Page 99 of Feralheart

Borrowing. The way Tolross borrowed my hum.

When she dove toward the treetops, I flattened myself against her neck. When she pulled up sharply, my thighs clamped tight and my hands found purchase on her spike like they’d always known where to go.

We rose higher.

The fortress poked through the clouds in the distance, a dark smudge perched near the top of the mountain. Mist shrouded the castle above it. Somewhere in that castle, Fenian was probably in his rooms. Running through Scorching strategies he’d practiced since childhood.

My chest ached from the impossible need for a man who’d stepped into darkness for me but who lived in a world that would destroy me just for existing.

Selira’s curiosity hummed through the bond.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered. “He’s nothing. Just another thing that can’t matter.”

If her rumble sounded skeptical, I pretended not to notice.

I didn’t know what disturbed me more. That he’d killed for me without hesitation, or that some twisted part of me had felt alright watching him do it. He’d moved like violence was a language he spoke fluently, and I’d understood every word.

Selira and I flew.

It wasn’t smooth or the polished flight of dragons who’d been trained to compensate for their riders’ every movement. This felt wild.

Noble riders controlled their dragons with reins that bit and rune magic that forced. I was partnering with mine.

The realization settled into my bones.

Selira’s happiness drowned out everything else.

Flying. Finally flying with her human on her back. The human who’d healed her and chosen her and was learning to move with her instead of trying to force her into submission.

The bond hummed between us, tightening.

I stopped trying to control anything and just felt. Wind screaming past. The mountain peaks rising around us. And a sky so blue it hurt to look at it above us.

I laughed, the sound ripped from my lungs and scattered across the sky.

And then the price hit me.

A flash of vision—not mine. Stone walls and iron bars. A dragon muzzled, its wings clipped. The elite did this to dragons who bonded wrong. To dragons who chose for themselves. If they saw what we’d done, they wouldn’t just kill Selira. They’d cage her first. Study her. They’d try to break what we’d built and remake it to fit the system they’d lived with forever.

My stomach lurched. I’d just signed her death warrant along with my race registration.

Through the bond, I felt Selira’s defiance. A sense of let them try so fierce it scorched through me.

Right. We’d chosen this together, which meant we’d face what came together too.

Selira’s pleased rumble vibrated through her body, into mine. A purr that said yes, exactly, this.

Bonds were not about control or submission. Not about runes that forced and harnesses that bit.

But choice.

She banked again, and I moved with her, anticipating the turn before she made it. We dove, the ground rushing toward us, and she pulled up at the last second, skimming above the treetops, her talons brushing leaves.

My face hurt from smiling. Cramps ripped through my hands gripping her spike. And spasms wracked my thighs from holding on.

None of it mattered.

We flew until the sun shifted lower and my body remembered it hadn’t slept properly in days. Until the hesitation in Selira’s wings showed the first hints of strain.