I bit her.
The bond opened the second my teeth went in. It did not arrive gently.
One heartbeat, I was aware of her beneath my hands. The warmth of her skin. The curve of her shoulder. The controlled lift of her breath. The next, she was everywhere.
A channel that had not existed a moment before tore open through me and filled with her. Pulse. Heat. Salt. The sharp, bright edge of pain. The steadiness under it. Her heart struck once against my mouth, and mine answered from inside my ribs, as if my body had been waiting all its life to be corrected by hers.
The scent-lock had told me:There. Mate.
The bond told me everything else. She had chosen this. She had chosen me.
Her taste flooded my mouth, and the dragon came up through my body with no theater, no display, no courtly nonsense. Only a pleased, possessive certainty so old it felt carved into bone.
Catalina made a sound with no formal protocol attached to it as the bond opened in her, impossibly bright.
I felt it from both sides of the bond. From inside my body and hers. From the place my teeth held her and the place her control finally broke.
It lit her, sharp and brilliant and impossible to hide. The bond carried every tremor back to me. Her pulse, her breath, the helpless arch of her body pushing into mine. Mine answered before I could command it not to, dragon and man both going still with the terrible reverence of being trusted with something that private.
In the council chamber.
Before nine elders in formal robes.
Before Yuki Ashenmere. Before Bjorn. Before Morag. Before Graves.
Most of the chamber found, with admirable discipline, that the ceiling required immediate study.
Her hand locked around my wrist as her knees gave, and I caught her before the room could see her fall, one arm braced at her back, my other hand still at her jaw, holding her through every tremor the bond gave back to me.
My teeth stayed in her throat for the time protocol required and then half a second longer, because the dragon in me had no intention of releasing her until the bond finished its first violent pass through us both.
When I eased back, the chamber had been very disciplined for several seconds in a row.
Yuki spoke in English now, for the record. “The claim is received.” Then Yuki added, in the formal register she didn’t waste, “The reciprocal claim remains the human’s to give. In her time. By her will.”
A private mercy. The protocol’s elegant little exit. Catalina could return the claim later. In a quieter room. Without the political risk of being watched while everyone pretended not to watch.
Catalina looked at me with determination. “Now,” she said.
The chamber went still and Yuki’s eyes sharpened.
Yes.
I had expected Catalina to give the reciprocal later, in private.
I should’ve known better.
She had spent her life watching powerful men edit women in rooms where the first version was never written down.
She wasn’t going to be edited.
She stepped closer, still unsteady enough that I moved with her before she had to ask, one hand firm at her waist.
“You said we were doing this the right way,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then I want it done all the way.”
