The term did not arrive gently. It slammed into me and took something vital with it.
For a fractured second, I forgot how to fly.
Humans were not fated mates. Librarians from New York were not fated mates. The bond was rare even among dragons, and it could be ruinous if mishandled.
I rejected it on instinct alone.
My father’s voice rose in my head, sharp with certainty. This was not possible. This was proof that getting involved in the human world was a mistake. If he had been alive to witness it, the knowledge alone would have killed him again.
Then my mind betrayed me. Everything rearranged. Her weight on my back stopped being just weight. It became an anchor. A point of reference. The place my awareness kept returning to no matter where I tried to send it.
My priorities shifted without asking permission.
Altitude mattered only because it affected her comfort. Speed mattered only because it changed how safe she felt. Weather mattered only because it touched her skin. Distance mattered only if it pulled her farther from where she needed to be.
My people, my duty, my life’s work—all of it slid outward, still important, but no longer central.
Shewas central.
This was the moment my father would have called weakness. The moment he would have demanded correction, discipline, distance. I waited for the guilt. For the reflex to obey him even in death. It didn’t come.
I felt it in the way my thoughts curved back toward her even when I forced them elsewhere. In the way my instincts lined up behind one command and refused to move.
Keep her safe. Keep her warm. Keep her close.
The bond opened fully. A quiet, devastating knowing that didn’t ask whether I was ready.
I wasn’t. And yet I needed it like Ineeded oxygen.
My lungs constricted. My limbs felt heavy and weak, as if an ancient part of me had finally stood up and declared ownership over the rest.
I didn’t belong to myself anymore.
I understood the cost instantly. The scandal. The outrage it would cause among those in my clan who aligned with my father. I understood that my father’s legacy would not survive this truth. And with equal clarity, I understood that I didn’t care. Not one bit.
Now, I belonged toher.
I forced my pace to steady and my thoughts into clean, ordered lines, like I’d been trained to do since I was a child. Meanwhile, inside, everything veered toward one truth: I would burn the world down before I let any harm come to her.
I checked on her through the bond, careful not to reveal the shift inside me. She was warm enough, focused, and content. She was completely unaware that she had just become the axis around which my entire existence now turned.
That, more than anything, terrified me.
Then the sky changed. Thunder cracked close enough to rattle my bones, the sound sharp and wrong in a way that made my instincts rear hard.
Then the downpour came.
Before I could send a word to warn her, she put her journal away and pulled her hood up, settling flat against my back again, her body aligning instinctively with mine.
No hesitation. No panic. No fear.
The bond thrummed. Her trust was a weight, a responsibility that settled fully into my chest and stayed.
“Are you all right?”I asked, already scanning distance, altitude, options.
“I’m fine,”she sent back at once.
I began to descend anyway.
