Really looking at me.

I felt the weight of his observing gaze like it was the clasp of his unyielding grip.

Something’s wrong, I realized, my instincts telling me so.

When I finally found my strength to stand, I stood before him, meeting his gaze head on.

Quietly, I told him, “You got what you wanted. You can leave now.”

His nostrils flared at my bold command. His wings—which were frighteningly strong, as I remembered the tightening hold of them—twitched. The tops of his wings were capped with a single set of sharp, curved talons. They could gut me where I stood if his gauntlets didn’t first.

If I thought it was a risk daring to give him an order after what had just happened, it was one I knowingly took. He needed to leave. I needed to wash him from my body. I needed to sleep away this entire day, this entire week.

In the morning, I would begin a new life. One I wasn’t certain of, but one I was determined to have a hand in shaping.

Krynn wasn’t anything like how I had expected. My own ignorance had played a hand in that, but I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. I needed to be rested. I needed to be alert. I needed to be ready.

And if my Kylorr husband’s bite promised dark, seductive, unwanted, dizzying pleasure?

Next time, I would be better prepared to receive it.

This was my life now. Whether I wanted it or not.

Turning from him, showing him my back, I made for the washroom I knew was off the sitting room.

There was a whisper of movement behind me, and then he was there. Spinning me to face him and pushing me up against the wall next to the hallway door, bracketing his hands on either side of my head. My heart pounded fiercely, but I leveled him a long look, the back of my skull pressing into the textured gray stone wall behind me. The bite on my neck gave a throb.

“You don’t get to dismiss me, wife,” Azur growled down to me. His eyes were still glowing.

“You’re in my rooms, are you not?” I answered in an even tone that made his fangs press against his bottom lip.

“Do you forget who I am?” he hissed, crouching low into my space until we were eye level and all I could see was him. His wings blocked out everything behind him. “And you still dare speak to me like this?”

“How could I forget who you are?” I snapped back, clenching my fists into the silk of my dress. “You’re the male who bought me! The male who’s made it clear to me that I am an object to him, a plaything, a damn meal. I am nothing to you but a neck you can stick your fangs into and torment whenever you wish.”

“Torment?” he asked, eyes narrowing dangerously. His purring tone was at odds with the hardened glint in his gaze as he asked, “Is that what torment looks like for you? As if you weren’t moaning with my fucking fangs in your pretty neck! Which, by the way, is only one of the many places I will feast on you, little bride.”

Fury rose. Shame made my cheeks heat, but it had nothing on the sudden rage.

“Fuck you,” I whispered. I began to shake. I pushed at his chest. “Fuck you!”

I never lost it. I was the calm sister. The rational one. The one who didn’t let emotions take over. The one who Piper had called a cold bitch with a stick up her ass. That was me.

Circumstance had made me that way. Even before my mother’s death.

Nothing about me felt calm. I wanted to claw Azur’s damn eyes out. I wanted to pummel his chest with my fists until they were bruised and raw.

I pushed at his chest again, and though he growled in warning—a low, deep, rumbling sound that made the hair on my arms stand on end—he didn’t budge. So I did it again, throwing my weight into him. Slapping at the hardened wall of his chest with my palms before I curled them into fists.

My throat was tight. My eyes began to sting. I was making small noises I’d never heard before, like a snarling, sad little beast.

I’m going to cry, I realized, and the thought made me even angrier. Because now he would see me cry, and I loathed to show him another weakness, another vulnerability after what had just happened between us.

“Stop,” he snapped when I banged on his chest harder. He tried to snag my wrists, to keep me still, but I fought against him. There was this hellish thing inside me, a beastly thing that wanted to break free. I wanted to hurt him. I was desperate to.

But it wasn’t truly him I wanted to hurt, was it?

It was everything else that had led me to him. My deep-rooted anger that had festered for years and years and years was beginning to surface.

I had no idea how to handle it.

I had no one to turn to.

I was completely and utterly…alone.

That realization made the first sob tear from my throat. The blur in my vision made my fists finally slow from their frenzied whip, and Azur caught them up, holding them strong. I fought against him half-heartedly as my grief and a bizarre sense of loss finally caught up with me.

I cried until my throat ached, trying to hide my face from Azur.

“Gemma,” came my name, spoken in a tone that was so unlike his cutting hiss.

My name alone gave me enough strength to break away from his hold. I stumbled away, toward the chair I’d dragged into the corner, turning my back on him. Wrapping my arms around my body, I felt the bite on my neck give a twinge, a constant reminder I couldn’t erase.

“Go away,” I whispered.

“Gemma—”

“I’ll beg if I have to,” I informed him, my voice shaking, trying to hold back another sob. “Please, just go away!”

Silent tears tracked down my cheeks as I stared at the shadows flickering against the stone walls. I could see his shadow there too, long but wide.

So, so alone, I thought. What I wouldn’t have given for my sisters right now. For Fran. For a familiar face, even my father’s. Because the heart was a fickle thing and I couldn’t simply erase the love I had for him.

I felt my face crumple. My shoulders shook as the deep sobs clawed up my throat.

Finally, though not soon enough for my liking, I heard Azur retreat. His heavy footsteps boomed across the floor, sounding quick and angry.

When the door closed behind him, I cried even harder.

At least he was gone.

Truly alone now, I thought.

Chapter 10

Azur

There was a smooth, flat perch on the stone roof of the keep. My father, when he’d been a young boy, had chiseled out the stone with his claws so he might sit comfortably to escape the house.

My father, the great Thraan of House Kaalium, had come into his wings later in life, a failing that his own father had never failed to remind him of.

As such, he’d liked to escape the house, to go up high to satisfy his instincts, though he could not fly there. Instead, he’d escaped out the top window from the east wing’s watch tower and navigated over a perilous, narrow stretch of roof line, before he’d chosen his preferred spot. It overlooked the Silver Sea, glittering and beautiful, especially with the moon rising overhead.

Whenever he was on planet, he still came up here. Last time he’d been on Krynn—though it had been five years—we’d shared a weighty pipe of lore and said absolutely nothing to each other the entire time as we’d listened to the echoing sounds of Laras behind us and heard the waves crash against the cliffside below.

Kythel and I would come out here in our younger years, after Father had shown us this place. Those moments had brought me peace. After what had occurred in Gemma’s rooms, I found that I sorely needed peace.

After plucking out some lore from my cabinets, I flew out the balcony windows of my own private rooms, catapulting myself into the sky, and for one blissful, impulsive moment, I allowed myself to freefall. My stomach curled in on itself, and then I flared my wings wide, heaving them down with zero effort, which surprised me for a brief moment until I realized why—why I was so strong right now. I caught the wind, gliding with it until I circled the keep and landed neatly on the roof. The stone had been worn with time and ample use. I settled into it, tucking my wings behind me and stretching my legs out along the sloped stone tiles.