My mind betrays me with memory.
Protection. Vigilance. Blood spilled in her name. The words spoken in the dark. Not as spell, not as oath, but as truth.
I love you.
I will keep you safe.
Nothing will touch you while I live.
My claws curl into the page.
The book does not stop.
“Dragon magic rewrites itself upon recognition.Recognition does not require consent.Only devotion to their one true mate.”
The room feels suddenly too small.
I flip the page, faster now. Pages rasp beneath my claws, the sound loud in the silence.
There… another marginal note, cramped, urgent.
“Attempts to maintain sleep after claiming will result in decay.”
Decay.
The word lodges in my chest.
Below it, a diagram. Two interlocking circles. One markedDragon. One markedMate. Between them, a line of blood.
A note beside it, almost apologetic in its precision:
“Blood anchoring following intimacy does not reinforce the curse when a true mate-claim is present.”
My breath comes shallow now.
“No,” I whisper again, but the word has no meaning left.
The candle trembles as if in answer.
“It acts as a reinforcement of the bond.”
The page swims.
My mind reaches backward. Counting, recalculating. Seventy-three years. The bite, every time after. Multiple times a day. The burning, comforting relief afterwards. The temporary stillness. The way the magicsettled. Not outward, but inward into my very soul. Not into the spell, but intous.
I had thought I was correcting imbalance. Ishouldhave been correcting an imbalance.
The book is merciless.
“When the true mate remains unconscious, asymmetry occurs.”
I carefully flip to the next page. “Asymmetry breeds hunger. Hunger demands proximity.”
My claws pierce the parchment. My head swims with disbelief.
Another line, underlined so deeply, the page is scarred:
“Increased frequency is not indulgence.It is starvation due to asymmetry.”
