The Clan (Book One)

•Chapter XXII•

•Chapter XXII•

Stay calm...

We're always the bad one
in someone's story.

<•••••∆•••••>

  I laid there... Eyes closed, listening to the gentle heart beat of the man I had just given myself to. He made patterns on my bare back as my chest was pressed against his and I sighed in happiness. This was how it was supposed to be, how it was always supposed to be.
There were many things we had to learn but he knew more about me than even I realized. The way he held me last night; the way our body's fit perfectly together like pieces of a puzzle, it made me feel whole. Once our bonding was complete, he opened his mind to me and I to him. I could see and feel the heartbreak he felt when he thought I was dead. I saw his brother die along with his mother in a battle against the Kings guard and his Clan. I saw how long he's felt alone and empty and how hard he's tried to keep his people safe but feeling unacceptable since he couldn't even protect his bonder.

He saw me, he saw my pain and my life that I was forced to live. It was like learning everything about a person in a few short minutes yet feeling as though you've known them your entire life. I understood Octavian in ways I didn't or couldn't before. His heart was something I was being trusted to protect and him with mine. As we held each other in this moment, it was like we've been this way our entire lives. It felt natural as all our problems dicipated in that very moment.

"Shadow Lord!" Someone yelled.

Octavian and I shot up from our sleeping positions in our bed and watched as a younger dragon came running into our chamber.

"Why do you disturb us at this ungodly hour Chandler?!" Octavian growled out at the poor boy.

"Soldiers! Soldiers are marching our way!" He said panicking and out of breath.

We still had one more day of mourning; why do they come so soon?

"Alert the others." Octavia commanded.

He quickly dressed himself and I watched him unaware of what I should do. I wasn't processing what was happening and why they were here a day early. It was against tradition and is considered dishonorable.

"Octavian-"

"Stay here." He said, cutting me off.

"Excuse me?"

He halted his movements and looked back at me with worried eyes. He studied my face as if this would be the last he'd see of it; which made me uneasy. I sat on my haunches with the thin blanket still covering my bare body, looking my bonder in the eyes. We were finally one, connected in ways no other would be to us. I was his as much as he was mine yet, we still had much to learn of one another. I wasn't about to lose that chance.

He rushed back, grabbing the back of my neck, smashing his lips against mine. This was his way of telling me that this was not the end of us But there was also a part of him, I felt, that believed this to be the last he'd see of me and that made my soul cry out to him.
He left me in his chambers once again, alone and cold without his touch. My head fell into my hands and tears threatened to fall from my eyes the longer I sat there anticipating the end of whatever war waged outside our doors.

Anger rose inside me instead, an anger I can only describe as a dragons fire. I got out of bed a dressed myself in the cloths he ripped from my body a few hours before. With every step I took, the ground shook in anticipation and the wind blew in rage causing the caves to sing a war song.
I bound out of the mouth of the cave and was surprised that I wasn't met with battle cries or bodies littering the ground. Instead, I saw Octavian speaking to my brother and a young looking women standing at his side. I didn't need to be informed that it was the Queen who stood proud at her sons side. Her years didn't scar her face like it did others the same age, instead she looked more like a sister or a wife than his mother which threw me off.

Something wasn't right about her but I couldn't pin point what it was that had me feeling that way. I stood tall, overlooking the sea of men that planned to take our mountain. I looked  over my brother who stood proudly against my Bonder in forced defiance.
And somehow, with the thousands of eyes that looked back at me, I met a pair that held hatred towards me for simply existing. Queen Tatiana held my gaze as I watched her once delicate face, morph into that of a witch. Her blond hair now looked gray and her soft features were wrinkled with age. Did no one else see her shift from beauty to beast? And as if I didn't feel crazy enough.

She screamed an inhuman scream that brought me to my knees, but no one else seemed to hear her. Her eyes were no longer blue like the ocean but dilated black pupils that tried to ravage my very soul.
She was a siren with a banchy whale and I knew she figured out who I was and that she had failed to terminate me. Weather she smelled my father or saw our similar features, I knew there was no escaping her now.

She knew i was alive and she wasn't going to make that same mistake twice.