His hand stayed warm at my jaw, grounding me before the law could turn intimate things into paperwork and make me want to set something important on fire.
He said, “Norwegian custom is formal, especially for second bonds.”
“The first mate is present,” he continued, “or formally represented.”
My fingers stilled on his mark. “You.”
“Yes, to acknowledge the structure.” He had selected every sentence from a more dangerous pile. “To prevent a later challenge. To make clear the second bond is not theft, coercion, or a rival claim made through weakness in the first.”
I stared at him. “Romantic.”
“Dragon law rarely is.”
“No, it has all the sensuality of the DMV.”
This time, his mouth did move enough that something in my chest loosened for a breath before the rest of the problem came back.
I let out a breath. “And if we do it privately?”
“Then the bond would still be real.”
“But politically messy.”
“Yes.”
I searched his face. “How messy?”
Dominic’s expression didn’t change. “Messy enough for Martin Solberg to use it.”
“And you?” I asked.
The look held. “What about me?”
The deflection was so neat I almost admired it.
“How would you feel?”
I felt the question hit him. He sorted it on tactical-brief settings. Threat. Cost. Consequence. Acceptable loss. He weighed it as strategy because strategy gave him somewhere to stand that wasn’t quicksand.
“I would feel it,” he said.
I slanted a look at him. “That isn’t an answer.”
His mouth thinned. “No.”
Then silence. I did not rush to fill it. Let him work. Dominic Graves could take apart an ambush route in four seconds. He could survive the emotional version without my rescuing him from it.
“The dragon would object,” he said at last.
That, at least, was honest.
I waited.
“The man would not.”
I didn’t let him hide in that division. “And underneath both?”
He didn’t look away. A dragging, reluctant pressurebroke through the bond.
