Dragons Realm Read Free Page A

fam­ily’s humble garden; and it usu­ally gave her strength.
    Usu­ally.
    Today was al­to­gether dif­fer­ent.
    “Of course,” she fi­nally mumbled, feel­ing more than a little bit queasy. Gath­er­ing her cour­age, she headed for the door.

Chapter Two
    M ina forced her­self to place one foot in front of the other, to simply keep her eyes on the cobble­stone path be­fore her, as she stoic­ally made her way to­ward the white horse. A deep, gut­tural sound brought her up short— was that ac­tu­ally a growl? —and her eyes shot to Dante. She took an un­wit­ting step back­ward. “Mi­lord?”
    “You’re bleed­ing.” He licked his full lips be­fore wav­ing her for­ward with his hand. “Come to me.”
    Mina’s heart began to race in her chest. She glanced down at her wounded arm and quickly covered it with the palm of her other hand. “It’s…it’s noth­ing.”
    His voice dropped to a sul­try purr, dev­ast­at­ing in its in­tens­ity. “I said, come to me .”
    Mina gulped. She raised her chin, took a slow, deep breath, and tent­at­ively stepped for­ward.
    “Closer.”
    She took an­other step for­ward. And then, with a wave of im­pa­tience, Dante nar­rowed his eyes on her feet, his pu­pils flashed burnt or­ange or crim­son—it was too fast to tell—and she was sud­denly stand­ing be­fore him, their toes nearly touch­ing. Blessed Nuri, Lord of Fire, the dragon had moved her body with his mind . She quickly dis­missed the thought; it was more than she could grasp.
    “What happened?” he asked, as he reached out to take her arm.
    Mina fought not to pull it away and tuck it be­hind her back. “Noth­ing.”
    He smiled faintly, but there was no joy in the ex­pres­sion. “Six years at the Keep and you still do not un­der­stand au­thor­ity?”
    She as­sumed the ques­tion was rhet­or­ical, but she answered any­way. “No…I mean yes …mi­lord.” She watched him as he stud­ied the wounds on her arm.
    “I’ll ask again: What happened ?”
    “Pralina,” Mina whispered. When he glared at her an­grily, she ad­ded, “She snatched my arm and dug her nails into my flesh.”
    “Why?”
    “I…be­cause…in re­sponse to my in­solence.” She bit her bot­tom lip.
    He nod­ded. “ Pralina …” And then he began to caress the wound ab­sently with his thumb. He rubbed slow circles over the jagged in­cisions as he stud­ied them more closely, and then he pressed his own thumb­nail into the deep­est of the cuts.
    “Ouch!” Mina flinched.
    “Shh, be still,” he whispered, and then he did some­thing as strange as it was un­ex­pec­ted. He slowly bent his head, his mid­night hair fall­ing for­ward in a silken frame that shiel­ded his eyes, and lapped up the blood in three slow strokes of his tongue.
    Mina gasped. She drew back her arm and stared at him in mor­bid fas­cin­a­tion. She looked down at her arm and shuddered—the wounds were all gone.
    He ges­tured to­ward the horse. “Your mount, Mina.”
    Mina took a cour­ageous step to­ward the beau­ti­ful white geld­ing and reached for the sloped leather horn, and then she froze.
    She had thought she could do this.
    Heck, she had been trained for six long years to do just this , but the real­ity of the Dragons—the real­ity of Dante—was far more fore­bod­ing than she had ex­pec­ted. Noth­ing she had been taught had pre­pared her for this first real-life en­counter, the over­whelm­ing pres­ence of the preter­nat­ural male stand­ing so close be­side her, the way he watched her with those eyes , the way he ap­praised her with barely con­cealed fe­ro­city in his gaze. And she wasn’t at all sure she could go through with it, that she wouldn’t end up be­ing ex­ecuted for dis­obedi­ence be­fore the en­counter was over.
    She reached once more for the saddle horn, will­ing her body to com­ply with the prince’s com­mand. After all, what was the big deal?