I felt so calm and centered with her today.
The mate bond was strengthening every moment they spent together. He could feel it humming beneath his skin, urging him toward her with primal insistence.
If this was how grounded he felt just from her presence, what would claiming her actually feel like?
His communicator buzzed, jarring him from increasingly heated fantasies.
“Veyra,” he answered, noting the sharp edge in his own voice.
“Hello, Draven.” Her tone dripped sweetness. “I’m just checking in to see how things are progressing with your human psychologist.”
Something in her inflection—the way she emphasized ‘human’—made his jaw tighten. “Therapy is going well. Lila is helping me more than I expected.”
A pause. When Veyra spoke again, disappointment and irritation leaked through her careful tone. “I see. How... encouraging.”
“Actually, that reminds me.” Draven leaned forward, studying the communicator as if he could read her expression through it. “Corin mentioned something about an antidote. Hesaid you knew about it—something that could cure my fire madness if I mate with a dragon shifter.”
“Oh, that.” Her voice brightened with sudden enthusiasm. “Yes, I’ve heard rumors. Corin and I discussed it briefly, though I don’t know all the details.”
Liar.Something about her tone suggested she knew far more than she was admitting.
“But Draven,” she continued, her words rushing together with excitement, “if this antidote is real, I could be your solution. Think about the political implications—we’d be such a powerful couple. I could ensure you remain fit for leadership, and together we could?—”
“I’m not rushing into anything.” His voice cut through her sales pitch like a blade. “I’m giving Lila’s therapy two weeks to see if there’s significant improvement.”
The silence stretched long enough that he wondered if she’d hung up.
“You’re running out of time,” Veyra finally said, her mask slipping to reveal sharp irritation. “This fire madness is consuming you. You can’t afford to waste weeks on experimental human psychology when a proven cure is right in front of you.”
“I have to trust this process with Lila for now.”
“Fine.” The word cracked like a whip before the line went dead.
Draven stared at the communicator, unease crawling through his chest.
Why is she getting so worked up?
Veyra’s reaction seemed disproportionate to the situation.
Shouldn’t she want him to get better, even if it meant accepting help from Lila rather than her? Something’s not right here.
But with his mate bond calling him toward Lila and his fire madness finally quiet for now, Veyra’s schemes seemed likedistant thunder compared to the storm of possibility brewing between him and his beautiful therapist.
Draven stalked to his mahogany desk, the weight of duty and urgency pressing against his shoulders like armor that no longer fit. His condition demanded swift action—every day without a solution risked complete mental collapse. Yet beneath that clinical urgency burned something far more primal and intoxicating.
Lila makes me feel alive.
The realization struck him as he pulled out a leather-bound notebook from his desk drawer. For the first time in eighteen years, his mind felt clear, focused, and electric with potential rather than consumed by chaotic fire.
He uncapped his pen and began writing, his normally controlled penmanship flowing with surprising ease across the cream pages.
Fear: That I’ll lose control completely and become the monster everyone expects.
Fear: That the kingdom will crumble under a broken king.
Fear: That I’ll never be worthy of the crown my father died protecting.
The words poured from him like lava finding its path down a mountainside. Eighteen years of suppressed emotion bleeding onto paper in jagged, honest strokes.
