Chapter 16: A change in character

Chapter 16

Ruby’s POV

My chest was beating loudly in my ears, and my blood seemed to rush up to my head as soon as Thane's tight hold on me was gone.

I doubled over, a series of painful coughs escaping my throat, and a cold wave of fear flashed through my veins. I remembered the look in his eyes, he would have killed me. Why was he acting so strange, asking me strange questions I knew nothing about, and trying to kill me when I didn't do what he asked?

My eyes went wide as saucers as I scrambled backwards on the floor, not even minding the broken glasses that dug into my skin as I moved.

My terror only grew as Lucas approached me. He wasn't human either, I had seen him use some kind of power to stop Thane’s attack. They were both crazy, and both wanted me dead.

‘’If you kill her now, you would die too,’’ Lucas said calmly as he came to a stop in front of me, my back hitting the cold, hard wall. His words did nothing to clear my confusion but only made me even more confused as my gaze darted between the two of them.

‘’She has laid a dragon mate mark on you,’’ Lucas said calmly, as he seeemd to stare hard at me like i was hiding something he was curious about.

‘’Well, you should know how to break it, aren’t you a dragon? So get to it,’’ Thane said from behind us, his voice filled with a cold anger that made me shiver.

‘’I do know how to break it, but we can’t do so in the first six months, as it will leave you both dead. So that means you have to bear it for these first six months and be nice to her,’’ Lucas said, turning back around to face Thane. My brain was spinning fast, trying to understand what they were saying, but it was hard to follow with my blood pumping hard in my ears.

‘’Nice to her? All I want to do is dig her little dragon heart out,’’ Thane said coldly, sidestepping Lucas to now glare at me from across the room. I shivered in fear, my whole body trembling under his cold stare.

‘’Well, since she is the one who marked you, any pain and emotion she goes through would be felt twice the intensity by you, but she wouldn’t feel anything from your end,’’ Lucas paused as he turned back to face me, his gaze now filled with a strange curiosity.

‘’I’m actually more curious as to how she is able to share her body with a dragon. It's like two different people in one body,’’ Lucas said, looking at me with a questioning gaze, but I remained mute, not even knowing what he was talking about.

‘’No, what you should be doing is finding out how to break this bond between us,’’ Thane said coldly from behind as he stalked out of the bathroom, leaving Lucas alone with me.

‘’The dragon inside of you seems so powerful, you were able to summon me, haha.’’ Lucas laughed to himself before also turning around and walking out of the bathroom, leaving me alone in the black shade of the bathroom with the broken bathtub and the cold air slapping against my exposed skin.

A dragon was residing inside of me? What did that even mean? But just then, I remembered the flash of a bright, gold light that had blasted from me as Thane had sank his fangs into my neck.

The next thing I knew, I was being pinned up on the wall, with him asking me to undo a curse. My mind went blank again, a chaotic mix of fear and confusion, as I tried to piece together the pieces of my life that no longer made any sense.

My head spun as I tried to make sense of it all. The chaos of the last few minutes was slowly settling into a cold, terrifying clarity. Things weren't making sense, but I came to two conclusions, one was that Thane really hated me now, and the other was that he wouldn't be able to hurt me for at least the six-month period that Lucas had mentioned.

I took a huge swallow to wet my parched throat as I tried to push myself up from the floor where I had been sitting for heaven knows how long. There was a needle-pricking sensation as I stood up, as if the blood flow had been restricted with how long I had been sitting there.

With the help of the wall, I slowly made my way out of the bathroom. ‘’Grrrr!’’ a sharp pang of pain slid up the side of my belly, making me clutch it hard in pain. I haven’t had anything to eat the whole day, and it wasn't looking like I would be having anything to eat anytime soon.

I froze in my tracks as I came face to face with Thane. He was standing in the doorway, his face set in a grim line that made my heart skip a beat. I took a deep swallow, my eyes never leaving him as he remained leaning on the doorway.

The shadows that made it through from the slightly open windows seemed to dance all over his naked, bare chest.

The darkness made his tattoo-covered skin look like it was alive, moving and breathing with its own life. I found myself taking a hard swallow as my eyes wandered lower to follow the trace of hair that dotted his pelvic area and went lower into his pants that hung low on his taut waist.

‘’You seem to have hurt yourself. Show me,’’ I heard him say, his voice deep and a bit warm. His words shocked me out of my wits. Why would he be concerned if I was hurt? Then, I remembered what Lucas had said, any pain I felt, he felt twice as much.

‘’Ummmm… I don’t think I have hurt myself…’’ I rushed out in fear as he was quickly approaching me.

My eyes fell low not to meet his eyes, but I was instead greeted with a closer view of his lower torso. I have never seen a man half-naked, and not this close up, and one with a body like he did.

I nearly slapped myself in the head as I reminded myself that this was someone who would not hesitate to dig my heart out and feed it to me. But just then, the loud sound of my stomach groaning in protest tore through the air again, and I didn’t need a mirror to tell me just how red I looked right now.