That... that can’t mean what it sounds like, does it?
I lean back just far enough to be able to see his whole face. “I thought you said dragons got to choose.”
“We do,” Zan says. “We have to choose the bond, and that means trusting that we are both the kind of people who will continue to choose each other for our entire lives no matter how we change and grow—because otherwise the mate bond can snap, which kills us. But until we choose, we always know when the potential is there. There has never been another possibility for me, Yora. Not in more than five hundred years.”
Oh.
So when he said, before, that he had only been tempted to settle down once...
Oh.
“Is that... normal?” I ask tentatively.
Zan shakes his head. “No. Before we leave the eyrie, dragons have usually felt the potential with multiple others. And I have continued encountering dragons over the centuries. You are the only one for me.”
Good.
I never knew I could be so possessive, but I am fiercely—exultant? smug?—to know he has never felt like he could have a bond with anyone else.
But—
“I’m going to need you to spell out for me what the godsdamn problem is, then,” I practically growl.
Zan’s eyes glow, and his jaw clenches like he has to fight with himself just to say, “Because just because I don’t have choices doesn’t meanyoushouldn’t.”
Oh his instincts donotlike that, do they?
How noble of him, but mine don’t either.
“You’re very much close enough to punch,” I tell him tightly.
“You don’t understand. Yes, Iknow, let me— I’ve never had to explain this before,” he says in frustration.
Well, at least we’re both pissed off?
I abruptly turn and tug him toward the couch.
He doesn’t pull away but follows me, and I hold onto that tiny hope.
This should have been incredible news for both of us, and I can’t help feeling a little hurt that we’re fighting about it instead.
But I sit down and pull him down next to me.
“I’ll wait,” I say simply.
After all, he waited for me for five hundred years.
Zan takes a moment to gather his thoughts. “A mate bond is... a lot,” he finally says. “It’s intense. Our magic will be entwined at our core. I’ll be able to be inside your head. We won’t share abilities, but we will share strength—which means I can pull it from you any time. There won’t... there won’t be many boundaries between us.”
“I genuinely don’t know what makes you think I want boundaries between us.” I practically invited the man to watch me naked.
“Because you barely know who you want to be, and I don’t want to limit that,” Zan says. “For you to find out later you want to change and can’t without killing me. I don’t want totrapyou—do you understand?”
Okay, maybe I do. He doesn’t want to limit the shape of my future like the Order did.
But it’s not the same if I’m choosing to let him shape my future.
He’s the one who pointed out that there are boundaries, and there are boundaries.
