I find her in a pocket of collapsed stone, half-buried in debris that should have killed her. Blood pools beneath her body—too much blood, mixing with ancient dust and the residue of power that predates everything I know. Her face is pale. Her lips are blue. Her magic, that volatile Vireth power that I’ve felt thrumming in her presence since the first day, is gone.
Not suppressed. Not dampened.
Gone.
“Alerie.” Her name tears from my throat in a voice that barely sounds human. I pull her from the rubble, cradling her against my chest, and her body is so light. Too light. The weight I’ve grown accustomed to feeling when she’s near—the gravitational pull of her presence—has evaporated.
She’s dying.
The knowledge hits me with the force of a fatal blow. I’ve seen death countless times. Caused it. Orchestrated it. Watched it claim enemies and allies alike with the cold detachment of someone who stopped fearing mortality long ago.
This is different.
This isher.
“Open your eyes.” A snarl that barely resembles a command. “Look at me.Look at me.”
Her eyelids flutter. Her lips move, shaping a word I can’t hear. Then her head falls back against my arm, and her heartbeat stutters again—a broken rhythm that tells me everything I need to know.
She’s not going to survive this.
The dragon roars.
Not from my throat—from somewhere deeper. From the place where instinct lives, where the beast I’ve caged since I first understood what I was has waited for exactly this moment. The walls I built, the restraint I cultivated, the control I maintained through decades of brutal discipline?—
None of it matters.
She’s dying in my arms, and the dragon doesn’t care about walls.
Save her.
The thought isn’t rational. It comes from a place that predates thought, predates civilization, predates everything except the primal need to protect what I’ve claimed. My power surges in response, volcanic fire building in my blood without direction or purpose.
But fire can’t heal. Fire destroys. Fire is all I’ve ever been good for?—
Not fire.
The realization surfaces through the chaos of the dragon’s howling. There is one thing that can save her. One power that goes beyond destruction, beyond wrath, beyond everything I’ve allowed myself to become.
Mating.
Dragon mating isn’t a ritual. It’s instinct—dangerous, irreversible, avoided by every dragon who values their independence. When we mate, we don’t simply bond. Wetransform. Our power expands in ways that can’t be predicted. Our existence reorients around another person. Everything we are becomes a permanent anchor to everything they are.
She’s dying.
And I would burn every wall I’ve ever built, every scar I’ve ever earned, every fragment of control I’ve ever maintained, to keep her breathing for one more second.
The choice isn’t a choice at all.
My lips findhers before I’ve consciously decided to move.
The kiss isn’t gentle. Can’t be—not with her fading in my arms, not with the dragon screaming at me to claim her before it’s too late. I pour heat into her mouth, volcanic fire that should burn but insteadflows.
She gasps against my lips. The first sound she’s made since I found her.
More.
I deepen the kiss, and the dragon surges forward with a hunger I’ve never allowed myself to feel. My power reaches for hers—for the place where her power should be—and finds devastation. The Blood Regent didn’t merely drain her magic. Heshatteredit, leaving nothing but broken fragments and the fading echo of Vireth blood.
