My dragon whips around midair.
MATE.The word isn’t a thought. It’s a command.CLAIM. NOW.
I bank hard, circling lower despite every rational part of my brain screaming warnings. The rain streams across my scales, doing nothing to cool the heat building under my skin. Centuries of discipline. Centuries of control. And now this woman’s scent threatens to unravel everything.
I find her on the road. Walking. In a thunderstorm. With nothing but a pack on her back and a branch in her hand.
She’s either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish.
The dragon doesn’t care which. It wants her regardless.
I land in the trees a hundred yards away, shift to human form behind a massive pine. The transformation is violent—bones cracking, scales receding, wings folding into flesh. I brace against the bark, fighting the urge to go to her.
“I’ve got pepper spray and anger issues!” Her voice carries through the rain.
My dragon stills.Listen to her. She’s perfect.
“And this is private property, so whatever you are, back off!”
She’s shouting at shadows in a monster-filled forest with nothing but a stick and attitude. Something in my chest clenches.Definitely both. Brave and foolish.
I follow her at a distance, staying downwind, tracking her progress through the trees. She’s fast for a human. Competent. Doesn’t panic when she finds the claw marks—rogues have been testing our borders for weeks—she just studies them with clinical interest.
Smart. She’s smart too.
She keeps walking. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t cry. Sets her jaw and pushes forward through the rain and the dark and the very real possibility that something is hunting her.
And she has no idea what she is. No idea that her blood sings to every dragon within a hundred miles. No idea that her grandmother was one of us, too—bound to a human life by choice rather than birth.
The dragon’s approval pulses through me, hot and insistent. Every instinct I possess screams to reveal myself. To claim her before anyone else realizes what she is.
A Fire-Bringer. The first in centuries.
And she just walked straight into the most dangerous territory on the continent.
I perchon the cabin roof in dragon form, claws digging into the old shingles.
Below, she fortifies. Pots balanced on the door handle. Chairs wedged under windows. That baseball bat never leaving her hand. I can hear her muttering through the chimney, her voice carrying up through the cold night air.
“Okay, creepy forest creatures, bring it on.” Metal clangs—more pots, probably. “I’ve survived three terrible boyfriends and student loan debt. Whatever you are, I guarantee I’m meaner.”
My dragon rumbles with amusement.Our mate is fierce.
She’s not ours.I dig my claws deeper into the wood.She can’t be.
I remember the last time I lost control. A rogue dragon had killed a human child in our territory—an act so vile, so needless, that when I found him, my dragon took over completely. By the time I surfaced, there was nothing left to identify. Just ash and the distant horror in my brothers’ faces.
“You were gone for three days,” Zyphon had said. “We couldn’t reach you at all.”
Three days lost to the dragon. Three days of pure, savage instinct.
And that was without a mate. Without the claiming fire burning in my veins.
A wild boar emerges from the trees, drawn by the smell of food from the cabin. It sniffs the air, grunts, starts toward the porch.
I release a controlled burst of flame. Just enough to singe its hindquarters. The boar squeals and crashes back into the underbrush.
Protecting her. Not claiming her. There’s a difference.
