Page 111 of Destined By Dragonblood
Chapter 32
Ashley
I held my face in my hands and sobbed, my heart torn as though a serrated knife had hacked its way through the tender flesh.
“It’s okay,” Vanni murmured, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me onto his lap, but I couldn’t stop the tears. Surely, he experienced the same pain that I did—how could he stand knowing—feeling—Dolyn’s energy leaving us again? Our beta’s awful words were just as distressing, but his absence was ten times more painful now that our energies had become more strongly wrapped up together.
Vanni rocked me back and forth, clutching my cheek against his chest until I quieted, the soothing thump of his heart beneath my ear reassuring.
“He’s gone,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“What should we do?”
Vanni heaved a breath. “Long term? No fucking clue, but I wouldn’t mind a shower right now.”
I pulled back slightly, and he swept his lips up my neck, finding my mouth. With more gentleness than I thought him capable of, Vanni poured his love into our kiss, trying to ease my heartache by giving the kind of tenderness Dolyn had fulfilled me with.
I wished Vanni’s sweetness, his caresses, could fill the part of me that needed more, but an aching emptiness remained deep inside me.
“I’m not enough,” he whispered, tipping his forehead against mine, the hurt in his voice and through our growing bond causing my eyes to sting again.
“Same as I fall short for you.” I pulled back and cradled his whiskered cheeks in my hands. “It’s not that we’re less?—”
Vanni’s snort cut me off, his brow furrowing and thunder filling his eyes. “Fucker needs to get that through his goddamn brain.”
“Try to see things from his perspective, Vanni.” I knew it was hard. I struggled to do the same, but thinking about past royal human lines of blood, rarely did a mere peasant take the throne alongside them. I expected Dolyn felt the same as those from ancient times did, but how could we help him overcome a sense of superiority he’d known as truth for four hundred-some years?
“We should go back to New York,” Vanni muttered.
“No.” I shook my head, the idea of abandoning the cavern turning my stomach to rock. “He’ll return. We’ll find a way to make him see we are worthy of his love. That bonding with us, regardless of our lesser blood, is what he’s longing for.”
Vanni grabbed the bloody shirt off the floor, wrapped his arms around my nakedness, and groaned while standing.
“Put me down.”
“Never.”
I grumbled, but wrapped my legs around his waist like he desired and laid my cheek on his shoulder as he started back the way we’d come in our search of Dolyn. He grabbed the lantern, easily carrying my much smaller frame with one arm. Relaxing against his rock-like chest, I closed my eyes, breathing a little easier.
“Hold onto me, sweetheart,” he whispered, and I knew he meant beyond the physical.
The next morning, showered and in fresh—somewhat—old clothing from the fifties, we made our way to the kitchen and ate the sourdough bread Primrose had left out for us the day before. With only a wood stove’s fire burned down to ash and no sign of matches anywhere, we were unable to make coffee.
I peered at Vanni across the table from me while Tiggy pigged out on a bowl of dog food we’d found in a lower cabinet. “Should we go look for Dolyn?”
Vanni’s gaze shifted toward the windows. Swirling eddies of white hid the far expanse beyond. I’d never been in a blizzard before but expected what happened outside counted as one. “He’s too far away.”
“What about the SUV? Think you can find it again after this snow stops? We’re going to need supplies if we stay here for any length of time.” I glanced around the outdated kitchen. “I don’t know how to cook on a wood stove.” A small stack of firewood lay beside the empty fireplace. “How is it warm in here? There’s no heat source right now.”
Vanni glanced across the cavern and shrugged.
“We should go exploring.” I eyed the oil lantern between us, the glass base of it more than half-full. Vanni had lit the wick earlier with a pack of matches in the bedside table drawer, but we’d left them there. “Shit.”
“What?”
“We didn’t bring the matches with us and turned the lamp off. How are we going to light it again?”
