His hand stayed cupped to my face, ember-soft heat rooting through the salt and ruin of me and I drank in what he didn’t realize he’d offered until it filled me to my core. A current inside me sparked, the ember I thought was smothered now shimmering to a flare until it burned brighter than it ever had.
He felt it, I know he did. And he didn’t pull away.
My arms locked tight around his neck, fingers sinking into his hair, twisting as though I might stay there forever. He lifted me without effort, my legs curling around his waist, liquid cloth sliding as he carried me to the bed where the sheets received us, soft and decadent.
Gods, I should have napped here instead.
I hadn’t known what to expect when he laid me down. But it wasn’t this—not silence stretched warm and endless. Not bodies pressed close, limbs tangled, the hush between us louder than words.
And yet, I didn’t need more. This was enough.
My hand drifted with teasing precision through his curls, tugging and smoothing, while the other traced idle circles along the carved planes of his shoulders, down the hard muscle of his arms. Every inch mapped, every inch memorized.
He held me tight, drawing long strokes across my back until our hands met between us, fingers lacing together in perfect unison.
I wasn’t sure when Ronan hadtrulysaved me. Perhaps he hadn’t yet. Perhaps he never would. But lying there, caught in the heat of him, in the inevitability of us, it didn’t matter.
I woke before the world had shifted, the moon still veiled in colorless clouds. An hour, maybe. No more.
Ronan’s eyes moved beneath their lids, lashes wavering, his breath slow and even. Our bodies hadn’t drifted; they had barely even stirred. Heat pressed along my skin from the closeness, and it startled me how flushed I felt, how undone. Intimacy had always been suffocating. Even after sex, the stillness of contact was always too much.
But this was different.
This was like breathing after drowning. Like air I’d never known I needed until my lungs ached for it. After years of holding my breath, I could finally exhale.
His voice cut through the dark, lids fluttering open. “I think I was starved.”
I looked over at him, dazed. “What?”
His laugh was low, euphonic, a sound that grooved down my spine. “We really need to work on your shields,” he murmured. “You thought you were drowning. And I—” His eyes traced me. “I think I was starved.”
“I hardly think you were ever starved,” I shot back, poking at his core.
His muscles tightened instantly, his groan spilling into the dark. “Of you,” he said. “When I was younger, I thought Aelora was it. We grew up together. Forced on one another from the start. She wasn’t bitter then, wasn’t how she is now.” His stare moved past me, remembering ghosts. “She had plans for herself. Until those plans twisted intous.My father sealed it with a contract at the height of it all. We thought marriage was the best choice. So, we signed.”
I stayed quiet...words would have only fractured the shape of this moment. I wanted to see him, not the heir, not the prince, but the boy molded into the man. The one who became empathic in ways he would never admit aloud.
“Aelora thought we were mates, but I knew fate had written otherwise. That pull I had felt, it dimmed the moment the throne began to fill her head. Power. That’s what she wanted. She was important, and she loved the charge of it. But that wasn’t what drew me to her at the start.”
“Whyisshe so important?” The question had been planted since he mentioned it. Why keep her alive at any cost?
He exhaled long, heavy. “Aelora wasn’t bred. She was created.” A name dropped into the room like a stone into black water. “By Vivianna, the Primal God.” His eyes found mine. “She’s the only rose-colored dragon to exist. The only fire that might one day outburn Hel itself.”
Oh. I swallowed, chest hollowing. Thank the fates I hadn’t sunk my fangs into her throat at that table. Thank the damn fates. But Ronan would have let me...
“Vivianna created her as a weapon in case Deimos rises?”
Or, in case they needed a dragon to burn a curse to hel. Never mind. I should have killed her.
His shirt spread loose as he shifted onto his back, a hand dragging over his eyes. “Yes. And rumor claims she wasn’t the only weapon created.”
A God’s hand shaping more than one. An army, born of divinity and desperation. Vivianna had known war would rage whether kingdoms sparked it or Deimos woke just to set the world aflame.
“Our offspring would have been undeniably the strongest dragon Selvarra has ever seen. Perhaps even stronger than this world has known.”
I nestled closer, head falling against his chest, my fingers curled around the chain that rested there. It slid between my knuckles, collapsing into my grip. “But?”
“But…my insatiable greed did not end with her.” His eyes stay fixed on the dark above. “I want to keep Aelora safe. Not out of love. But because, like you, she has a greater worth than she knows. I will not breed with her simply to have our young turned into weapons.”
