“You gave me this. However you did it—I’m not going to hate you for it.”
He doesn’t respondwith words.
Instead he reaches for me. His hand cups my jaw, tilts my face up toward his. The contact sends heat cascading through my skin—not the heat of fever, not the heat of fire. Different. Deeper. As if his touch has found pathways that didn’t exist before and claimed them as his own.
“You don’t understand what this means.” His voice is rough. “The mating bond isn’t temporary. It doesn’t fade. From now until the end of everything, I will know where you are. I will feel when you’re hurt. And I will never, ever stop coming for you.”
“Is that supposed to frighten me?”
“It’s supposed to be the truth.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “I won’t apologize for keeping you alive. But you deserve to know what I’ve done. What we are now.”
What we are now.
The bond pulses in the back of my consciousness—a presence I’m only beginning to recognize. Not intrusive. Not demanding. Simply there, like a pulse echoing his own.
“I know what we are.” I hold his gaze. “I’m choosing not to regret it.”
His grip tightens on my jaw. Not painful. Possessive. “Say that again.”
“I’m choosing not to regret it.”
When he kisses me,it’s not gentle.
Nothing about him is gentle—the way his other hand fists in my hair, the way his body presses me back against the warm rock, the way his mouth takes instead of asks. This is claiming. Possession. The physical manifestation of what the bond has already accomplished at a deeper level.
I meet him with equal force.
My fingers dig into his shoulders, finding the places between wounds where I can grip without causing fresh damage. His skin burns beneath my palms, dragon heat barely contained, and I press into it instead of away from it. Let the fire fill me the way it filled me when I was dying.
The way it saved me.
His mouth moves from my lips to my throat. Teeth graze the pulse point that’s beating faster than it has any right to, and the sensation sends electricity racing through nerves that feel newly awakened. I arch into him without thinking.
“Tell me to stop.” The words vibrate against my skin. “Tell me and I will.”
“No.”
His laugh is harsh, broken. “Stubborn witch.”
“Says the dragon who claimed me while I was unconscious.”
He pulls back. Meets my eyes with an intensity that makes my breath catch. “Do you want this?”
“I want to feel anything other than dying.” The truth emerges raw and unfiltered. “I want to know what this body can do when it’s not fighting to survive. I want?—”
I stop. I’ve never been good at articulating want. Years of rationing every expenditure of energy have trained me to focus on need—the immediate, the essential. Want was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
“I want you.”
His expression shifts. Not softer—he doesn’t do soft—but more intent. Focused in a way that makes me feel like prey, like the target of attention so absolute nothing else exists.
“Then you’ll have me.”
TWENTY-SIX
SOREIA
He strips me with an economy of movement that borders on clinical.
