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The pull did not abate. It intensified, the dragon's wild hunger fusing with my own physical reaction until my pulse hammered in my throat.

That was the precise moment clarity cut through the shock.

This was a trap.

I locked my posture into rigid stillness, the cold discipline of a warrior taking over before emotion could betray me. I examined her again with detached calculation. Somehow, some way they had found the one female who would shatter my composure. They had wrapped the ghost of my murdered love in a beautiful young body and delivered her to my doorstep, expecting a broken, grieving king to surrender to their terms.

A slow, dangerous fury ignited in the center of my chest. It was not the reckless heat of a brawler, but the deep, lethal wrath of a ruler who had been insulted. My hands closed into tight fists at my sides, a slight adjustment that went unnoticed by anyone except Sanyra, who went utterly still beside me.

The human female had stepped forward to deliver her formal greeting. Her words were smooth and her inflection was perfectly measured. Someone had drilled her on every syllable, and that polished perfection felt like further evidence of deliberate deception. My dragon raged against the confines of my flesh, torn between tearing forward to claim her and lunging back to destroy the deceit.

I took one heavy step toward her.

She caught the movement instantly. Her outward poise remained steady, but her green eyes sharpened with the sudden awareness of someone who realized the terrain had turned treacherous. Beneath her calm veneer, her scent shifted, growing richer and warmer. To my utter shock, it was not the scent of pure terror. A distinct spark of physical awareness mirrored my own, and the idea that the Alliance might have engineered even her physical response made my jaw ache from the force of my clenched teeth.

"What treachery is this?" The words came out lower than I intended, rougher, and she flinched, a small involuntary motion quickly suppressed. "What game does the Alliance think to play with me?"

She didn't look away. That surprised me enough that I noted it before I could stop myself from caring.

She stood in her pretty green gown with Marion's scent clinging to her skin and a blood song humming faintly in her veins, and she looked directly back at me with an expression that was neither performance nor panic. It was genuine confusion, edged with something I read as offense.

And still I couldn't stop looking at her.

That was the most infuriating part of all, not the manipulation itself, but that knowing it was manipulation changed nothing about how my body responded. My dragon hadn't quieted. The pull hadn't diminished. I was furious and suspicious and I wanted to go to her anyway, and the coexistence of those three things was so disorienting that I held my ground simply because I didn't trust what I'd do if I moved.

Whoever had sent her was going to learn exactly why the Drakhoni were considered the most dangerous warriors in the universe.

And I was going to start by demanding answers from the female standing twenty feet away, looking at me like I was the one who'd done something wrong.

Chapter 3

Leila

I couldn't process what was happening. One second I'd been performing the formal greeting Binwee had drilled into me, trying to project diplomatic professionalism despite the way my breath had stuttered at the sight of King Kavan. The next, he was accusing me of treachery, his voice a low growl that vibrated through my bones, and the air around him was literally shimmering with heat.

My training kicked in before my conscious mind could catch up. I catalogued the details automatically. The way his guards had shifted into defensive positions, hands moving to weapons in smooth, practiced arcs. The tension in Binwee's small frame beside me, her usual calm replaced by coiled readiness. The other Drakhoni, a tall female with the same white hair and golden eyes as Kavan, watching me with an expression that was more curious than hostile. And Kavan himself, radiating fury so intense I could feel it against my skin like standing too close to an open flame.

But beneath the rage, there was something else. Shock. Confusion. Almost wounded.

What the hell had I done?

"Your Majesty," I said, forcing my voice to remain steady even though my pulse hammered in my throat. "I assure you, there's no treachery here. I don't understand what you're accusing me of."

"You carry another's scent." His words were clipped, each one delivered with barely controlled violence. "Do not insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise." Even through the translator, his voice was distinct, gravelly and low, and it made my skin tingle in the most aggravating way.

I blinked, completely thrown. Another's scent? What did that even mean? I'd showered on the shuttle, used the standard-issue soap. No perfume, I never wore it, found most of it too cloying. And humans don't just randomly smell like other people unless they'd been rolling around in someone else's laundry, which I definitely hadn't.

Without thinking, I lifted my arm slightly and took a discreet sniff, trying to figure out if I'd picked up some strange smell from the shuttle or the fabric replicator. Faint soap, clean replicated fabric, and underneath that, just my own natural scent. Nothing unusual.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, dropping my arm and meeting his gaze directly, protocol be damned. "Humans can't change their natural scent. Not without perfumes or oils, which I'm not wearing. I smell like myself, and that's all I can smell like."

"She speaks the truth, Your Majesty," Binwee said, her voice calm but firm. "I've worked with Leila for months. I'd know if she'd been compromised or manipulated. She's exactly who she appears to be, a human operative sent here in good faith by the Alliance to help with your reintegration."

Kavan's eyes flicked to Binwee, and I thought he might argue. But his gaze returned to me, and his expression shifted. The fury remained, now laced with something more desperate.

He moved.

One second he was ten feet away. The next, he was right in front of me, so close I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. The proximity was immediate and overwhelming, his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the heat rolling off him in waves. He was enormous this close, easily seven and a half feet of solid muscle and barely contained power.