I can fill those spaces. I can reshape them. I can bind her life to mine so completely that death itself will have to go through me to claim her.
The mating instinct takes over as I lean back.
“Izan...” Barely audible—not a protest, not a plea. Recognition. She knows what I’m doing. She understands what it means.
“Stay with me. Choose me. Choose to stay.”
Her hand finds my face. Her fingers trace my cheekbone with a touch so weak, it barely registers against my skin. But her eyes—those warm brown eyes that darken when she works magic—they find mine. And in them, I see everything she can’t say.
Yes.
I take her as gently as urgency allows, my hands and my fire and my power all working to the same end—not claiming, not consuming, butanchoring. Every place I touch, I pour heat into the broken spaces the Blood Regent left behind. Her body arcs against mine, not from weakness but from recognition, her remaining magic reaching for mine the way a drowning person reaches for solid ground.
“Mine.” Not a decision. Just the truth, surfacing before I can contain it.
“Yes.” Her voice breaks on it. “Yours.”
The dragon roars its approval, and the mating bond weaves between us in pulses of heat and light. I feel the transformation completing—feel the moment her life, which was narrowing to a single guttering point, suddenly catches and holds. Not sustained by borrowed time but anchored to something permanent. Something that cannot be taken from her while I still breathe.
THIRTY
IZAN
Time does strange things in the Sundered Cistern.
I don’t know how long we lie in the ruins of the collapsed chamber—minutes or hours, the distinction lost in the aftermath of transformation. The bond hums between us. Not telepathy—nothing so intrusive. But awareness. I know where she is the same way I know where my own hands are. I can feel her heartbeat, steady now, strong in ways it wasn’t before.
Her lifespan stretches out before my senses like a road extending to the horizon. Not years. Not decades.
Centuries.
She’s going to live as long as I do. The mating bond has anchored her life to mine, expanded her mortality to match dragon longevity. Whatever time I have left—and dragons live a very long time—she’ll be there for all of it. Every sunrise. Every battle. Every quiet moment when the world stops demanding our attention and we can simplybe.
She matters.
Nothing else does.
“Izan?” Her voice is soft, wondering. “What happened to us?”
“Mating.” I press my mouth to her skin, the heat of my mark claiming the space. It isn’t tenderness—it’s the dragon coilingaround its hoard, daring the world to try and take it. “I mated you. Bound your life to mine. Transformed both of us in ways I don’t fully understand yet.”
“I feel...” She shifts against me, and I feel every movement like fire across my nerves. “Different. The empty places are gone. My magic is—” She pauses, clearly searching for words. “It’s not fighting me anymore. It’s simplythere. Responding. Like it finally knows who it belongs to.”
“It belongs to you.” My arms tighten around her. “Same as you belong to you. The bond doesn’t change that. It doesn’t make you mine in any way that overrides your choices. It means I’myours, equally. Maybe more.”
She pulls back far enough to meet my eyes. Her gaze is clear —brown irises that don’t show any lingering traces of the damage the Blood Regent inflicted. “You saved my life.”
“I savedmylife.” The distinction matters. “You’re my life now, Alerie. Where you go, I go. What threatens you, threatens me. Your survival isn’t separate from my own anymore—itismy survival.”
Her hand rises to my face. Traces the line of my jaw with fingers that no longer tremble.
We can’t remainin the cistern.
The ruins are unstable, the air thick with residue from the collapsed ritual, and somewhere above us the Blood Regent is regrouping for whatever comes next. The battle isn’t over. The war hasn’t been won. All that’s changed is us.
But it’s enough.
I rise first, my body protesting the separation even as my mind acknowledges the necessity. Alerie’s clothes are destroyed—shredded in my desperation to reach her—so I strip off my own shirt and wrap it around her. It hangs to her thighs, far too large, making her look even smaller than usual.
