Love flickered in his expression.
“Then I met you.” A ghost of a smile curved his lips. “And you were everything I thought I didn’t want. Chaos and emotion and feelings I couldn’t categorize. Your storms didn’t follow patterns. Your magic didn’t obey rules. You argued with my methodology and challenged my conclusions and refused to simply follow instructions.”
A few soft laughs rippled through the crowd. Cassia felt her cheeks heat.
“You terrified me,” Aero said quietly. “You still terrify me. Because loving you means risking loss. Means knowing that one day—whether in fifty years or five hundred—I will have to exist in a world without you. And that thought is unbearable.”
His hands steadied around hers, his voice gaining strength.
“But I’ve decided I’d rather be terrified with you than safe without you. I’d rather have decades of chaos than centuries of emptiness. I’d rather learn to feel again—even knowing how much it will hurt when the feeling ends—than go back to the numbness I mistook for peace.”
Cassia’s eyes were burning. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. That promise was already broken.
“You asked me once what I wanted from you,” Aero said. “I didn’t have an answer then. I do now.” His thumbs traced circles on the backs of her hands. “Everything. I want everything. I want your storms and your sunshine. Your chaos and your calm. Your worst days and your best ones. I want to spend however long you have—and however long I have after—being grateful for the gift of knowing you.”
Sue Tidewell made a soft sound that might have been approval. Or possibly smugness. Hard to tell with Sue.
“Storm witch.” The elder turned to Cassia. “Your turn. Speak your truth.”
Cassia took a breath. Then another. Her hands were shaking now, too—trembling in Aero’s steady grip—but her voice came out clear.
“I’ve spent my whole life being told I’m too much.” The words hurt to say out loud, even now. “Too loud. Too emotional. Too intense. Too powerful. My parents taught me to contain my storms. My teachers taught me to apologize for taking up space. Every relationship I’ve ever had ended the same way—with someone deciding I wasn’t worth the chaos.”
She squeezed Aero’s hands, anchoring herself.
“I learned to make myself smaller. To hold back. To dim my light so I wouldn’t blind anyone. I convinced myself that was just who I had to be—the dramatic one, the intense one, the one people loved from a distance, but no one wanted to get close to.”
Her voice cracked, but she pushed through.
“Then you came along. This ancient, impossible, emotionally stuck dragon who looked at my chaos and called it magnificent. Who didn’t flinch from my storms. Who never—not once—asked me to be less.” She laughed, the sound wet with tears she wasn’t trying to hide anymore. “You looked at me at full intensity and decided you wanted more.”
“I did,” he murmured. “I do.”
“You made me feel like maybe “too much” could be exactly right. That maybe there was someone out there who needed a storm, not a summer breeze. That maybe I wasn’t broken for wanting to take up space.”
She met his gaze, storm-cloud eyes holding storm-cloud eyes.
“I love you,” she said simply. “Not because you saved me or because the surge brought you here or because some cosmic force decided we were fated. I love you because you see me—all of me, the chaos and the calm—and you choose to stay anyway. That’s the most terrifying and wonderful thing anyone has ever done.”
“It is,” he said. “You are.”
“Then claim me.” She stepped closer, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. “Make it permanent. I want to be yours for however long we have—decades or centuries or just tomorrow. I don’t care about the timeline. I just want you.”
Something fierce and possessive flared in his expression. His dragon—she could feel it pressing against the boundary of his control, eager and wanting and utterly certain.
“Then let’s not waste another minute.” He pulled her into a kiss that made the crowd erupt in cheers—deep and claiming and absolutely not appropriate for public viewing, but neither of them cared.
Overhead, the sky erupted in lightning—not destructive, just joyful. A celebration written in electricity across the evening clouds. The crowd cheered louder. Someone—probably Junie—whistled sharply.
When they finally broke apart, Cassia was breathless and flushed and probably looked thoroughly debauched. She didn’t care. Let the entire town see what this dragon did to her.
“By the power vested in me by the Haven Shores Council and the Continental Shifter Alliance, I declare this intention witnessed.” Sue Tidewell’s voice cut through the chaos with practiced authority. “Go complete your bond, children. And try not to destroy any more property.”
Cassia laughed against Aero’s mouth. “No promises.”
FORTY-EIGHT
AERO
