That doesn't excuse what he did.
But it makes it harder to hate him.
I force myself to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. The path descends now, switchbacking down the mountain face. My legs shake with exhaustion but I keep moving. Can't stop here. Can't rest where I'm exposed and vulnerable.
The bond aches. He's moving. Coming toward me. I feel his urgency like heat through glass, his desperate need to see me, to touch me, to make sure I'm real and not some grief-born hallucination.
"Stay away," I mutter, even though he can't hear me. "Just stay away until I'm ready."
But the bond doesn't care what I want. Just keeps pulling tighter.
I reach the tree line as the sun starts its descent, painting the sky in shades of orange and gold that remind me of his eyes.
The forest here is nothing like the light, airy woods around my village. These trees are ancient—massive pines that block out the sky, trunks so wide three men couldn't link arms around them. The air smells like resin and smoke and something else underneath, something that makes my contaminated blood sing with recognition.
Dragon territory. Where his kind has lived for millennia. Where the old magic still runs through the ground like groundwater.
I find a fallen log covered in soft moss and sink down, my legs giving out with relief. The twins settle slightly, as if they too recognize this place. I press both hands to my belly and feel them there—both still alive, both still moving.
For now.
"Almost there," I whisper to them. To her. "Just a few more miles. Then we can start figuring out how to save you both."
A shadow passes overhead—too large to be a bird, too fast to be anything except dragon. My heart kicks against my ribs. The bond flares bright and hot, recognition singing through my blood.
It's him.
He circles once, twice, a massive black shape against the darkening sky. Scales catching the fading light and throwing it back darker, shot through with veins of deep purple and gold that I never noticed before. Beautiful. Terrifying. Mine, something whispers, and I don't know if it's the bond or my own traitorous heart.
Then he descends, landing in a clearing about fifty yards away. The ground shakes with impact, birds screaming from nearby trees, and I feel the moment his claws touch earth like it's my own body meeting stone.
The shift happens fast—scales rippling into skin, wings folding into shoulders, the massive form compressing into something human-shaped and achingly familiar. He stands at the edge of the clearing, naked because his clothes don't survive the transformation, and I can't stop my eyes from traveling over him.
Broader than I remembered. Or maybe I just forgot. Shoulders that could block out the sun, chest carved with muscle, skin pale gold in the fading light. Scars I've traced with my tongue, planes and hollows I've mapped with my hands in the dark. And lower?—
I wrench my gaze back to his face, heat flooding my cheeks. But not before I notice he's half-hard already, his body responding to my presence the same way mine is responding to his. The bond pulses between us, thick with want neither of us is acknowledging.
"Kess." My name carries across the distance—rough, broken, raw. Like he's been screaming it in his sleep for weeks. "You're here. You're really here."
"I told you I was coming." My voice sounds steadier than I feel. "Through the bond. You felt me."
"I thought—" He stops. Swallows hard. His hands clench at his sides like he's fighting not to reach for me. "I thought maybe I was imagining it. That grief was making me sense things that weren't real."
"I'm real." I don't stand. Don't move toward him. Don't trust myself to be any closer. "And I'm exhausted. And I need to get to the castle before dark."
His eyes drop to my belly, to the visible swell that wasn't there when I left. Something complicated moves across his face—wonder, grief, guilt, desperate tenderness all tangled together. When he looks back up, his golden eyes are wet.
"You're showing."
"I know."
"It's—" His voice cracks. "It's really in there. Growing."
"Both of them." I press my hand protectively over the curve. "For now."
He flinches at that. At the reminder of why I'm here, what's at stake, what his curse might do to our daughter.
"You can ride," he says, visibly pulling himself together. "On my back. In dragon form. It's faster than walking and you—" His eyes trace over me again, cataloguing the changes. The darker purple under my nails. The faint red ring that probably shows around my pupils now when I'm emotional. The exhaustioncarved into every line of my body. "You shouldn't be on your feet. Not after walking all day. Not carrying them."
