She doesn’t resist.
Sheresponds.
Her hands find my chest, grip the fabric of my shirt, pull me closer instead of pushing me away. Her mouth opens beneath mine, and the sound she makes—half gasp, half moan, entirely devastating—sends fire roaring through my veins that has nothing to do with dragonfire and everything to do with pure, consuming need.
A lifetime of refusing to let myself want anything this badly, and she’s undoing all of it with a single kiss.
I want her.
The admission crashes through me with the force of a collapsing wall. I want her in ways I’ve spent decades learning not to want anything. Want to taste every inch of her skin. Want to burn my claim into her flesh so thoroughly that no one could ever mistake who she belongs to. Want to mate her, bond her, transform her into the other half of my existence.
The mating instinct roars.
And Ilisten.
My teeth find her throat. Not biting—not yet—but grazing, testing, feeling her pulse hammer against my lips. She arches into me, and the motion presses her wound against my palm, and the sharp hiss of pain that escapes her cuts through the haze like cold water.
Pain.
She’s in pain.
I hurt her.
The realization hits with enough force to make me stagger. I wrench myself back, putting six inches of distance between us that feels like miles, and stare at her with eyes I know are burning full volcanic red.
She looks ruined. Beautiful. Her hair is tangled from my grip, her lips swollen from my kiss, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The wound on her ribs is bleeding again—I must have pressed against it without noticing, too lost in the haze of want to register the damage I was doing.
This is what I am. This is what I’ve always been—a monster barely contained, a predator pretending to be civilized, a threat to everyone stupid enough to get close.
Including her.
Especiallyher.
“Izan—”
“I hurt you.”
“It’s nothing?—”
“Ihurtyou.” Raw. Shattered. I stare at my hands like they belong to someone else. At the skin that was touching her moments ago, that could have torn her open, that was desperate to mark her in ways that would never heal.
The dragon screams at me to go back. To finish what I started. To claim her before anyone else can take her from me.
I refuse.
“Izan, listen to me?—”
I can’t.
If I listen to her, I’ll go back. If I go back, I’ll finish what I started. And if I finish what I started, I’ll mate her.
I know this with the same certainty I know my own name. The beast is too close to the surface, too desperate, too far beyond the restraint I’ve built over a lifetime. If I stay in this room one more moment, I’ll claim her.
And claiming her now—before she’s chosen this, before she’s ready, before she’s made the decision with clear eyes and full understanding—would make me no different from the Blood Regent and his blood-oaths.
It would be ownership without consent.
I won’t become that.
