I close my eyes. The castle groans around me. Old stone, old magic, shifting under a truth it can no longer contain.
Slowly, I turn the page again, even though all I want to do is burn the damn thing. This one is written in blood. Dried dark. Dragon blood.
“No sleep may outlast fate.”
I swallow.
“At fifty years, erosion of the magic begins. At one hundred, total collapse of the mate is inevitable.”
My vision narrows. I do the math without meaning to. Fifty. Seventy-three. One hundred… only 27 more years until…
Time I do not have. I begin to breathe faster.
A final passage, quieter than the rest. Almost kind.
“What appears as preservation may in truth be consumption.To keep a fated mate asleep is to kill them slowly.”
The book slips from my claws and strikes the stone floor with a sound like a verdict.
Final.
I stare at the empty space where it was.
I have a fated mate. After over 1,000 years, I have found my one true mate. And all this time. The bite was never keeping her asleep. It was keeping us bound. Feeding a bond I was unaware of. Keepingmesane. Keeping the magic from tearing itself apart while it waited for what it was always meant to have.
Mutual presence.
Mutual awareness.
Choice.
The candles go out completely.
In the sudden dark, the truth settles. Not as panic, but as certainty.
The curse is not failing.
It is fighting me. Ithasbeen fighting me.
Adelaide and I have been bound by fate, and if I keep her asleep, it will kill us both.
Slowly.
Hungrily.
As fate always does.
CHAPTER 6
THE DRAGON
One month.
I've known for one month, and I still haven't told her.
I stand in the doorway of our bedroom, watching her sleep. The morning light catches in her golden hair, spreads across the silk sheets tangled around her body. I took her braid out last night to wrap her hair around my cock last night. She looks peaceful. Perfect. Mine.
But she's dying.
