Cursed Ice_Paranormal Fantasy by Ann Gimpel

Author:Ann Gimpel [Gimpel, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ann Gimpel Books, LLC
Published: 2019-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

A Short Time Earlier

When I understood the serpent was trying to seize Katya’s body to escape the hold we had on its own, I felt helpless. Incensed such a thing could have happened, and ill-prepared to fight back. I could have left it to the other dragon shifters—the ones who actually understood how to wield their power—but I didn’t have it in me to walk away.

Katya knelt on the ground, head down as if she were praying. Her hair fell around her in a cascade of copper curls, the golden highlights pronounced in the soft light of this world. I may have danced around my feelings before, but in that moment I understood I’d fallen in love with her. Maybe my dragon had something to do with it, but I’d been attracted to her from the moment I laid eyes on her.

A man would have to be dead to not be smitten by her charms, yet my feelings extended far beyond her curves and hair and eyes. I’d fallen in love with her spirit, the bedrock of what made Katya who she was. Determined. Sure of herself.

Because I was still linked to her magic, I felt the moment when the serpent made the leap and tapped into her. My dragon shut off our magical flow damned fast, before I even thought it might be the wisest move.

“That was selfish,” I told my bondmate. “Now we cannot help her. Not as easily as we might have.”

“We would do no good at all if the serpent nabbed us along with her,” he retorted.

His words gave me the idea to offer myself. I’d wait until the situation was truly desperate, of course. But surely one dragon shifter was as good as the next for the serpent’s purposes.

All around me, dragons were shifting and bugling. Some took to the skies, but Konstantin and Nikolai remained on the ground. Kon tried to pick Katya up, but the moment he released her, she collapsed in a nerveless heap. It was as if she’d been drained of the ability to do anything. Not so much as an eyelid quivered.

It may have been ill-advised, but I shouted at the goddamned, fucking serpent to take me instead. My dragon gave me nine kinds of grief. I waited for Armageddon to fall on my head, but nothing happened. Apparently, I wasn’t as appealing a vessel as Katya.

Kon was chanting over her. Nikolai picked up the refrain. They seemed to have whatever magic they’d selected well in hand, so I knelt next to her. I blurted that I loved her and told her what I’d gleaned from her twin, which was that once the serpent fully had its claws into her, we wouldn’t be able to pull her back from its clutches. Not easily, anyway. The difference with the dragons we’d found in the ice was there were no serpents physically here guarding them, merely remnants of sea-serpent magic.

Even those remnants had given us a merry chase as we defused them.

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