Winter Nox in the flesh.
He had a serene smile on his face as he listened to her talking animatedly.
A flash of her magic for a second as she demonstrated something to him had me realizing who she was when the potency of it rolled through the space, turning a few heads.
Christalyn.
Torvek had told me about her. She was one of the children from Haven Initiative all grown up. Many of them had chosen to remain there and the facility had expanded into an actual community over the last two decades. But some of them had ventured out beyond that, like she had clearly done. As I remembered from Torvek, it was her second year here now. She was showing Winter around. That made sense with one of his dad’s—Cassius Ashmoor—having worked at Haven Initiative since she’d been there. Actually, he’d also saved her and all the Celestial children from the Celestial Plane all those years back too.
I went to fully turn from Combat Conclave, intending to greet Winter. Best to do it in a crowded, non-intense atmosphere, I figured.
But before I’d managed to take more than one step into doing that, a shadow fell over me.
In the next second, a big body was blocking my view of him.
I looked up to see who was just two inches from breaching my personal space.
A shot of adrenaline tore through me.
No. No. Fuck, no.
It couldn’t be.
How was he even—what the flying fuck was happening?
Keuric Glastor.
An ice dragon belonging to a high-ranking family in the Dracoryn Realm that was a political ally to House Vortimer.
And to me—my ex-boyfriend.
He smirked at me as he flicked his layered blue hair off his shoulder. He was wearing his bulky black furry jacket, no shirt beneath, his bare chest on display in that usual arrogant way. He had a massive white ice dragon’s head belt buckle on his belt, his wide-legged pants black with glacial swirling markings all over them.
“Want me to take your bags for you, pretty princess?”
Urgh.“I’m a dragon. Just like you.” Actually, not just like him—stronger.
He frowned, not getting it. Of course not. He never had. Although he’d hid that chauvinistic aspect really well for a long time.
Until he’d gotten desperate.
Then things had unraveled.
I didn’t want to get into all of that now—or ever.
“Why are you here?”
“I enrolled here, just like you.”
Son of a bitch.I’d hoped he would tell me that he’d come here to help a friend get settled in. That would have been bad enough. But this, this was obviously far worse.
“What? Why?”
“Why do you think?” He reached out to finger my hair, but I slapped his hand away.
Stepping back wasn’t possible. I was dragon-born. We didn’t give up ground in a confrontation.
His eyes flashed. “So now I can’t even touch you?”
