Page 70 of Red Dragon’s Flame

I would, Mikah thought. I’d do whatever it takes, to keep her alive and give her the life she deserves.

Whatever it takes.

Chapter 32

Back at Al-Maddeiri, Emon held a debriefing meeting in his office, to let the Ops team know how the meeting had gone, and for them to make final plans for the following night.

When the team leaders started to get into mission tactics, Mikah and Devon quietly left.

She’d barely said anything during the meeting, and she was still silent as they walked back to their rooms. When they got there he poured them drinks, not knowing what to say.

Devon went to the open window and stared out, leaning her elbows on the wide stone windowsill.

Mikah stood irresolute. He was supposed to be her mate, her protector, her hero. But how could he possibly fix this? The Ops team might get the male phoenix back, but that wouldn’t help Devon. For her, death and disaster seemed to lie in every direction.

Finally, the distance between them was too hard to bear. He went over and stood behind her, lifting the silky strands of her hair and letting them slide between his fingers.

“Talk to me,” he said softly. “Tell me what you want. Whatever it is, I’ll make it happen. I swear.”

She leaned back against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He could feel the heat of the phoenix coming from her tattoo, and wished to all the Draken gods he could just bottle it up and keep it there.

But she was his Devon, his love, his mate, and she didn’t want that. He slid his arms around her and held her close.

“What I want,” she repeated softly, and then gave a laugh that just missed being bitter. “The last time I believed I could have what I wanted just because I wanted it, I was seven years old.”

He kissed the top of her head, still without words. What could he say to that?

She went on, “I want to be a regular person, who doesn’t need a phoenix wrapped around her spine to function. I want to mate with you, and get all dragoned up like Lucinda and Maddie, so I can live as long as a Quahog clam and be yours for hundreds of years.”

She was starting to cry; a couple of tears fell and splashed on his arm. “I want to have your little dragon babies, and I want them to have little dragon tantrums and set the dinner table on fire and then watch their faces light up when you restore it.”

The picture of that filled his heart to overflowing—he could feel his own eyes sting. “I want that too,” he said. “But I don’t care if you have to keep the phoenix to do it.”

Devon said, “But I do. And I know, deep down, you do too, because you’re a good man, and you don’t believe in enslaving other creatures just so you can get what you want.”

“I don’t think I’m as good a man as you think I am.” He’d sacrifice every phoenix in existence to give Devon the life she deserved.

“You are.” She sounded positive. “The phoenix gave me fifteen years of life. Now she needs to go free, to save herself. I have to let her go.”

But you’ll die. He couldn’t even say the words out loud, but he knew she could hear them. You’ll die, and I’ll lose you. I can’t lose you.

She said, There are ways to keep me alive.

Maybe.

He said, “My dragon could claim you, like the other shifters do. There’s a chance that the power of the mating bond could heal the spinal damage.”

They both knew that was a long shot—the more so because he couldn’t claim her until the phoenix was out of her body. She couldn’t tolerate the magic. That would give them a very small window.

“We’d have to have a backup plan,” she said.

He nodded. “Thorne and Tyr are working on it.”

But they were running out of time. The twenty-four deadline Emon had set wasn’t arbitrary. It was all the time they had.

So he turned her to face him, and kissed her with all the love he felt in his heart. Then he swept her up and carried her over to the bed, dissolving her clothes one piece at a time, kissing each precious part of her.

He made love to her with everything inside him that wouldn’t go into words—all the yearning, all the fear of loss, all the longing for years and decades and centuries of learning to know each other, of bonding and fighting and loving.