I’ve wanted her since the first moment I saw her. That cold clarity. That absolute refusal to look away from what I am.
Now she’smine. Bound. Claimed. Permanent.
The dragon roars in satisfaction with every thrust. The man beneath the dragon agrees completely. We’ve never beenso aligned—never wanted the same thing with such absolute certainty.
Her. Only her. Forever her.
She meets me stroke for stroke, demand for demand. Even bleeding, even barely recovered from near-death, she refuses to be passive. Her hips rise to meet mine. Her teeth find my shoulder, biting down hard enough to leave bruises. Her magic flares against my power, truth pressing against interruption, the two forces feeding each other in ways that make us both stronger.
The bond pulses between us with every movement. Not telepathy—I can’t hear her thoughts, can’t feel her emotions directly. But I know where she is. Would know it anywhere, now. The claiming mark on her shoulder is a permanent anchor, a connection that death itself couldn’t sever.
She’s going to live.
The thought crashes through me as I drive into her, as her body clenches around mine, as the pleasure builds toward a peak that feels less like satisfaction and more like survival.
She’s going tolive. Centuries instead of moments. Years I thought were lost, restored through the bond that’s rewriting us both.
I couldn’t protect her from the blade. Couldn’t stop the Herald from wounding her. But I can give her this—my years, my power, my existence anchoring hers.
She shatters beneath me a heartbeat later, her cry echoing off the cave walls, her body arching against mine with a force that should be impossible given her injuries. The bond absorbs the pleasure, amplifies it, sends it ricocheting between us until I can’t tell where my release ends and hers begins.
TWENTY-THREE
ZEPHYRA
Centuries.
The word doesn’t make sense at first. My mind—trained for decades to calculate diminishing returns, to measure the cost of every use of my bloodline against the years I had left—can’t process the sudden abundance.
I had one year. Now I have… I can’t count it. The Auric Veil shows me time extending forward in patterns too complex to quantify. Hundreds of years. Centuries. His lifespan becoming mine.
I gasp against his shoulder, my fingers curling into his back, nails digging in because I need to anchor myself to solid flesh while my entire sense of existence restructures.
The bond completes itself in fire and desperation and the taste of blood. I lose track of time, of pain, of everything except his power threading through mine, rewriting both of us from the inside out. The claiming mark at my shoulder burns with each pulse of shared magic—his existence locking to mine, permanent and absolute.
When the world settles, we lie tangled on cave stone, his weight pressing me down, his breath hot against my neck.
I survived.
I survived because he refused to let me die.
Time passes.I can’t measure it—the Auric Veil is still recalibrating, still adjusting to the centuries it suddenly has access to.
“Your wound.” Tyr’s voice is churned gravel, his lips moving against my shoulder. “I should check?—”
“It’s closed.” I test the skin of my abdomen with careful fingers. The impalement site has sealed completely, fresh scar tissue smooth beneath my touch. “The accelerated healing took care of it.”
He shifts onto his side, pulling me with him so we’re facing each other in the dim blue light. His fingers trace the mark on my shoulder—his teeth, his blood, his magic scarred permanently into my flesh—mapping the pattern there.
“This is permanent.” He says it the way he says everything that matters—flat, certain, leaving no room for misunderstanding.
“Yes.”
“Can’t take it back. Can’t undo it. Can’t escape it.”
“I know.” I hold his gaze, letting him see the certainty in mine. “I chose this, Tyr. Chose you. Do you need me to say it again?”
His fingers tighten on my shoulder. “No. I need you to understand what you chose.”
