“No.”
“Shame.”
She swallowed. “This is—the situation is more complicated than I thought.”
“Maya is in danger.” Corin’s eyes flashed. “And I intend to stay here to protect her.”
4
Corin
The hearthfire dragon raised one dramatic eyebrow. Corin leveled his gaze at him.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at me,” Apollo Jenkins drawled. “It’s Maya whose permission you need.”
His mate made a frustrated noise. He could tell how little she wanted to answer the question—how much the mate bond tugged at her, the same way it made him want to throw himself at her feet.
“I’m not in danger,” she argued. “And even if I was—guh.Fine. He can stay on one condition.”
She said it through gritted teeth. But she said it. Corin let his eyes drift down to her, bracing himself for the sight of her.
He’d thought himself prepared, waiting here in this kitchen jail for her arrival. He’d been wrong.
The Maya who had stepped through the door wasn’t the Maya who had worked for him, glossy and sleek as her pregnant belly grew from barely there to huge, rounded beauty. It wasn’t the Maya of his guilty dreams, either, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes dark with desire, her mouth hot against his.
This Maya was a whip of controlled anger. Unpolished, her body softer and heavier, but the soul within honed to a sharpened point.
And now…
Still angry, still gorgeous, still everything he needed with every breath in his body and every atom of his soul.
Telling him he could stay.
She thrust out her chin, as though she could hear the chorus of angels that sang out inside him at her words, and was telling them to watch it. “One condition,” she repeated, and he knew the look of rapid calculation behind her eyes.
She’d agreed he could stay. And she was still trying to think up that one condition.
He raised one eyebrow. “You want me to stay. So you don’t think the hearthfire dragon and his mate can protect you?”
“It’s not myself I’m worried about. Tomás was the one who found the necklace. If there’s any chance he could be in danger—” Her face tightened. “Whoever is behind this, they targeted me because I’m an easy target. So is he.”
“No dragon would threaten a hatchling.” And if any dragon dared even breathe wrong in the presence of Maya’s child, he would make them regret they were ever born.
The same way he did. Because as far as he could tell, the only dragon who had ever threatened Maya and Tomás’s happiness was him.
He’d flown here on his own wings. That had been a mistake. It was the fastest way to travel, but it came at a brutal cost.
Duskfire focused outward brought back old injuries and old damage. Duskfire used to hide when flying fed on the pain in the world outside—and poured it directly into the user. Corin had landed outside Hideaway weighed down by all the misery that paved the world he’d flown over.
It was exhausting.
He drew himself up. What was he doing, moaning over his duskfire’s side effects? He’d come here to protect Maya.
Not to worry about himself.
“Coming through!” a woman called from outside. Felicity shouldered open the door. Corin remembered her as Montfort’s assistant—she’d performed the same role for his enemy that Maya did for him. Now she was the hearthfire dragon’s mate, and shared in his protective power.
His own magic hummed in his bones, and he held it back, a dangerous dog muzzled and leashed.
