I close my eyes. Let the couch take my weight. Let the poison work its way out of my system while the dragon paces and growls and demands things I cannot give it.
She didn’t run.
She saw the dragon—the scales, the fire, the violence—and she didn’t run.
She helped me instead.
That changes things. I’m not sure how yet. I’m not sure what it means for either of us.
But as her scent wraps around me and her presence fills the cabin and my wounds begin to close, I know one thing with absolute certainty.
Staying away from her just became impossible.
FOUR
SELENE
He heals fast.
I’ve been watching the wounds close for the past two hours, and it still doesn’t seem real. The gashes across his shoulder and back—wounds that should have required surgery, hospitalization, probably a blood transfusion—are now nothing but faint pink lines. In another hour, I doubt there’ll be any evidence they existed at all.
It’s unsettling. Fascinating. A little bit awe-inspiring, if I’m being honest.
Dragon metabolism.Right.
Drayke sits on the edge of my couch, shirtless, because his was destroyed in the transformation. I’ve been very carefully not looking at his chest. At the way his muscles shift when he moves. At the V of his hips disappearing into the waistband of the pants I found in Grandma’s closet—men’s pants, which raises questions I’m not ready to ask.
Eyes up, Selene. He’s a dragon. An actual dragon. Stop objectifying the mythical creature.
I dip the cloth back into the basin and wring it out. The water has gone pink with blood—his blood, which apparently runs hotter than any human’s. Every time I touch his skin, heat seepsinto my fingers. Not uncomfortable. Just... present. Constant. Impossible to ignore.
“You don’t have to keep doing that.” His voice is a low rumble. “The wounds are nearly closed.”
“Humor me.” I press the cloth to a particularly stubborn gash near his spine. “I don’t have a lot of experience with dragon first aid. For all I know, there’s some critical step I’m missing. Apply pressure for twenty minutes or your patient spontaneously combusts.”
A sound escapes him. Low. Rough. It takes me a moment to realize he’s laughing.
“We don’t spontaneously combust.”
“Good to know.” I move to his shoulder, cleaning away the last traces of dried blood. “What about other fun dragon facts I should be aware of? Do you hoard gold? Sleep on piles of treasure? Eat princesses?”
“No. No. And no.” He turns his head slightly, and I catch a glimpse of his profile. Strong jaw. Straight nose. Lips that look softer than they have any right to on a face that hard. “Though the hoarding instinct is... not entirely inaccurate.”
“So you do have a pile of gold somewhere.”
“Not gold.” Something shifts in his voice. Darkens. “Dragons hoard what matters to them. For some, it’s wealth. For others, territory. Knowledge. Power.”
“And you?”
Silence. Long enough he might not answer.
“I protect what’s mine.” The words come out rough. Final. As if they cost him something to say.
I set the cloth down. My hands are steadier than they should be, given that I’m essentially having a casual conversation with a shape-shifting apex predator.
“So. Dragon.” I settle back on my heels, meeting his gaze when he turns to face me. “New for me. Scale of one to ten, how likely am I to be eaten by your friends?”
“They’re not my friends.” His jaw tightens. “They’re my brothers. And they don’t eat humans.”
