She doesn’t trust us. She has no reason to. We haven’t even told her our names, but she allows me to hold her and comfort her. She allows me to touch her and murmur soft encouragement.
And for all her bravado, I’m certain her loneliness is the deepest wound she carries.
Magic can’t heal everything, no matter how much we wish it could.
9
KELAN
I leave the cave before the night can settle too deeply into my bones. To do so, I need to rebel against every instinct. The dragon inside me is restless, desperate to claim his mate. Her presence is a gravity that tugs my skin in a constant pull, sharpening every sense and fraying my control. If I remain, I will hover at her side like a sentinel while my dragon paces, as desperate to claim her as he is for revenge.
So I step out into the cold and let the change take me. Flesh yields to scale in a rush of heat and release. Bones stretch, wings unfurl, and the night opens beneath me, vast and waiting. I rise with almost no sound, cloaked in the same ancient magic that has hidden us from mortal eyes for centuries, my shadow swallowed before it can touch the ground. Blackwood Forest spreads below, dark, and so old it remembers the first dragons.
I circle high above the treetops, senses flaring outward, tasting the air for corruption, for the oily residue of stolen magic, for the heavy, brutal imprint of bear shifters whohave forgotten restraint and wolves whose only language is cruelty. If they are close—if any of them dared linger after what they did to Aura tonight—I will end them.
There will be no warning or mercy.
Fire gathers in my throat at the thought, eager to destroy. I would reduce them to ash, scatter them to the wind, erase them so completely the forest itself would forget their names.
But there’s nothing.
There are no cowards in pursuit or ambushes waiting in the dark. Whatever had hunted her fled when she vanished.
I bank once more over the canopy, then turn back toward the cave, my dragon reluctant to descend. The night is the best time to fly, when the air is cool and the moon is high. The freedom my wings afford me will never be taken for granted.
The cave comes into view, and it is only when stone and shadow close around me again that I shift, drawing myself back into human form with effort that’s heavier than it should be.
Inside, the fire burns and Aura sleeps, curled on her side in the nest we built for her, red hair spilling across pale furs. Her breathing is quiet and even, and in sleep, the sharpness fades from her features, leaving her looking less like a survivor carved by fear and more like the young woman she should be.
The sight of her in our nest settles the restlessness inside me for a few seconds until my dragon reminds me she is unclaimed.
Darial and Ronyn sit nearby, their voices low, their attention divided between Aura and the cave’s entrance. Even at rest, we are a protective wall around her.
“She exhausted herself,” Darial murmurs. His gaze rests on her, as soft as the furs beneath her, following the rise and fall of her chest. “Healing costs more than magic. It takes something from the soul, too.”
Ronyn’s jaw tightens. “We can’t keep avoiding it.”
Darial glances at him. “She’s been hunted, wounded, and controlled against her will. If we tell her what and who we are, it could feel like another trap. Three more shifters who are looking to take her power for themselves and put her in a position she doesn’t want to be in. Dragons who would contain her magic.”
“And if we wait,” Ronyn counters quietly, “then everything from the day we met her until the day we tell her will be a lie.”
They both look at me.
I think of the way Aura fought through the forest rather than surrender. The way her magic answered fear with fury. The way she looked at us as potential threats she would face head-on if she had to.
“She’s strong,” I say at last. “Stronger than she knows. She deserves the truth from us. The bond we have with her is a blessing, not a curse. She will never fear us, never have to run from us, never be hurt by us. All the pain she’s suffered will be like dust when we claim her. We tell her when she wakes.”
The words settle between us, and even if my friends disagree, they will follow my decision. I turn for another glimpse of the most beautiful woman my eyes have ever had the privilege to observe, and find Aura’s eyes open silently, her green gaze sharp and alert even through exhaustion. She watches us from the bed, her stillness more unsettling than panic would have been.
How much did she hear?
“Dragons?” she says. The word is flat and disbelieving. “That’s what you are?”
I step forward, careful not to crowd her.
“Yes.”
Her eyes flick over me, searching my face for lies. Searching for madness. For delusion. For some crack in the story she can pry open and dismiss.
