The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 16

MIDAS

The entire forest goes silent the minute he takes the first step into its shadows.

Like a single organism holding its breath in anticipation.

a predator watching its prey; stalking...observing...waiting for the perfect moment to pounce, to attack.

Midas rolls his shoulders and breaths in the stale, unmoving air.

"Let them come."

He walks beneath sunless copses, into pools of darkness punctuated only by thin shafts of silvery moonlight passing through the leaves.

The towering trees stare baleful down at him as if disapproving of his intrusion into their space.

Screaming oaks of magnificent mahogany brown in the day, transformed in the darkness into grotesque faces contorted in pain, twisted bloodwoods with scarlet sap running down their trunk as if from bleeding wounds and spotted, stark white birches, ghostly in the night light.

He c***s his head to listen as he walks carefully through the forest.

The only sounds are the crunch and crackle of twigs and dried fallen pods snapping beneath his boots, loud in the unnerving stillness of the forest.

Grotesque fungi litter the forest floor, leaking out their sticky poisonous sap when he steps on them and every now and then, he can hear the scurrying of strange creatures that crept under the twisting, sprawling limbs of the trees above him. He can hear them crawling in the gloomy foliage.

Their feverish yellow eyes, shiny with hunger, watch him between the rotten, moss covered boughs but they do not dare to come any closer.

Thigh high creepers snag at his trousers, pull at his clothes like tiny hands and when he tears them off, they leave a sticky, rancid slime on his palms.

For Hades' sake where is she?

"Er'gan."

Silence.

"Er'gan, cease your sulking at once and answer me."

The dragon slithers and stretches to the surface of his consciousness, filling his mind with the full force of its disapproval.

Midas sighed. "The sooner you help me replace her, the sooner we can get out of here. Do you sense her?"

Er'gan says nothing but Midas can feel his senses sharpen.

Suddenly, the forest is alive with sounds. He can hear every falling leaf and every scurrying insect.

The smells of the forest also become sharper, stronger.

The moldy, rank smell of decaying plants, the tangy, cloying sweetness of the poisonous forest fruits; sharp and stinging in his nose.

And beneath it all, he can sense them; a fetid stench of corruption that rises and oozes through the curtain of leaves, infecting everything.

"I sense nothing human dragon king. Maybe she is already dead"

"Try harder."

The dragon bristles beneath his skin but says nothing, opening and reaching out through Midas' senses once more.

Then it comes; drifting and gliding towards him.

A scent so completely different from the pungent odor of the Elder forest at night, it is almost a physical shock.

"By the gods..." he whispers breathlessly.

It is faint. Barely even a trickle yet it fills every part of him.

The aroma of elderberries and wild cherries dipped in honey.

So exquisite in its teasing perfection, it raises the hairs on his arm and makes his insides clench with fierce longing.

He starts in the direction where the scent is slightly strongest but even then it keeps fading in and out like smoke; elusive, slipping between his fingers and he has to struggle not to lose it. Not to lose her.

A twig snaps loudly to his right and his head jerks sharp towards it.

Another, loud and crunching, the sound of movement beneath padded feet comes towards him from his left.

He glides smoothly beneath the darkness and into the shadow of a large tree. It's brown trunk rough and hard when he presses his back against it.

Er'gan is alert within him now.

He closes his eyes and slows his heartbeat so he can hear theirs; unhurried and rhythmic as the hunters stalk silent and deadly towards him on both sides.

He would not have heard them were it not for his heightened dragon senses and as they creep closer, their claws sinking into the soft mulch of the moss covered forest floor, he can smell them too.

He reaches behind him and draws both swords from their scabbards with the barely audible sound of metal sliding on wood.

A familiar, comforting hiss.

The obsidian steel glistens dark in the moonlight and he tightens his grip on them.

A rustle in the foliage in front of him snaps his eyes open just in time to notice a flash of fur the color of tar in the bushes ahead.

There are two more of the predators in the shrubs straight ahead and they appear first.

Slinking out of the bushes, with their shiny black bodies gleaming wet in the darkness, illuminated by the swirls and whorls of blue light that writhes beneath their skin like magic runes. The other two have appeared now and the four predators circle him slowly.

Their tails swishing lazily as red eyes bright and shiny in narrowed slits watch him carefully.

Long bared fangs hang out over open jaws and saliva drools down their chins to drip on the dark, rich soil below.

The wild cats know this is no easy prey and they stalk him cautiously, their jaws pulled into low, fierce, feral snarls.

"I guess it's no use asking you to let me out."

A cruel dark smile curls up the dragon king's lips and he can feel the familiar, bitter sweet rush of blood l**t gliding like poison in his veins.

His fingers flex around the hilts of his sword. "And let you have all the fun. I do not think so."

For a single moment the forest goes silent again and it's like everything slows down, holding its breath.

Then they attack.

The two cats in front leap throw the air, launching on their larger, longer, more powerful back legs, teeth bared and claws extended.

Midas dives sharply to the right and throws his left sword with startling accuracy.

It pierces straight through the eye of the closest cat ahead, passing with effortless ease through flesh and bone and a loud strangled cry escapes the beast's mouth.

The cat on his right leaps claws first and in one powerful swipe, tears the sleeve of his shirt to shreds below his amour plates and slices open the skin of his right arm. Midas growls low and swings his arm hard, throwing off the hunter attached to it with so much force, the wild cat crashes into a tree and snaps the trunk in half. Too late, he hears the one behind him charge with a loud snarl.

But before it can pounce, sink its teeth into the sides of his neck, he swings the sword in a dizzying arc and the animal's head goes flying in the opposite direction.

The other two cats, including the one with his sword in its eye seemingly enraged, dive at him with inhumane, feline speed.

He dives low on his knees, plunging his sword all the way to the hilt right below the neck of the half blind one while it is still in the air and slides under the blackness of the animal. The cat lands on its feet and for one second, its single red eye blinks as if confused.

Then it crumbles to the ground, its belly slit open, entrails and blood, spilling first unto the forest floor.

Midas sends his sword singing through the air again.

But the other one catches itself in the last second and dives out of the way of his swinging sword, claws sliding and gripping hard on the ground.

Demon red eyes clashing with the molten gold of the ruler of the 5th realm.

Hunter and prey stare at each other.

Except now, the roles are reversed and the animal knows it.

It roars and sneers, teeth bared but Midas knows it won't attack. Not anymore.

Not that it matters.

That smile, dark and dangerous stretches his face again.

The monster beneath Midas' skin has tasted blood and it wants more. Nothing else matters.

He knows that even if the cat turnd around and runs, tails between its legs, he will go after it.

If it hides, he will replace it.

He will not stop...can not stop until he has killed it.

Something claws persistently at the back of his brain.

It is trying to tell him something.

Trying to remind him of the exact reason he had been walking in the forbidden grounds of the Elder forest at night in the first place.

But he cannot hear it... will not hear it.

Nothing can get past roar of the blood [**t rushing through his veins, staining his vision a hazy, cloudy red.

Until his sword slices through flesh and muscle and passes through the heart of those who have dared to attack him, nothing else matters.

The cat seems to know this too and it takes a step back, no longer snarling.

A pitiful whine of fear emanating from its throat causes Midas to laugh cruelly. It knows it will die that night and it is afraid. Good.

Nothing...else...matters.

A loud scream tears through the forest and like a shaft, a hot sword of bright light, it slices through the darkness around his head and Midas jerks forward as if physically pushed, his hands clutching his head. The animal senses his killer is now distracted and slinks away quickly, disappearing into the darkness.

"How did..."

But Midas is no longer listening to his dragon and does not care for the surprise in its voice.

There it is again. A scream that sends fear gripping coldly around his heart.

Because even infused with blood curdling panic, he recognizes the voice.

He drags his second sword from the eye of the dead animal and races through the forest.

He's running with all the speed of a dragon Ryder but it doesn't seem to be enough and when the scream comes again he feels his heart tighten.

Gods above do not let me be too late.

"HELP!!!"

"Hera!!!"

He screams back but she doesn't respond, maybe doesn't even hear him.

She's too far away.

So he yells her name again, until the back of his throat hurts. "HERA!!!"

"MIDAS?! MIDAS!!!"

And maybe it's the sound of his name falling from her mouth in that strangled, heartbreaking, hope filled voice that pushes him even faster.

He sees her at the last second.

"Hera!"

Her head snaps towards his and for one brief, beautiful moment those luminescent, glacial blue eyes look at him with something other than hatred. And as his heart swells he sends the sword hurtling, through the air and towards her.