Pyrran blinked. "I was a fool. I will spend decades making it up.”
She frowned. “I thought I was going to die.”
“You are a dragon, my queen. It would take a lot more than a fall to kill you.”
Sol swallowed.
And then his eyes widened with excitement. "You're real, and you're ours."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water. Sol felt them ripple through her—through her human heart that wanted to reject them, and through her dragon heart that rose up purring in response.
Ours. Mates. Claim them.
Korin stirred beside her.
His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer against his chest. His eyes fluttered open—molten gold, still hazy with sleep—and when they found her face, they softened with something that made her chest ache.
"Little queen, you're awake." His voice was a warm rasp against her ear. He sat up and his lips brushed her temple—barely a kiss, more a nuzzle—and Sol felt her resolve crumbling like sugar in rain.
She was naked between two dragon kings who had hunted her across the sky.
She should be terrified.
She should be fighting.
She should be anything other than this—this melting, this wanting, this desperate ache building between her thighs as their heat pressed against her from both sides.
"How long was I asleep?" she asked, because she needed words, needed something to anchor her to reality before she drowned in sensation.
"Several hours," Korin answered. His hand traced idle patterns on her hip, leaving trails of warmth in its wake. "You shifted back on your own about an hour after we found you. We brought you here to rest."
"You stayed with me?"
"We will always stay with you," Pyrran said from her other side. His fingers found a strand of her hair, twisting it slowly around his knuckle. "You are ours now, little queen. Where else would we be?"
The possessiveness in his voice should have infuriated her.
It didn't.
It made the heat between her thighs pulse harder.
What is wrong with me?
But she knew the answer now. She had felt it in the sky when her dragon body had betrayed her—the wanting, the needing, the instinct older than thought that recognized these two males as hers.
She was a dragon, and dragons took what they wanted.
Sol lay back down and closed her eyes. Korin followed because soon she felt their heat pressing against her from both sides. She also felt the hum of power still thrumming beneath her skin and the last of her resistance crumbling into ash.
She whispered, "I don't understand any of this."
Korin leaned closer and brushed her jaw with his lips. "You don't have to understand it."
Pyrran's breath ghosted across her shoulder. "You just have tofeelit."
Sol's eyes remained closed, but she finally allowed herself to feel everything. Korin's warmth radiating against her left side, his hand still tracing lazy patterns on her hip. Pyrran's cool presence on her right, his fingers still twisting slowly through her hair.
The silk beneath her bare skin.
