The ice stopped five feet clear of me, though it continued other directions, coating the surface.
“No,” I said, more firmly than I felt, not knowing what I would find out there on the roof but absolutely certain I had to go to him anyway. “I don’t think I am.”
Then, before I could stop myself, I stepped out onto the roof entirely, my hair blowing wildly.
Caz was in pain. He was hurting. And that meant I was too. I wasn’t ready to go all in, to accept his bite, and become mated, but I was no fool either. I could tell that it was going that way. That’s what fate meant. It could be fought, but it would always win in the end.
And right now, Caz needed his fated mate. He neededme. What’s more, I wanted to do this. I wanted to go to him, to care for him. It was like a flower suddenly blossoming, this newfound care. Had seeing his scars really changed me that much? Or had it simply brought down a wall I had been struggling to keep propped up?
“Leave me alone,” Caz growled, his voice coming from behind and above me.
“No,” I said, slowly pivoting on the spot until I could see him.
All of him.
A massive dragon with scales as platinum as his hair was crouched on the far side of the flat surface. Its head still towered above me, the snout easily fifteen feet or more in the air. Baleful yellow eyes glared at me, the vertical slitted pupils narrowing dangerously.
“How did you find me?” His head whipped to the door with a flex of the long neck and fresh frosty air gathered around the end of his snout. “Dirk.”
I had to stop him, and now, the malice in the way he said his brother’s name spelled trouble if I couldn’t find a way to restrain him and keep him up here with me. I didn’t fear Caz, in any form. The only thing I felt around him wassafe. Even now.
But how to keep him here? First, I would have to get his attention. How did one get the attention of the ice tyrant himself?
Do something they aren’t used to dealing with.
Oh, shit. This is a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.
But it was the only one I had.
“Casimir Dvorak IV,” I barked in my best “I’m the boss” voice, even as one giant taloned paw stepped forward. “You will stop right there.”
The dragon’s head snapped back to me with terrifying speed. The giant beast growled so deeply it shook the entire rooftop. I wanted to turn and run, to flee back into the depths of the citadel as it rose up high before me, but I didn’t.
Instead, I glared at it, putting every ounce of courage I had into keeping my feet in place and not retreating or curling up into a ball. I wanted to. The beast was massive. Thick horns rose from the top of his head, a quartet of them swirlingback and forth in a forest of thorny protrusions.
Teeth half as long as I was tall hung over his lower jaw, and frost billowed from nostrils the size of my head. Claws that could slice me in half pressed hard into the stone surface. I could see plenty of divots where they had literally scratched out solid stone in the past.
My skin would be paper compared to them. I should be running in terror, begging for my life and cowering on my knees before the might, the majesty of this alpha dragon.
Instead, I raised a finger and shoved it at the beast. “Enough with this. I need to see Caz. You will shift back.Now.”
Something inside me rose up as I said that, putting an unseen and unheard sort of emphasis on my words. They were infused with more power and gravitas than I could have possessed on my own.
And Caz’s dragon shuddered in response.
My jaw nearly hit the floor as it shivered once more and then bent, as if it could get any lower to the ground. Then, a second later, Caz was standing there, naked but for the mate marks like he had been in the shower as well as the terrarium when he’d saved me from Andrik.
“Much better,” I said, walking up to him.
“How did you do that?” he whispered, his eyes wide and face slack with shock. “It had a firm hold on me. I was doing everything I could notto lose total control and go feral. Then you just walked up here and point afingerat it?How?”
“I think your dragon and mine had a discussion.” I smiled, the words feeling accurate as they came. “Mine made the more persuasive argument.”
“Indeed.” He ran a hand back over his head and through his hair.
Pecs and abdominal muscles stretched with the movement even as the wind undid his efforts in a second, swirling his hair out and around his eyes, still silver-green with the pressure of his dragon. Altogether, it gave him a rather impressive naked wild-man effect.
A very-nakedwild-man effect.
