Their kiss that followed was different from their passionate claiming the night before. This was softer, deeper somehow. When they broke apart, he could feel her happiness through the bond like a warm embrace.
“Would you like to move in with me?” The question emerged before he’d fully formed the thought. “To the beach house. We could situate everything after we finish up here.”
“I would love that.” Her response was immediate, no hesitation or doubt clouding her features.
As he kissed her again, tasting the future on her lips, Damon felt something click into place that had been missing for far too long. He had his mate. He was hopeful. And soon he would exile the traitors working against him, stabilize his clan, and build the kind of future he’d never dared to imagine.
After a century of darkness, there was finally light.
THIRTY-THREE
ISLA
Isla folded her coral sundress with trembling fingers and placed it carefully in her open suitcase. Evelina’s estate had become a sanctuary over the past week, but now it felt like a chrysalis she was ready to shed. Everything was changing so quickly it made her head spin—completing the mate bond with Damon last night, his proposal to move in together, his dragon mark still tingling on her skin beneath her dress.
A week ago, if someone had told her she’d be moving in with a man she’d just met, she would have laughed and recommended they read fewer romance novels. Yet here she was, folding clothes with the kind of giddy excitement she’d only read about in books, the mate bond humming contentedly in her chest.
She needed to call Harper. The thought made her stomach clench with a mixture of guilt and anticipation. Her best friend deserved to know what was happening, but how did you explain that you’d found your soulmate in a dragon shifter and were about to uproot your entire life for him?
Isla sank onto the four-poster bed, her phone feeling heavier than it should in her palm. Harper’s contact photo smiled backat her—the two of them grinning over steaming mugs at their bookstore’s grand opening three years ago.
God, was she abandoning everything they’d built together?
The thought made her chest tight with panic.
But then she remembered the way Damon’s eyes had lit up when she’d said yes to moving in with him, and the profound rightness that had settled in her bones when their souls had locked together last night. This wasn’t abandonment—this was growth. Evolution. The next chapter of her story.
Harper answered on the first ring, her familiar voice cutting through Isla’s spiraling thoughts. “I haven’t heard from you in a week. Please tell me you didn’t get married to that tall, dark, and emotionally unavailable guy already?”
Isla opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. The words seemed too big, too impossible to squeeze through the phone line.
“Isla? Please tell me you did not do anything drastic.”
The concern in Harper’s voice made Isla’s eyes sting. She pressed her back against the headboard, bracing herself for the explosion that was about to come.
“Don’t panic,” Isla began, then immediately winced at her choice of words. “But this place is really full of dragon shifters, and Damon is the Alpha dragon here. I’m his fated mate, like I said before, and we completed the mate bond last night.”
The silence stretched so long Isla wondered if the call had ended. Then Harper’s voice came through in a shriek.
“You did what? He’s a what? Oh my god, Isla, you really stepped into a romance novel, didn’t you?”
“It’s so much more than that.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “The mate bond is so intense and real and profound. Sure, Damon has a century of baggage, but he’s trying to heal. And I want to help him heal and find joy again.”
“Excuse me—a century of baggage?” Harper’s voice climbed another octave. “Isla, how old is this man?”
“Two hundred years old.”
“Oh my god.” Harper’s exhale was audible through the phone. “Isla, how is that going to work? You’re human. Humans live to maybe a hundred if we’re lucky, and we age, and he clearly doesn’t. This is so far beyond comprehension.”
Isla’s dragon mark pulsed with warmth, as if responding to her mate’s proximity somewhere in the estate. The sensation grounded her, reminded her of the rightness she felt in this new world.
“It may not make sense to anyone else, but Damon and what we have and this world make perfect sense to me. I belong here, Harper. I belong with him.”
Another long pause, then a heavy sigh. “I can hear the conviction and happiness in your voice. I can tell you really care about this man. Who am I to judge it or hold you back from your destiny?”
Relief flooded through Isla so quickly she felt lightheaded. “Thank you for your understanding and support. But what are we going to do about the bookstore?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out. You can still be co-owner if you want.”
