I trailed off, but Einar wasn’t going to let me off that easy. “You and who?” he growled, his tone murderous. He looked around as if Dune were hiding in a nearby shrub. “If some low-life fae hurt you, I’ll rip out his—”
“Stop.” Laughing, I clapped a hand across Einar’s mouth. It wouldn’t do to have him threatening to kill fae while we were enjoying Lady Axlya’s hospitality. “It’s no one here. Just an old flame from my past.”
I told Einar about Dune, how we’d grown up as childhood enemies, constantly sniping and attacking each other until one fateful day when that hate had turned into one passionate make-out session, then two, until we were seeing each other weekly. How it had felt to have the attention of the most popular boy in the village, and how my dreams of joining the army together and fighting the shadow creatures side-by-side had come crashing down when Dune confessed his true feelings about me. I’d only been a temporary fling to him, one last short-term romance before his father shipped him off to the army, and he'd found the idea of me, a magically impotent fae joining him, laughable.
“I proved him wrong, obviously,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I fixed my gaze on the statue again—I couldn’t meet Einar’s eyes, too embarrassed at how naïve I’d been about Dune. “But still, I can’t believe how off my judgment was about him. How could I have thought a male who spent his entire life bullying and belittling me could actuallyloveme?” A bitter smile curved my lips. “I was an idiot then, but I’d be evenmoreof an idiot now if I made the same mistake again.”
Silence fell between us, stretching so long and taut that anxiety began to bubble inside me. Unable to take it, I looked at Einar, expecting him to be disappointed in me.
Instead, he was clenching his jaw, his golden eyes blazing with emotion.
“Adara.” Einar dropped his second knee to the ground. My breath caught as he nudged my thighs apart so he could kneel between them, so close that his chest brushed against mine. I tried to lean back, but he planted his hands on either side of me on the stone bench, caging me in. “This Dune was using you for his own amusement as young, shallow males who don’t know what they want often do. He may have stolen a few kisses in the dark, may have even shared a few of his secrets with you, but he’s never fought by your side. Never helped you break into a temple, stormed a castle to rescue you, held you while you cried, or tended to you while you were injured.”
Einar looked down at the golden cuff clasped around my wrist, the red primal stone in the center reflecting the last of the daylight. “I don’t expect you to return my feelings,” he said, his voice as raw as my insides felt. “But after all we’ve been through, I thought you’d think more highly of me than to compare me to a boy who is so clearly unworthy of you.”
Guilt squeezed my heart, and I wanted to sink into the floor from shame. “Einar, I—”
“Hush.” He reached out and brushed a finger along the mark on my shoulder. Heat rippled through me, and my mouth snapped shut as I fought against the sudden urge to wrap my legs around him and pull him into my heat. “You don’t need to say anything. At least not until I’ve explained.”
He pulled back to look me in the eye, and I braced myself, not sure where this was going. “Adara, I don’t know if you know this, but dragons don’t choose their mates. They are pre-ordained by the spirits. When a male dragon lays his eyes on the female that is meant to be his, a bond awakens between them that cannot be severed by anything, save death, or the female herself.”
He paused, as if steeling himself for the next revelation, before continuing on in a rush. “That bond snapped into place the moment you woke me from my enchanted sleep. It’s the reason you were able to break the spell when it should have lasted an eternity. The reason I haven’t been able to leave your side, why I’ve protected you with my life even though doing so puts my people at risk. It’s why I can always sense your moods, and the reason that you’re drawn to me, even though you don’t understand why.”
He leaned in and blew a gentle stream of air against the mark, sending a full-body shudder through me. “A blood exchange, in addition to consummating, is what seals the bond between dragons. It’s why I bit you… though you have to understand I didn’t mean to.” He lifted his head, regret shining in his eyes. “I lost control, and it’s been tearing me apart ever since, because the last thing I wanted to do was influence your choice in any way.”
“My choice for what?” I asked.
“To accept the mating bond… or reject it.”
He flinched at the end of that sentence, the expression so subtle I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been so attuned to him. “You’ve probably felt drawn to me since the beginning, but that feeling will have increased tenfold now that I’ve bitten you because it’s started the bonding process. Your body craves to complete it, which is why you want to bite me back, and why you’re struggling with these feelings of desire. But you have to understand, Adara, that there’s no going back on this. If we complete the bond, it’s forever. Nothing save death can undo it, and even then…” He blew out a breath. “Let’s just say I’ve seen plenty of dragons lose their mates in the war, and it changes them. If they had children with their mates they can continue on, but if not, they become a shell of themselves, living a colorless half-life.”
“Is that what will happen to you if I reject the bond?” Horror sluiced through me, and I nearly recoiled from Einar at the thought. To think that Einar’s happiness depended on my acceptance of the bond… it was almost too much to bear.
The left side of Einar’s mouth quirking up into a half-smile. “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it? For me to say yes, and guilt trip you into accepting the bond that way?” He shook his head. “But no, that won’t happen. I’ll lose my one chance for a soul-deep bond with a female I love, and I’ll never be able to have children. But I would get over it… eventually.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, my shoulders slumping with relief. “Well… that’s good, at least. But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about this until now, Einar. It seems like something I ought to have known from the beginning.”
“I should have told you from the start,” Einar admitted, “but I was too busy struggling with the idea myself, and to be honest, I was terrified of revealing the truth. While a dragon female has the power to reject a mate bond, the male doesn’t. You could have forced the bond on me to control me, and there wouldn’t have been a damned thing I could have done about it. I’ve seen that happen before, too.”
“What!” I stared at Einar, aghast, my stomach turning sour at the very thought of manipulatinganyonethat way. “How… how could you think I would do something like that to you?”
“I don’t think you would do that to menow,” Einar said, a little impatiently. “But when you first woke me up, I only saw you as an enemy fae. I didn’t dare reveal the truth about the bond, since I had no idea how much you might know about dragons and their mates. My strategy was simply to make you hate me—a task I didn’t think would be difficult—so you would reject me, and in doing so, free me from the bond. But clearly, that didn’t go as planned.”
“Clearly.”
I licked my parched lips, and his eyes flared as they tracked the movement. Tension thickened in the air between us, and I knew that if I leaned in even a little, we’d be locked in another stormy, passionate kiss, like the one that had led him to bite me in the first place. And even though we were in the gardens, where anyone could stumble upon us, I wasn’t sure the threat of that would be enough to stop us.
In fact, judging by the gleam in Einar’s eyes, I suspected he would very much enjoy Prentis stumbling upon us while I claimed him.
But did I want that? To claim Einar as my mate, and bind our hearts and souls together for the rest of our potentially very long lives? “It sounds like dragon matings aren’t always loving partnerships based on what you just told me,” I said. “Not if dragon females have a history of using the bond to manipulate males.”
Einar laughed. “I have seen some miserable mate pairings, but those are few and far between.” He took my hand in his again, stroking his thumb over my knuckles, his expression softening. “For most dragons, mating is one of the most joyous experiences they will ever have in their lives. The soul-bond strengthens our abilities, making us more powerful, and the security and stability that comes from that kind of partnership… well, let’s just say it’s something I secretly envied in my mated friends.”
Grief shimmered in Einar’s eyes for just a moment before he blinked it away, and I felt a wave of compassion for him. “You miss them, don’t you,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Your friends, your family.”
He nodded. “Those who survived Aolis’s shadow magic have gone to the realm Kiryan and I opened for them. I will never see them again, which was why I was so angry when you woke me. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone in this realm… but I’m not alone, not anymore. You may be a hybrid, but you are still a dragon, and that means you will always be kith to me. Even if you reject the bond.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I looked at Einar for a long time, trying to come to terms with what he’d told me. I understood now why he was so territorial of me, why he’d never abandoned me despite his multiple attempts to drive a wedge between us. Why the idea of me marrying Prentis was so anathema to him, he’d been driven to mark me against his own judgment.
