Page 18 of Ash and Burn

"I said I'm not hungry." This time her voice carried an edge.

Calix felt his dragon stir, responding to her defiance with something that was part frustration, part admiration. She wouldn't be managed or controlled, and wouldn't accept his protection simply because he offered it.

Stubborn woman.

"I'll have food sent to your room," he offered, attempting to compromise.

She paused at that. Finally, she nodded once—a sharp, military acknowledgment that felt like a minor victory. "Fine."

Then she disappeared into Ashspire's interior, leaving him standing in the grand foyer watching the space where she'd been. The house settled into its familiar quiet, but the silence felt different now—heavier in a way that made his dragon restless and dissatisfied.

Distance should feel safer. More manageable. Easier to maintain the control he'd spent fifteen years perfecting.

Unfortunately, none of those things felt true anymore.

SEVEN

ARVID

The guest suite felt like a cage made of luxury. Arvid had attempted to settle in—rearranged her meager belongings, organized her toiletries in the marble bathroom, even tried sitting in the absurdly comfortable chair by the tall windows. Nothing worked. Her mind refused to quiet, circling the same frustrations like a predator stalking wounded prey.

She pushed herself out of the chair for the third time in an hour and resumed pacing. The pyrestone floors radiated warmth beneath her feet, but the heat did nothing to ease the cold knot of anger in her chest. Cevryn's measured voice echoed in her memory, each carefully chosen word designed to undermine her presence here. The way he'd spoken reminded her too much of Colonel Martinez and the tribunal panel—men in positions of power who viewed her as a problem to be managed rather than a solution to be utilized.

Supervision.

The word tasted bitter. Three years since her discharge, three years of building something on her own terms, and here she was again—deemed untrustworthy by men who prioritized procedure over lives.

She stopped at the windows, pressing her palms against the glass as she stared out at the medical district in the distance. Somewhere in those buildings, Essin lay in a hospital bed, too weak to shift into her dragon form. Somewhere, other patients she hadn't met yet were fighting a disease that Dorn and his team couldn't identify after four months of trying.

Four months.

The timeline gnawed at her. On Earth, she'd helped contain outbreaks in half that time, working with limited resources in active conflict zones. Here, with advanced facilities and dedicated healers, they were still grasping for answers. Either Ash Fever was more complex than anything she'd encountered, or they were missing something fundamental.

Without Dorn's compiled data, she had only observations. The disease wasn't airborne—that eliminated several transmission vectors. Contact didn't spread it either, which ruled out surface contamination. Organ failure suggested systemic toxicity rather than infectious agents, but the pattern of spread indicated environmental exposure rather than genetic predisposition.

I don't have enough information.

The thought made her want to punch something. Every minute spent waiting felt like failure. She'd traveled through a wormhole to an alien planet to help dragon shifters she'd never heard of yesterday, and now she was trapped in a guest room until tomorrow.

Her reflection stared back from the darkening window—her skin flushed with frustration, and her dark hair slightly disheveled from running her hands through it. The scar through her right eyebrow caught the lamplight, a permanent reminder of the last time she'd trusted institutional authority to prioritize lives over politics.

That tribunal had been different, though. Martinez and his panel had questioned her judgment, her loyalty, her fitness for command. They'd painted her as reckless, insubordinate, a liability. But underneath their accusations had been genuine disappointment—men who'd believed in her until she'd forced them to choose between her and the system that defined them.

Cevryn felt different. Colder. More calculating. When he'd suggested sending her back to Earth, there had been no disappointment in his pale eyes. Only strategic assessment, as though she were a chess piece he was deciding whether to sacrifice.

Stop thinking about it.

But her mind refused to cooperate, because thinking about Cevryn meant thinking about the council meeting, and thinking about the council meeting meant remembering the moment Calix had said she would stay. The absolute certainty in his voice, the way his jaw had tightened when Cevryn pushed back, the flash of something almost protective in those green eyes.

Heat flared in her chest at the memory. Not gratitude—she didn't need rescuing. But something deeper and more complicated. The recognition that he'd risked political capital to defend her, that he'd chosen her expertise over council approval despite barely knowing her.

She turned from the windows, agitation spiking higher. This was exactly the kind of thinking she needed to avoid. Calix Silvanus was a king, an Alpha dragon shifter, and her temporary employer. The fact that something electric happened whenever they were near each other was irrelevant. The way her pulse had quickened when he'd smiled during their walk to the medical facilities was a distraction she couldn't afford. The way something inside her seemed to settle whenever he was nearby was definitely not worth examining.

She resumed pacing, her bare feet silent on the warm stone. The guest suite was easily twice the size of her entire apartment back on Earth, furnished with pieces that looked ancient and priceless. Under normal circumstances, she might have appreciated the craftsmanship, the way volcanic heat kept the space perfectly warm, and the view of Ashvorn's lights beginning to twinkle in the distance.

But nothing about this situation was normal.

Her stomach chose that moment to remind her that she'd barely eaten. The food Calix had promised should have arrived by now. Or maybe she'd been too distracted to hear the knock on the door when it came.