“I haven’t been completely honest with you these past three days.” She looked up at him, guilt flickering across her features. “I’ve been working with Nyra to uncover the truth behind Veyra. What she told me today while you were in the shower was sick.”
Draven’s hands stilled completely on the bandage.
She’s been investigating without me?
Part of him bristled at being kept in the dark, but a larger part swelled with pride at her initiative and cunning.
“The antidote was fake,” Lila continued, her voice growing harder with each word. “It was really poison meant to kill you after you agreed to give Veyra your mate mark. You would die, and she would be queen.” She paused as she locked eyes with him. “She has some twisted revenge plot against your family because your father humiliated and rejected her mother when he met your mother.”
The bandage fell from Draven’s hands as fury unlike anything he’d ever experienced blazed through him. His inner fire roared to life, but instead of the chaotic madness he’d battled for years, it felt controlled, focused—deadly.
She would have murdered me and claimed my crown.
“Nyra suspects Veyra killed your father when she was eighteen, as revenge for her mother,” Lila said, her voice even despite the explosive tension radiating from him. “And she killed your mother to isolate you and make your grief spiral, so you’d be vulnerable and easily manipulated for the poison scheme.”
Draven stood abruptly, his hands clenching into fists. “That bitch has been playing the long game for eighteen years.” His voice was dangerously low, the kind of tone that had sent grown dragons scrambling for cover. “She murdered my parents.”
“The proof is all here in the messages between Corin and Veyra,” Lila said, holding up the communicator. “She admits everything—her mother’s humiliation, the murders, the poison plot. All of it in her quest to become queen.”
Every primal instinct wanted him to shift, to hunt Veyra down and end her where she stood.
She took everything from me. My father, my mother, nearly took my mate, nearly killed me.
His dragon snarled for blood and vengeance.
“I want her arrested immediately,” he growled, pacing to the window like a caged predator.
“How about we wait and expose her in front of everybody so she can get a taste of humiliation herself?” Lila’s voice carried a note of satisfied vindictiveness that made his dragon purr with approval. “Give her the same public shame her mother experienced.”
Draven turned back to her, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face.
“That’s a brilliant plan. She deserves to face the same disgrace she’s spent eighteen years plotting to avenge.”
“I have another brilliant plan,” Lila said, her voice dropping to a sultry whisper that made his pulse spike.
“Tell me.”
Her green eyes blazed with determination and something deeper—something that made him forget to breathe. “I’m ready for you to give me your mate mark and complete our mate bond.”
Every cell in his body ignited with euphoric disbelief.
She’s ready. My mate is finally ready.
Before he could form words, she continued. “Watching you fight for me today, seeing your dragon protect me so fiercely—I know this is right. We’re right. I don’t want to wait anymore.”
Draven was across the room in two strides, his hands framing her face as he crashed his mouth to hers. The kiss was hungry and desperate, filled with eighteen years of deep longing and the promise of forever. When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, he rested his forehead against hers.
“Even though my mother’s funeral is tomorrow, this feels like a rebirth,” he whispered against her lips. “Of my soul, of my kingdom, knowing my true queen will be by my side forever.”
Tomorrow, we’ll expose Veyra and get justice for my parents. Today, I claim my queen.
NINETEEN
LILA
As Lila stared into Draven’s eyes, with the sunlight beaming through the cabin’s windows, she realized he wasn’t the dragon king or the man battling fire madness in this moment—he was just Draven. The man who had somehow, impossibly, become the center of her universe.
His voice had been soft but unshakable when he’d spoken of rebirth and a future where she would stand by his side as his queen. It wasn’t the grandness of the title that made her heart swell; it was the certainty in his words and the way he stared at her like she was the axis his world revolved around.
