It wasn’t. Nothing was ever enough.
Until her.
I kiss her like I’m drowning. Like she’s air and I’ve been suffocating for three hundred years. She responds with equal desperation—fingers tangling in my hair, hips arching against mine, small sounds escaping her throat that drive my dragon to the edge of madness.
CLAIM. MARK. MAKE HER OURS FOREVER.
Soon. So soon.
I strip her slowly. Deliberately. Cataloging every inch of skin as it’s revealed—the freckles across her shoulders, the scars on her wrists where the manacles bit, the lean muscle she’s built through weeks of training. She’s changed since that first day in the infirmary. Stronger. Fiercer. Still broken in places, but healing.
We’re both healing.
“Rurik.” My name on her lips sounds like a prayer. “Please.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Everything.” She pulls me down, captures my mouth. “All of it. All of you.”
I give her everything.
We move together—fire meeting fire, her flames rising to twine with mine. The incomplete mark on her chest blazes asthe claiming magic builds. I feel it growing between us, ancient power responding to our need, our want, our choice.
This isn’t just physical. The claiming never is.
It’s souls tangling. Fires merging. Two becoming one in a way that can never be undone.
“Look at me.” I brace myself above her, buried deep, her body wrapped around mine. “Aisling. Look at me.”
Her eyes open. Green and fierce and full of things neither of us has words for.
“I love you.” The words tear out of me. Raw. True. “I love you. I’m claiming you. And I will burn down anyone who ever tries to hurt you again.”
“I love you too.” Her hands cup my face. Steady despite everything. “Now stop talking and finish it.”
I let the claiming fire loose.
It pours from my chest into hers—wild and red-gold, the essence of my dragon given form. Her fire rises to meet it. White-gold and fierce. They crash together, merge, become something new. Something that’s both of us and neither. Something that will burn between us until the end of time.
The mark sears into her skin.
She cries out—not in pain, but in completion. In relief. In the overwhelming rightness of finally, finally being whole.
I feel it too. Feel her inside me in a way I’ve never experienced. Her heartbeat echoing in my chest. Her emotions bleeding into mine. Joy and exhaustion and fierce, overwhelming love.
MATE. OURS. FOREVER.
The dragon settles. Not quiet—never quiet—but content. Satisfied in a way it’s never been before.
Home. We’re finally home.
AISLING
The claiming mark burns.
Not like pain. Like completion. Like a puzzle piece finally slotting into place after being held wrong for too long. I feel it spreading across my chest—Rurik’s fire writing itself into my skin, branding me in a way that has nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with belonging.
When I can finally breathe again, when the world stops spinning and the fire settles into a steady glow beneath my ribs, I look down.
