Page 63 of Prince of Storms
Two feet shy of the door, my words failed me as I strode through a cold spot. It wasn’t like standing under the vent of an air conditioner and having the cool breeze flutter across your skin, drawing goosebumps.
This kind of cold sank below my skin and into my bones, chilling me to my very core. It was dark and unwelcome, a reminder that evil walked the world. I shivered despite myself. I’d felt this sort of depressive, vile cold before. Once. Seventeen years ago.
A Vorgan had been here. In my room.
Rushing forward, I flung the door to the bathroom open.
“Mia!” I bellowed, but it was pointless. The room was empty. The light was on, but that was it. She’d never been in there. All that time that I’d been calling for her, and she hadn’t been there.
I turned back to the bed. Ty had slipped into unconsciousness. I whispered a prayer to the God-King that he would recover, and then I stormed from my room.
A Vorgan had my mate.
It was time I showed the creature just how big of a mistake it was to fuck with the woman I cared about.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tor
Lightning led the way as I strode out into the hallway, shooting from my skin and drilling into the outlets and light bulbs. The house came alive as my energy sank into its circuits, illuminating my path despite closed circuits. Power filled me as I followed the path of cold and evil.
Even if I hadn’t been able to find that, the undeniable scent of Mia filled the air. Our sex had been vigorous, and she’d exerted herself as much as I had. Now I tracked those pheromones through my house. She was not going to get away from me. I was going to save her, and in the process, I would destroy the Vorgan.
Then I would end the threat of my sister because I had no doubts that she’d unleashed the Vorgan, much as she had before, letting the untamed creature loose on the dragons of the Manerium.
Tempest and the others had died in their sleep to its brutality. My sister would not get such a reprieve. She would die, and die painfully, for what she’d done.
And that was if I found Miaunharmed. If she’d harmed her in any way … I would lock her up in a cell with the Vorgan and let it repay the pain a dozen times over.
Outside the house, thunder rumbled. The incoming storm was responding to my fury and call for power. It would disrupt the local weather cell, but I didn’t give a fuck. The God-King as my witness, I would tear the house down until the storm built into a hurricane before I gave up searching for Mia.
“Where are you going?” I growled as I rounded another corner, the scent more than strong enough on the charged air for me to follow with ease. The continual tendrils of frozen icicles in my blood just served to confirm that.
I’d expected the trail to lead me outside. But it didn’t. Instead, it wound through the house several times. I saw slashes on the floor and the wall, but none of them were bloody. The Vorgan was just destroying for the pleasure of it.
My lips pulled back in a snarl of fury, and I broke into a jog as I realized where we were going. The Vorgan wasn’t heading for a door after all. It wasn’t trying to getoutof the house. It was heading even deeper into it.
I raced ahead, taking the stairs to the basement in a single bound, rolling and coming to my feet as lightning spit in every direction, turning the steel panels into electrified fences as I burst out of the stone tunnel and into the Rift room.
“You bitch,” I growled, seeing the Rift glowing with fresh lightning, indicative of a recent passage.
Rica must have opened it for the Vorgan, guiding it to the other side. They were heading for home. For the mountain under Storm Keep. If they got there, I would never find them. I would never find Mia. She would be lost to me forever.
With a snarl, I rushed at the Rift, throwing myself through it without caring what might be waiting on the other side.
When I was younger, my father had been the one to kill the Vorgan that had attacked. I was too young, too inexperienced with my powers, to be able to take it down. The other dragons, they were too weak.
Now, I was neither. I was heir to the fucking Storm Throne, and I hadallthe power I needed to destroy the Vorgan the way my father had. Royal blood flowed in my veins, descended directly from the God-King himself. My father had taught me much since my sister had been exiled, and it was time I showed her just how poorly she’d erred in coming for me.
My powers had expanded beyond what she could comprehend. I would end the Vorgan, and I would end her. Then I would claim Mia as my mate.
Dragon blood all but sang with promise as I poured energy into my change, swiftly growing in size. Bright blue scales replaced human skin in a patchwork that covered my entire body in the span of an eyeblink. Wings sprouted from my back while my fingers became claws longer than my human forearm.
Without waiting for the change to finish, I hurled myself into the air, a gust of wind coming at my call, sweeping me up and launching me toward the tunnel that would take me into the storm clan lands. Each swoop of my wings accelerated me faster than any other dragon in the entire realm as the wind pushed against me from behind, gathering me into a vortex of swiftly spinning air.
I shot up the giant tunnel, its width enough to accommodate skyscrapers lying side by side, let alone a single dragon. The sheer scope of Mount Drakonus defied comparison. Even as I raced out of the mouth like a cannonball, rocketing into a darkening sky, I couldn’t help but look behind me.
The tunnel I’d exited was near the base of the mountain, while the peak stretched high, high above me. Mount Everest, by comparison, would come perhaps halfway up the side of Drakonus. I wasn’t entirely sure because the peak was always shrouded in a ring of gray-blue clouds, obscuring the top. Only those with a key could fly through those clouds and find the peak where the God-King supposedly lived.
