To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,33
this, and you will enjoy every bite. Then you will thank me for it.”
“Had you offered it to me nicely, I would have been grateful. Now, you can take that meat and choke on it.” She ducked beneath his arm and walked toward her bag.
Unfortunately, the dragon was faster. A faint rustling of his wings and the light scrape of his feet across the floor were her only warnings before he darted in front of her and snatched up her bag in his free hand with a snarl.
“Then you will starve, human!”
Elliya growled. “I do not need an overbearing male to provide for me!”
“And I did not need a mate, yet here you stand.”
Tears of frustration—and pain she refused to acknowledge—filled her eyes. “Why must you be so hateful?”
Something flickered in his gaze, something deep and sorrowful, but it was gone so quickly that she could only assume it had been her imagination. His features were hard-set when he replied, “Because you are human, and you forced this bond upon me. You have stolen everything from me, Elliya.”
“What have I stolen from you?”
The orange glow in his chest flared again, creeping down to his abdomen and up his neck. “My shape. My desire. My life. You have trapped me in this pathetic form for the rest of my days, you have forced me to yearn for you like I have yearned for nothing else in my existence, and you have robbed me of my immortality.”
Elliya’s heart stuttered, her brow furrowed, and her lips fell into a frown. He could not… He could not truly have meant what he’d said, that couldn’t possibly be the truth. “What?”
His voice dripped with bitterness and loathing as he said, “The touch of a human hand upon a dragon’s scales is binding in every way, female. You have tied my life to yours—and your life is but a single spark compared to the roaring fire that was mine. I had eternity. Now I have you.”
Elliya retreated a few steps, chest tight, heart pounding. She’d bound herself to a mate who despised her, and now she understood why. She couldn’t blame him. Unknowingly, she’d taken everything from him.
The stories had never mentioned the price exacted upon the claimed dragon. She’d joined the Crimson Hunt so she could have a choice in her life, a choice in a mate, but in doing so, she had stolen the dragon’s choice. Elliya had enslaved him. She’d longed for a true mate, for a loving mate, for a male who cherished her and her alone, but instead had trapped a dragon who’d forever hate her for what she had taken from him.
Whatever desire he had for her was forced by the mating bond and the Red Star. Any tenderness he might have shown her, any affection, any care, wouldn’t have been real. Those tastes she’d had were nothing more than illusions.
Elliya turned her face away from him. “I did not know the cost.”
The dragon strode forward, his heat radiating against her skin. That tense, furious energy wafted from him along with it, making the air thick and charged, as unsettling as the time leading up to a thunderstorm. “And would you have cared? The price was never yours to pay.”
“I never would have participated in the Crimson Hunt had I known. I am sorry for all you have lost, and sorrier still that it was me who took it.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I did not know.” She hadn’t cried since she was a young girl, but she could not stop the flow now.
He caught her chin with his fingers and forced her face toward him. There was a crease between his brows, which were low over those intense eyes, and his lips were curled down in a frown. “What is this? Why are your eyes leaking, Elliya?”
Elliya pulled out of his hold and wiped her eyes with the back of it as she turned away from him. “They are called tears. Do dragons not cry?”
“No. I find it…unsettling.” He shifted closer to her again, but without the speed and aggression of before. “Would you stop if I ask you to eat nicely?”
Horrifyingly, those words only coaxed more tears from her eyes. Shaking her head, she laughed and sniffled, hating how weak and pathetic she must’ve appeared in that moment. “It is only th-the bond making you feel that way.” She took in a deep breath and looked up at the cave’s uneven ceiling, willing the tears to