes as they remained locked on him, firmly away from Lyra.
Grey was thankful for that too.
He was too tired to lose his shit over the male looking at her when she was naked.
“Thank you,” he whispered, but knew as he looked at Brink that simple thank you wasn’t enough.
The male looked close to passing out, and he knew that first bellow of agony, one that had sounded as if its owner was ripping their own soul apart, losing a piece of themselves in the process, had come from Brink.
Whatever magic he had used to heal Grey’s wounds and give him another chance at life, it had cost him greatly.
Brink nodded.
Sagged a little and landed on his arse on the black dirt.
He sat there, his forearms resting on his bent knees, breathing hard.
“What happened?” Brink panted and pulled down one long breath and tried to exhale it slowly.
It didn’t happen. It ended up sharp and short, followed by another deep fast breath. He gritted his teeth, a muscle in his jaw popping, and grunted as he ran trembling hands over his wild black hair and muttered something to himself.
Grey mustered the strength to speak.
“We think they were the Archangel team mentioned in Grey’s documents, the ones carrying out the research for the project his brother was interested in finding out more about.” Lyra beat him to it, and he looked at her, soul-deep grateful for her stepping up and sparing him so he could conserve the tattered remains of his strength.
“The fallen angel?” Brink curled a lip at the blood staining his bare arms and chest.
“Was after me,” Lyra said. “I’m sorry about that.”
The dragon casually shrugged. “A dead fallen angel is a good fallen angel. They’re a menace.”
“What were you doing here?” Grey pushed the words out as he felt a little stronger, the pain dulling to a manageable level where he could breathe easier and didn’t feel as if his bones were crumbling beneath his skin.
He flexed his fingers, testing their strength as it slowly returned.
Brink seemed more relaxed too, his breathing level at last. “Ren sent me when you disappeared. He doesn’t like people reneging on a contract.”
“I wasn’t,” she snapped. “I always pay my debts. I was going to get the gem.”
“I wasn’t talking about you.” Brink’s black eyes fell to Grey as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. “Still… I suppose you are off the hook now… and I didn’t exactly agree with what Ren wanted you to do.”
It was a relief to hear that.
Brink stared off to his left, towards the dead hunters and the lights. “No one should be enslaved, trapped against their will.”
Grey had never really thought about how the dragons felt about their banishment, but the yearning in Brink’s dark eyes said it was hell for them, that they felt trapped in this bleak realm and longed for blue skies to fly in and the feel of sunshine on their scales.
“Do you know of any reason why mortals are interested in this place?” He gripped Lyra’s shoulder and tried to stand. She held his arm and helped him, rising to her feet but moving behind him as she steadied him on his.
Using him as a shield so Brink didn’t see her bare curves.
Brink’s gaze slid to meet his, his black eyebrows dipped low, and then his focus drifted back towards the hunters, and lifted up, to the mountains.
Grey followed his distant gaze and spotted an opening halfway up the cragged black mountain. The dim glow coming from it said the mortals had placed lights inside it too, and as he peered closer, he could just about make out ropes dangling from a ledge at the mouth of the cave.
“Why would mortals come here?” Brink stared at the cave, his voice as distant as his gaze, and Grey had the feeling that the male knew this place.
“I don’t know.” Grey couldn’t take his eyes off it, felt drawn towards it as he stared at it, pulled there by invisible vines that snared him tightly and wouldn’t release him. “I need to know.”
Before he could look at Brink, could utter the question balanced on his lips, the male had shifted into an enormous black dragon and had scooped him and Lyra up into one huge paw. Lyra squeaked and pressed against him, one arm banding around his waist from behind and her other one gripping the sharp talon that curled around Grey’s chest.
Grey battled the urge that blasted through him as her bare curves pressed against his and it hit him that Brink was touching her too.
Had his damned paw on Grey’s naked female.
He growled but held back the need to shift and attack the male, breathed through it and focused on Lyra behind him, how she held him with both hands now, and had pressed her cheek against his shoulder. Soothing him.
The world dropped away, making his stomach lurch, and he closed his eyes and narrowed everything down to Lyra.
She was warm and soft against him, her feelings flowing into him, filled with affection, relief and tenderness that curled around him and had him sinking against her, wanting to turn and nuzzle her cheek as he held her.
Just as he was about to give in to that need, Brink’s paw opened and his feet hit solid ground again. His legs wobbled but he locked his knees to stop them from giving out beneath him, and remained standing. He turned and gathered Lyra into his arms to shield her from view as Brink shifted back into his human form. Black leathers moulded over his long legs as he strode past Grey, heading into the cave.
It reeked of blood.
Grey turned his head to track the male.
His eyes slowly widened.
It was a slaughterhouse.
Crimson splashed up the rugged black walls, still glistening and wet, catching the lights.
Dead mortals lay everywhere, ripped to shreds. Some of them wore the white coats of scientists, while the rest were dressed in black fatigues.
A few lucky souls near the cave entrance had been given a swift death, only their throats cut by the fallen angel’s claws.
Grey stooped beside a female hunter and removed her boots and her black combat trousers.
He offered them to Lyra where she stood closed to him, wide blue eyes scanning the horrific scene. He had no love for the mortals, probably would have killed them himself if the fallen angel hadn’t. She looked as if she felt bad for them though.
It dawned on him.
“You didn’t do this,” he muttered and rose to his feet, and offered her the clothes again.
She started, eyes leaping to his, and quickly took the trousers and boots and put them on.
Her movement slowed as she fastened her trousers.
“He was here because of me.” She looked down at her boots, and then moved past him and stripped the t-shirt from the dead female. She paused there, holding it in her hands, her eyes on the hunter.
“Don’t feel sorry for these people, Lyra. They don’t deserve it,” Grey bit out, and when she looked at him, her soft eyes imploring him to tell her the reason he despised them, he added, “They held my brother for months, tortured him and ran tests on him, and they killed a friend of his. Their experiments broke her. And then they attacked our pride. They slaughtered innocent females and cubs… ones who couldn’t defend themselves.”
The guilt that had been in her blue eyes faded away, sparks of cerulean brightening her irises as anger swept in to replace it.
“They want to hurt us, Lyra. If they ever got their hands on you…” He looked away from her. “I’ll never let it happen. They could send a thousand hunters and I wouldn’t let them near you. I’d kill every single one of them.”
She slipped into the t-shirt, rose onto her feet and took hold of his hand, pressing her fingers against his palm.
He looked down into her blue eyes.
Drowned in them.
“You’d do that for me?” she whispered, a shimmer to her eyes that spoke of affection and told him she had liked his fierce words.
“I meant every one of them,” he murmured and stroked her cheek as he held her gaze and let her see that in his. “I swore I would protect you and I will.”
She smiled, tiptoed and kissed him.
It was too brief.
She stole her lips from his just as he was getting into it, and broke free of his grip, slipping away from him, heading deeper into the cave. She whirled to face him.
“Come on. I need to know what they were doing here.”
Grey smiled at that and the fact he wasn’t the only cat curious about what Archangel had been up to in the dragon realm.
He grabbed a pair of trousers from a male hunter, tugged them on and buttoned them as he walked, slowly following her towards the back of the cave, giving his legs time to grow stronger. Damned if he was going to rush and end up flat on his face because of it.
He had worried Lyra enough for a lifetime.
She waited for him at the point where the open cave became a tunnel, her blue eyes fixed on him, affection brightening them and luring him towards her.
Gods.
He had never imagined a female like Lyra could be his, but as he looked at her waiting for him, her hand rising to reach for him, he knew that she was.
And she would be forever.
He held his hand out to her when he was close enough, savoured the soft warmth of her fingers as they slid over his, and how good it felt as he curled his fingers between hers and locked their hands together.
He would never let her go.
Never.
He led her into the tunnel, keeping her tucked close behind him. Lights formed a trail that took them down into the mountain. The path branched as the air began to grow warmer, splitting into three. He kept following the lights. The corridor was tight in places, the rocks closing in and making him turn sideways to squeeze through, but then it opened out.
Into an enormous cavern.
Brink stood in the centre of it, transfixed by the wall in front of him.
On it, was a detailed carving at least four metres wide by three metres in height. It must have taken someone years to carefully chip the figures into the black stone.
A dragon on the right and a female in human form on the left.
She stood on the precipice of a mountain, valleys stretching beyond her. The sun rose above a lake in the distance, its rays filling the sky, telling Grey that the scene depicted somewhere in the mortal world.
The female’s long robes flowed behind her together with her wavy hair as she held her hand out to the dragon looming above her. It stood with its huge wings spread and one paw lifted from the rock, almost as if it was reaching for her too.
“Brink.” Grey walked into the cavern and the male turned.
His step faltered.
Tears lined Brink’s dark eyes.
“Do you know this place?” Because Grey was starting to get the impression that he did and that this place meant something to Brink.
It was important to him.
He looked beyond the male to the dragon. It looked like Brink, but then most dragons looked the same to him.
Symbols ran beneath the relief and twined around the dragon and the female.
On the black sandy floor of the cavern, drawing pads had been discarded, probably tossed aside in the panicked rush when the fallen angel had attacked. One had a sketch of the female, and the other three had drawings of the symbols, and notes scrawled around them.
Archangel didn’t understand them.
Did Brink?
He lifted his gaze to the male. Brink stared at the carving again, a distant look in his dark eyes.
“It was my home once,” he murmured, eyes not leaving the female on the wall. “I don’t come here much now, but it was my place of hibernation a long time ago…”
“Why don’t you come here?” Lyra’s soft voice filled the cavern and she took a step towards Brink.
Grey could feel her curiosity. It beat inside him as fiercely as his own. Brink was the key to this place, and to understanding what was on the other side of the door in Archangel.
He knew it, felt it deep inside him.
“Something about it hurts,” Brink whispered and tore his eyes away from the female, casting Grey a pained look as his eyebrows furrowed and unease settled across his features. “It dredges up feelings I don’t understand… so I started staying away.”
The dragon drifted towards the wall and sank to his knees by the female.
Had Brink known this female once? Had the passing of time made his mind forget her, but not his heart?
The dragon looked as if he had loved and lost, and still suffered because of it.
“What do they mean?” he said as Brink ghosted an unsteady hand over the symbols that flowed beneath the female, intricate swirls and spots, dashes and sharp angles.
They were more than decorative.
It was a language.
“I don’t remember now.” Brink touched one of the symbols, rested his fingers on it and stared at it. One directly beneath the female’s bare feet. “I never remember. I know them, but I cannot read them. I made them, but I forgot them. They are foreign to me, but also familiar. I cannot explain it. Whenever I try to remember… I forget.”
Grey moved to stand beside him so he could get a closer look at the carving. He needed answers, but he had the feeling he wasn’t going to get them from Brink.
There had to be a reason Archangel had been interested in this place, in the symbols on this wall.
Brink stared blankly at the carving, his black eyes glassy, and whispered, “She always makes me forget.”
Grey stilled, afraid that even the slightest movement might shake Brink out of whatever had seized him, just as it had back at the dragon village and Brink hadn’t been able to remember what had happened to him.
She always made him forget.
“Who?” Grey said softly, his heart pounding, a feeling that he was close to uncovering what Archangel were doing rushing through him.
Brink murmured, “Aryanna.”
Shock swept through Grey, almost knocking him on his arse.
Aryanna was the name of the project related to the door in Archangel, the one he was researching.
He hadn’t thought of it as a name before now.
“Who’s Aryanna, Brink.” He reached out to touch Brink’s shoulder.
The male blinked, his head snapped around and he stared at Grey. “Who?”
“Fuck,” he growled and cursed himself.
Stupid fucking idiot.
He should have kept still, but the need to rattle more answers out of Brink had consumed him, had made him move before he could stop himself.
He crouched in front of Brink, glanced at Lyra to check she was alright, and caught the flicker of disappointment in her eyes that told her she was right there with him, was as desperate to know more about the female and was equally as frustrated that he had fucked up the chance he had been given.
“Aryanna.” Grey pointed to the female on the wall and Brink’s gaze followed his arm. “Remember Aryanna.”
Brink stared blankly at the female. “I don’t know that name.”
Shit.
He was starting to get the impression that more than time was involved in Brink’s little lapses in memory. Aryanna had done something to him, had somehow made him forget.
His eyes widened.
“She was a witch.”
The moment Grey said that, Brink’s eyes went glassy again.
“She cursed me.” Brink stared at the female, tears rising in his eyes, and reached a trembling hand out to her, his eyebrows furrowing and pain washing across his features. “She cursed us all.”
A shiver went through Grey.
Brink slowly slid his gaze towards him.
“She banished us to Hell.”
“Fucking hell,” Grey breathed and sank onto his backside as that hit him.
Archangel had to want the spell she had used, one that was powerful enough to banish a species and stop them from entering the mortal realm by stripping them of their powers and inflicting a slow death upon them if they dared to set foot in it.
He stared at the carving of the female, and the cold that had been sweeping through him turned to ice.
It was more than that.
He had read the Project Aryanna file a thousand times over, looking for clues, enough times that he could recite most of it by heart.
In one of the related files, it had mentioned a subject and something about a barrier, and power they needed to break it.
He had thought nothing of it at the time, had figured it was just another poor soul being held in one of the cages as his brother had been.
But why would Archangel want to break a barrier around one of their own detainees?
“What happened to Aryanna, Brink?” He pointed to the female. “Archangel mentioned holding a subject, and something about breaking a barrier. Is it possible the file was talking about her?”
How long did witches live? The dragons had been banished millennia ago. Was it possible a witch could live that long?
Brink stared at her, pain flooding his eyes, and reached for her, stroked his fingers down her figure and growled, “She is linked to me… and I to her… what she took from me… I gave to her… what I took from her… she gave to me.”
That didn’t make any sense.
He grabbed Brink’s shoulder.
The male turned on him with a snarl and batted his hand away. “She is mine.”
Before Grey could stop him, Brink was gone, out of the cavern.
He chased after him, leaving Lyra to follow, and reached the entrance to the main cave just as Brink hit the ledge and ground to a halt there. The wind whipped his wild black hair around his face as he turned towards Grey and his eyes glowed violet and gold.
“She will be mine again.”
Brink dropped off the ledge, disappearing from view, and Grey sprinted towards it, hitting the edge just as a huge black dragon shot past the mouth of the cave.
Heading south.
“You don’t think he’s…” Lyra stopped beside him, her eyes tracking Brink.
Grey nodded. “He’s going to get himself killed though.”
“Then he’s going to need our help.” Lyra placed her hand into his.
He looked down at her and shook his head as he saw the need to fight in her bright blue eyes, a need that echoed in him.
He knew the answer to what was beyond the door now, meaning his mission was over, but it wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy Talon’s curiosity.
Because it wasn’t enough to satisfy his own.
The need to know what Archangel wanted with Aryanna had only grown now that he knew she was the one responsible for cursing an entire species. He needed to know what Archangel intended to do with that power and how they could stop the hunter organisation from getting their hands on it.
Although, the answer to that one might be flying like a dragon out of Hell on a suicide mission to reach her.
He owed Brink a debt he could never repay, but he could at least chip away at it a little by helping him.
Because he had the feeling that Aryanna was something special to Brink.
She was his fated mate.
“Gods, I hope he forgets what the fuck he was doing before he reaches the portal.” Lyra tugged him towards the ropes fixed to the left side of the ledge.
Grey stilled.
Gods, Brink was going to forget her again.
The poor bastard.
He couldn’t let it happen, but he also couldn’t let the male get himself killed by recklessly entering the mortal realm.
“Wait.” He pulled Lyra back into the cave, found a pad on one of the dead scientists, and ripped a few sheets out.
He wrote on them in big letters Brink wouldn’t be able to miss, and spread them across the floor of the cave, leaving him a message, sure he would return to this place.
Lyra stood over him, her eyes on what he was doing.
When he had finished, he stood and admired his work.
“Brink. Her name is Aryanna. She’s your fated one. Archangel might have her. Take this note to King Thorne of the Third Realm. I owe you and I’ll help you get her back. Grey.” She looked across at him, and smiled. “You big softie.”
Grey shrugged. “He’ll remember us at least, and hopefully that’ll convince him to speak with Thorne. I’ll tell Thorne all I know so he’ll keep an eye out for a forgetful black dragon. I get the feeling that Brink is the key to awakening her, and that means we need to wait for him to make his move.”
He held his hand out to her.
His mission was done. He had an answer for his brother, but more importantly, he had fulfilled his mission to protect Lyra from the fallen angel bent on enslaving her and now all that was left was getting her out of Hell.
Until a black dragon came knocking on Thorne’s door, he would return to his world and continue his research into Archangel, sure that Talon would be right there with him, and so would the others at Underworld.
Together, they would arm themselves with all the knowledge they could, they would prepare themselves and they would form an army so powerful Archangel couldn’t possibly hope to succeed.
They would be the victor in whatever battle lay ahead of them.
He was sure of it.
Lyra slipped her hand into his. “Let’s go home.”
As she led him from the cave, those words rang in his heart and had something dawning on him.
That place he had been trying to find since Maya and Talon had left the pride was at Lyra’s side, and wherever she went was where he needed to be.
Because she was his home.