A sound tears from her unconscious throat. Primal. Agonized.
I don’t stop.
The poison fights back. I sense it—the divine toxin recognizing a threat, rallying against the invasion of my fire. For a terrible moment, I’m not certain which will win. The poison was designed to kill specifically what she is. My fire was designed for nothing except destruction.
But destruction is exactly what’s needed.
I burn the poison out of her blood. Burn it out of her organs, her veins, the places where it had wrapped around her magic and begun to strangle. Every trace of the poison, consumed by flames that refuse to accept her death.
The convulsions ease.
Her body goes still.
I pull back.Watch her face in the orange glow of the cave walls.
She’s not breathing.
No. No, that’s not?—
Her ribs rise.
A single, shallow breath. Then another. Deeper this time. More regular.
Her heartbeat steadies beneath my palm. The erratic flutter becomes a rhythm—still weak, still recovering, but consistent in a way it hasn’t been since the abomination’s claws first delivered their payload.
She’s breathing.
She’s alive.
The fire didn’t burn her.
It saved her.
I collapsebeside her on the heated stone.
Every ounce of strength I had left went into that transfer—dragonfire and will and the desperate need to keep her alive poured out until there was nothing remaining. My healing has stalled completely. My wounds seep slowly, blood pooling beneath me on rock that absorbs the heat.
I need to move. Need to check her vital signs. Need to determine whether the mating bond took hold or whether the fire simply forced her body to keep functioning temporarily.
I can’t move.
The best I can manage is turning my head. Watching her breathe. Counting the rise and fall of her ribs like each one is a victory.
I don’t knowhow long I lie there.
Minutes. Hours. The cave exists outside normal time—no windows, no sunlight, only the constant orange glow of heated walls and the sound of her breathing slowly strengthening.
The bond is forming. I sense it—a thread winding between us, fragile and new but growing stronger with each passing moment. The beginning of an awareness that will never fully fade. The first traces of a presence that will occupy space inside me for as long as I exist.
I feel her heartbeat now. Not through my palm pressed to her throat—through the bond itself. A distant rhythm that pulses in the back of my consciousness, faint but unmistakable. Present in a way it wasn’t before.
She’s breathing.
Alive and breathing and here, on heated stone in a cave I’ve claimed as territory, with my fire running through her veins and her heart beating stronger every minute.
Alive.
That’s all that matters.
