Well, I certainly experienced that firsthand.
“Draxxon and Hamon were bonded. I don’t know how… It just was… The precise knowledge of wyrm-taming is lost to us. Allrecords were destroyed, I’m assuming,aftermy ancestors freed the wyrms after the Final War.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Maybe to bring an end to it. Maybe so no one else would learn their tricks and try to tame wyrms for themselves.”
I’d drifted forward without even realizing it. The roughness of Draxxon’s scale was like sandpaper abrading my fingertips and sent a shiver of low humming power down the bones of my arm. “He’s beautiful,” I sighed, smiling.
“Beautiful,” Graysen murmured in agreement. But when I glimpsed his reflection on a small polished patch of dark scales, he wasn’t looking at the wyrm, he was looking at me. And there was such deep longing in his expression, something fell away beneath me like stepping into sinking sand, cloying and wrong, grief at what once had bloomed between us. Last night, I slept beside him to ward off his nightmares, and it had cracked a rent in the wall I’d erected to keep him out. His heart still matched mine, beat for beat, and it wasn’t cold, it was filled with something I dared not think about.
I wanted that empty feeling back that had carved a hollow space within my chest. The one I’d held tight to after he’d placed Zrenyth’s magic about my neck. But that wasn’t right either. I’d helped him slip the collar over my head and settle it around my throat because he couldn’t.
Despite the complicated feelings where he was concerned, I reminded myself that Graysen was still going through with his family’s plan to use me to get into the Witches Ball.
Straightening my spine, I hardened my resolve to iron. I needed to learn as much as I could aboutthis, us, him,andhis family, starting with wyrm and tamer.
“I can’t quite wrap my head around it all,” I offered honestly, turning back to him to see that he’d safely tucked away his brimming emotions behind a neutral facade.
“Me either,” he replied, stalking closer. He slid his hands into his front pockets as he came to stand flush with me.
I waved a hand between the two of us. “Wyrm and tamer. What does it all mean?” How did it affect us both?
He hitched a shoulder and shook his head as if to say—fucked if I know.
My mind swept back to our family temple and the things Graysen had shared about Hamon and Draxxon.“Obsessive. Territorial. Greedy. And the females…”I muttered under my breath. And before I finished the thought I’d spoken aloud, it slammed into me I was about to echo what Graysen had just revealed. What it meant. The females chose their mates. During estrus, they marked them, claimed them… And they mated for life.
Estrus.
Oh my gods.
In heat.
They claimed their mate in heat.
I had no idea if that would affect me as a human. My wyrm was male. I sensed it. The wyrm and I were connected, its characteristics melded with mine. I was fire and brimstone, and when slighted, easily fell into a rage.
But I was female. And very much human.
Every inch of my body went taut with shock.
I covertly glanced at Graysen, who was stroking a fingertip along the edge of a scale.
That connection he and I shared. That hyperawareness of one another as wyrm and tamer was more than that. He was my human counterpart.
For some godsforsaken reason, I started blushing at the thought of going into heat. I was pretty sure my skin was scarlet from the tips of my toes to my crown as my mind flooded with what we’d shared together in the guest bedroom at myfamily home. I was helpless against the way my secret inner muscles clenched as the memory of him pushing his body into mine echoed between my thighs. The way he thrust. His hips slapping against my own. The deep moans and soft gasps of shared pleasure. I bunched my fingers into my skirt, shifting my bare feet, trying to appear casual to hide the fact that I rubbed my thighs together to rid myself of the burning desire aching between my legs.
Hellsgate.
Fucking hellsgate.
For how long? Would it be days of blissed-out, mind-altering sex? The two of us rutting like animals? That night I had fallen willingly into a world of white-hazed pleasure, no awareness, only a greedy need to take what I wanted, and then suddenly shaken awake with cold water splashing down upon me, sitting at the bottom of the shower looking up at him.
Suddenly, Graysen’s head snapped around to face mine as if a stretched line of string tugged at us both. I met eyes that widened in shock. Perhaps he’d sensed my thoughts, or my flaming cheeks gave me away.
His nostrils flared, and I cursed myself, realizing it was my arousal he could scent. Cursed him too for his keen senses. Cursed us both for this connection.
He shot his gaze forward once more, as did I, the two of us hyperaware of the other, yet pretending that Draxxon was so fucking amazing—which he was—and that there was nowhere else to look but at the wyrm. But we stole sidelong glances at each other, our gazes darting away before they could connect because we knew what the other was thinking.
