They stood there for a long moment, two figures against the endless white, surrounded by the kind of silence that most people couldn’t bear. But it wasn’t an empty silence. It was full of possibility—of futures yet to be built, of challenges yet to be faced, of a life that neither of them had expected but both of them had chosen.
The wind picked up, sending a spray of ice crystals dancing across the surface. In the distance, something glittered—the first hints of the deep ice fields where her new claim awaited. Where the minerals Adjar had mapped still waited to be extracted.Where the remnants of an ancient civilization might yet yield secrets they couldn’t imagine.
“We should keep moving,” she said reluctantly. “The claim site is still four hours out, and we need to establish shelter before nightfall.”
“I know.” But he didn’t move immediately. Instead, he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss against her gloved fingers. “Thank you, Jaz.”
“For what?”
“For understanding. For wanting the same things I want. For choosing this—” he gestured at the vast white expanse “—when you could have chosen comfort and safety and the company of others who are not territorial dragons with inadequate social skills.”
She laughed. “Your social skills are fine. Mostly.”
“Mostly.” His smile was like sunlight on snow—bright and cold and beautiful. “I will work on the rest.”
“We both will.”
She squeezed his hand once, then released it and headed back towards the crawler. There was work to be done, a life to build, a future to secure. But for the first time in longer than she could remember, those tasks didn’t feel like burdens.
They felt like possibilities.
He followed her into the vehicle, folding his wings with obvious reluctance but no complaint. As she started the engine and pointed them north towards their new claim, she caught himwatching the ice fields through the window with an expression of quiet contentment.
We’re going to make this work,she thought.Whatever comes next, whatever challenges GenCon throws at us, whatever other dragons emerge from the ice… we’re going to make this work.
The crawler hummed beneath them as they drove deeper into the polar wilderness.
Behind them, the settled territories faded into memory.
Ahead, the ice waited.
They were going home.
EPILOGUE
Six months later…
Adjar letthe cold wrap around him like an old friend, settling into the familiar embrace of the sub-zero winds that swept across the trading station’s outer perimeter. His scales absorbed the chill, channeled it through his body, and made it part of him. This was what he was designed for—what he had been born for, though the details of that birth remained frustratingly fragmented.
Six months of ice and silence and Jaz, and still the memories came in scattered pieces, like shards of a mirror he couldn’t quite reassemble. All he could do was gather them together and hope that one day they would make sense.
He shifted his position on the rocky outcrop, scanning the settlement below for the hundredth time. The polar trading station sprawled across the ice like an ugly wound. Prefabricated structures in garish colors clustered together inside a huge dome, too many humans crowded into too small a space. The noise alone made his teeth ache. Engines and shouting voicesand the constant hum of climate systems working overtime to keep fragile bodies warm.
Unnecessary,he thought.All of it.
But Jaz was down there somewhere, navigating the chaos with the quiet competence that still amazed him. She was trading their minerals for supplies and asking careful questions, maintaining the fiction that she was merely another struggling prospector scratching a living from the ice. In truth, between his knowledge of the ice and her skill at drilling, they’d already made enough to reimburse Alina for the claim and the equipment.
But she still insisted on trading which meant his mate was alone, surrounded by strangers who could not be trusted.
His wings twitched beneath the thermal covering he wore, restless against the concealment. He wanted to launch himself into the air, circling the station like the predator he was and letting every creature below know that the female conducting business in their midst was claimed and protected.
Instead, he waited.
She is capable,he reminded himself.She survived alone for years before you. She does not need you hovering.
The words were true. That did not make them easier to accept.
He’d argued against this division of labor when she first proposed letting her handle the face-to-face negotiations while he remained at a safe distance—safe for the fiction of her identity and safe for his own concealment. Safe for everyone except his increasingly frayed nerves.
