The words surprised her even as she spoke them. She hadn’t meant to say it now, but the truth of it was undeniable. Somewhere between terror and tenderness, she had fallen completely.
He went very still beneath her.
“I love you too,” he said. “I understand the word, in the way I understand many things about your language. But I do not know if I feel it correctly.”
“What do you feel?”
A long pause. His hand continued its gentle exploration of her back, but his voice was distant, searching.
“That I would die for you without hesitation. That your happiness has become more important than my own survival. That when I look at you, something in my chest expands, as if itwas always too small before, and only your presence has shown me its true size.”
He pulled back slightly, meeting her eyes.
“I feel that in all the memories I do not have, across all the years I cannot remember, there has never been anyone like you. And there will never be anyone after. You are my beginning and my end, Jaz Kour. That is what I mean by love. And I love you with everything that I am and everything I do not yet understand about myself.”
Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back, but some escaped anyway, sliding down her cheeks to fall on his silver-scaled chest.
“That’s love,” she whispered. “That’s definitely love.”
He pulled her close again, tucking her head beneath his chin, his arms and wings creating a fortress of warmth and safety. Outside, the polar night was falling, the temperature dropping towards extremes that would kill an unprotected human in minutes. Inside, wrapped in the embrace of an ancient dragon, she had never felt more secure.
“Sleep,” he murmured. “I will watch over you.”
“The ranger?—”
“I will wake you when he approaches. Sleep, my mate. You have earned it.”
She wanted to argue, to insist on keeping watch together, to maintain some semblance of her famous independence. But exhaustion was dragging at her limbs, and his heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, and the warmth of his body was melting away the last of her resistance.
She slept.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The intruder’s approach vibrated through the ice long before any sound reached Adjar’s ears.
He was on his feet instantly, every muscle coiled for combat, his claws extending before conscious thought could intervene. The sensation was unmistakable—something heavy and mechanical was moving towards them at a rapid pace. Not a pursuit vehicle, the rhythm was wrong for that.
“Adjar?” Jaz’s voice was sleep-rough and alarmed. She pushed herself up from where she’d been curled against his side, her dark hair tumbling loose from its braid. “What is it?”
“Someone approaches.” He positioned himself between her and the station’s entrance, wings half-spread in a threat display. “A modified rider with a mechanical mount.”
“Modified?” She quickly pulled on her thermal. “What do you mean modified?”
“I can feel metal woven through the flesh.” He bared his teeth at the door. “The ranger.”
“Already? It hasn’t been—” She checked her wrist unit and swore softly. “Six hours. I slept for six hours?”
“You needed it.”
“You should have woken me earlier. We should have prepared?—”
“You are prepared.” He didn’t turn to look at her because he couldn’t take his eyes off the approaching threat. “You contacted him. You set this in motion. The rest is simply… execution.”
The vibrations grew stronger and closer. His nostrils flared, catching the first hints of scent through the station’s filtration system—machine oil and metal and something organic.
Every instinct screamed at him to attack.
This was his territory now. His mate was here, vulnerable, still warm from their coupling. Another male was approaching—modified and dangerous. The dragon part of his mind, the ancient part that remembered when his kind ruled the skies of this dying world, demanded blood.
