Burn My Heart: Dragons of Blood and Bone #1: A Viking Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance by Ava Ward

Author:Ava Ward [Ward, Ava]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dragonlight Publishing LLC
Published: 2023-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

16

RUFFIAN

As I leave the bar, my blood boils, my drakaina churning in my veins. The black dragon of my Bloodwalker power has risen high right behind my regular magic, stirred up by my conversation with Bjorn. No matter how I shove it, it won’t be suppressed any more—everything about today has triggered my dark magic to sit up and raise its ugly head for good this time. I growl, heading to the primary avenue and gazing out over the glittering sea.

Suddenly, I’m shifting up into my dragon—launching far up into the late afternoon sky.

I don’t know where I’m headed, as the urge to be free devours me. As I swirl up into my drakaina, my mind is lost to the movement of my beast; I banish my thoughts now, relying on the sensation of muscles bunching and wings slicing the air, and the smell of snow, coastal heather, and ocean detritus.

I fly north up the coast rather than heading inland. As my dragon’s mind takes me, I don’t know how long I’ve flown until the sun lowers over the mountains to the west. This area of the coast so far from Stockholm is remote, but I see lights up ahead, in a massive fortress with a city up on a rocky headland over the ocean cliffs.

Buried in my dragon-thoughts, it feels right as I make a tight circle, diving. Spring snow is piled up in heaps all around as I reach a massive, vaulted building near the center of the fortress. Made of stout wooden beams carved to resemble Viking dragons, the enormous fortress has a roof of thatch. Gigantic archways on the many-tiered structure permit dragons to fly in; I do as the sun snaps out over the horizon, making a beeline for an empty nest of hay and thatch and settling down into it as the chilly night rushes in.

My nest is lined with fluffy goose down; with a snort, I settle in, letting the warm scents of other dragons coming to rest in the evening soothe me. Puffs of super-heated air surround me; as I coil up in the nest, I curl around five or six others to stay warm. I revel in the comfort of my kin as we twine into each other, coiling and sliding scales past each other until our bodies are braided into intricate knotwork. It’s the animal comfort I need right now.

After the vast shitshow that is me and Bjorn.

As I wind into my fellows and feel them embrace me, we settle down to sleep. Dark dreams try to sink their fangs into me, but nestled in among my people, I finally sleep with the peace of the dead. As I breathe with my kinfolk in the night, no foul air disturbs me. It’s morning before I know it.

I blink awake to a cheeky tenor voice chuckling beside me.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the Hög Skjaldmær, Rikyava Andersen. Fancy being curled up with you, sharing a nest.”

I blink awake completely now to that laughing tenor voice.

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