“We don’t want to cage you,” Valerie chimed in. “You are independent and your own person. You should live how you want to. We just worry that such an upheaval so soon might not be good for you.”
Hele had a peculiar realization then: it was entirely possible to love her adopted family more than she ever had, and yet still want to leave them. The feelings, which had previously seemed mutually exclusive, were perfectly in sync. She loved them so much that her throat tightened with the force of it, but she also knew that she was right. It was time to spread her wings.
“I need to do this. It’s important to me.” Her words were soft, her cadence still slightly unnatural, but the feeling was strong.
Her parents, who had taken her into their nest and treated her like a daughter without hesitation, shared a meaningful look. “All right,” Constantin answered, his expression bittersweet. “We’ll help you find a roost, but I want to see you in the nest every week, so I know you’re well.”
Hele’s heart raced. A smile curved her mouth. “Of course,Isa.I will still need company when I do the crossword.”
* * *
He’d been in a piss-poor mood for five days. It just so happened that it had also been five days since he last saw his star.
A year ago, the other dragons in the Wing might have given him shit for his bad attitude, knowing that it stemmed from his entirely obvious obsession with a certain elemental, but they had long since exchanged jokes for pitying glances.
Two years.Two years had crawled by since he caught his falling star, his curious, delightfully strange Hele, and that deeplydragonpart of his brain simply…clicked.
This one is mine,he’d thought, perfectly calm even as they plunged through the air.This is who I Choose.
Gods, he’d been so excited to hold her in his arms, to stare down at her shining face in the shade of his wings. His heart soared when she blinked up at him with wonder.“I’ve always thought lightning was pretty,”he remembered saying.“And now I get to hold it in my arms.”
But she hadn’t understood him. She couldn’t speak. She could only panic, and his heart had sunk.
He’d Chosen her, but he could not claim her — not until she was ready.
It wasn’t such a hardship at first. Getting her settled and cared for was the first step. Watching her grow, and learn, and blow everyone away with her intelligence was a privilege he wouldn’t have given up for anything.
He Chose her when she fell into his arms. Helovedher when she flourished.
So he was in the running for the longest a dragon in the Wing had waited to claim his Chosen. Vael was just behind Pasha, who had spent the better part of five years hunting for a nameless elvish woman, and poor, mad Radek, who refused to believe the mate he’d lost in the final days of the war was truly dead. He’d gone damn near feral in the one hundred and thirty years since.
A glimpse of my future.
A dragon did not wait. It went against every instinct they possessed. Waiting meant that their Chosen might be unprotected, left alone in the cold without a roost or the shelter of their mate’s wings, orworse —they could be claimed by another.
Impossible.
His entire being balked at the thought. Instinct was a roaring pressure on taut nerves. The longer he waited, the worse it got. The temptation to clutch Hele in his claws and take her away grew every day. Always a quiet man, Vael became downrightsurlyas the months passed. His mood only darkened when his comrades began to worry about him.
“Just claim her,”Radek had bluntly advised him.“Don’t wait and watch her slip from your claws. You’ll regret it, boy.”
But she wasn’t ready.
The only impulse that could outpace possessiveness in a dragon was the absolutely immutable urge toprotect.Hele’s health and happiness were above all things in his priorities. In a normal mating, the desire to claim would go hand in hand with the need to protect, but for them…
Hele was so young. Though she looked like a grown woman and he knew intellectually that she was ancient, he could not forget the heartrending vulnerability and fear of her first few days earthside. He thought of how she’d clutched at him in the dark, her body shaking, and the confidence he had watched bloom like a flower in the sun.Soon,he tried to reassure himself.Soon she’ll be ready.
But soon wasn’t soon enough, and every day he felt like he was a step closer to snapping.
Add onto that constant tension the fact that he hadn’t seen her or heard from her in five days? Vael was a bomb about to detonate.
“Go home.” Taevas, the man who had saved his life so many years ago and the Isand he would follow into the Underworld if necessary, wiggled his claws in the direction of the Roost. They were standing on the tarmac of his personal landing strip. A sleek black m-jet loomed over their shoulders, recently emptied of the Isand and his Wing.
Though they all could have flown to the New Zone — where they suffered through a week of United Congress meetings — without the help of technology, Taevas liked to be able to work while traveling. That meant his m-jet was more of a luxe floating office than a plane.
Officially, it was every member of the Wing’s job to guard the Isand every moment he was not in his roost. There were four dragons in the Wing. Two were charged with keeping their eyes on the Isand at all times while the other two scouted ahead and behind.
A man whose duty meant everything to him, Vael immediately answered his Isand with a flat negative. “I’ll see you back to the Roost.”
