Just that one word and it undid me completely.
The scales hit their full brilliance and the entire room flooded with warm gold light, incandescent and total, pouring from my skin in a wave that had nothing to do with anything I couldcontrol and everything to do with the woman beneath me. My dragon, finally, completely, irreversibly certain.
This one. Her. Always.
We stayed locked together in the gold light, her hands pressed flat against my chest, feeling the warmth of the scales pulse beneath her palms. Her breathing slowed gradually, mine did too.
Her fingers began tracing the patterns of the scales absently, the way she used to trace the rim of her coffee cup at the bakery counter when she was thinking.
"Kael," she said finally, her voice breathy and slightly undone.
"I know," I said.
She tilted her head back to look at me, her eyes warm and unguarded in a way I had never seen them before. Not even in six months of morning visits and honey-ember tarts and everything we'd been building without either of us having the courage to call it what it was.
"You really glowed," she said.
A laugh moved through my chest before I could stop it, low and quiet.
"I really glowed," I confirmed.
She smiled. Small and real and entirely hers.
And I thought that I would spend the rest of my life making sure she had reasons to smile like that.
Starting tomorrow with honey-ember tarts.
But for now I held her close and felt her settle against my chest with a soft exhale and let the gold light hold us both in the quiet of the room where I had grown up dreaming of exactly this without ever knowing her name.
13
AMARA
The first thing I noticed was the warmth and not just the blankets or the nest still soft around me, but the specific warmth of a body behind mine, a broad chest rising and falling slowly against my back, an arm draped over my waist like it had always belonged there.
I lay still for a moment and let myself feel it. I felt safe and I felt chosen.
Two things I had stopped believing were available to me sometime around the age of nineteen when Colin had looked at me and found me lacking. Two things I had quietly stopped asking for because wanting them and not having them hurt worse than just not wanting them at all.
My hand moved to my neck without me deciding to and I found the bite mark. My fingers rested there, pressing gently against the tenderness. I had expected to wake up in a panic, had expected the cold morning light to strip away whatever had felt so certain in the dark and leave me with nothing but regret and a very complicated situation.
What I actually felt was settled, and quiet in a way I hadn't been in years.
My phone was on the bedside table and the screen was lit up with notifications. I reached for it carefully, trying not to wake Kael, and squinted at the messages.
Lila.
All seven messages were from my cousin. The first few were relatively restrained. By the fourth one she had apparently abandoned all pretense.
Amara I need details RIGHT NOW.
He literally GLOWED. The whole east wing. People were talking about it all night.
Are you bonded? Oh my god are you BONDED?
Call me.
Amara.
