The corner of his mouth twitches. “No… absolutely not.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do this then.” I’m out of bed before Rogue can respond, moving with the grace of a gazelle still getting used to her own speed. Five minutes later, I’m dressed and walking into the main room.
Scorch enters the cabin first. He shoulders through the doorway like the room needs to adjust around him, and the heat of him arrives before he does, a wall of warmth that hits me in the chest. His arms are crossed, his expression carrying that permanently furrowed quality of someone who was born impatient with the universe and has spent five hundred years confirming his suspicions about it. The veins along his forearms carry a faint luminescence, deep amber and red, barely visible beneath the skin, yet present the way a banked fire is, quiet but entirely unextinguished.
He stops at a careful distance and looks at me, assessing rather than judging, head tilted, eyes moving over me with a methodical attention that has nothing to do with pity.
“Dragon fire…” he says, without preamble, “… can burn away vampire instincts. Temporarily.” He pauses, and his jaw shifts. “It’ll hurt like hell. No way to dress that up differently. But it might give you clarity. Space between you and the bloodlust where you can actually think instead of just fight.”
I stare at him. “You want to set me on fire?”
“Controlled application.” He uncrosses his arms, and the faint glow in his veins shifts, brightening slightly as if responding to the subject matter. “Nothing burns that isn’t meant to. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
Something about the complete lack of apology in his voice, the absence of any attempt to make this sound appealing, lands more convincingly than reassurance would have. He’s not selling me anything. He’s telling me the truth and leaving the choice where it belongs.
“Noted,” I say.
The corner of his mouth shifts, barely, but there. He nods once, which, from Scorch, I suspect, constitutes the equivalent of an enthusiastic endorsement, and steps back toward the center of the cabin.
“Sit,” he says, his voice low, all business now.
Rogue moves before I do, dragging a heavy chair into the open space near the hearth. The air thickens, as if the cabin is bracing for impact. I lower myself onto the seat slowly, instincts snarling at the idea of stillness while something stronger prepares to burn.
Scorch rolls his shoulders once. The glow beneath his skin intensifies, veins lighting in molten amber and red. Heat gathers around him in slow, deliberate waves. Shadows bend toward him, drawn by something older than fire. “Keep your eyes on me,” he says.
I do.
His gaze shifts first, molten gold bleeding through the brown, ancient and vast. When he exhales, the air ripples, shimmering between us like a thin veil.
“This isn’t punishment,” he murmurs. “It’s refinement.”
Then he breathes fire.
A narrow ribbon of living flame unfurls from him, controlled and precise, gold-edged in white heat. It coils toward me like it already knows my shape.
The moment it touches me, pain detonates.
Not surface pain. It drives inward, burning through instinct, through hunger, through the restless beast pacing behind my ribs. My back arches, my fingers crushing into the arms of the chair as heat floods my veins.
A raw sound tears from my throat before I can stop it.
The Dragonfire sinks deeper, peeling back layers I didn’t know existed—every moment since my turning flashes through me.
Every surge of bloodlust.
Every fight for control.
My vision fractures into shards of gold.
And then… something else is there.
Not Scorch.
But bigger.
A presence brushes against my mind like the sweep of colossal wings. Ancient awareness coils around me, curious rather than cruel. I feel scales without seeing them, heat without flame, a consciousness so vast it makes my thoughts feel small and fragile.
Dragon.
