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I remained absolutely still while he crossed it, and by the time he stopped in front of me, he was close enough that I could feel the warmth coming from his body and smell the coffee he'd drunk at breakfast.

His hand lifted slowly, although he stopped before touching me. “Can I?”

Emotion tightened around my chest.

I closed my eyes briefly and lowered my head, and everything inside me went silent when Ash's palm touched the scales above my nose.

The connection opened between us so suddenly that for one stunned second, I forgot how to breathe.

I'd known it could happen. Every dragon knew the old stories, and I'd seen enough proof among mated dragons to understand what it meant when a human mate touched their dragon and the barrier between thought and speech simply ceased to exist.

Knowing wasn't remotely the same as feeling it.

Ash's startled breath sounded impossibly loud.

Max?

His voice wasn't in my ears.

It was inside me.

My dragon surged with such fierce satisfaction that heat rolled through my chest, and I had to concentrate on keeping the reaction from becoming another cloud of smoke.

I'm here.

Ash's hand jerked but didn't leave me, and his eyes widened so dramatically that under any other circumstances I would've laughed.

“What the fuck?”

You can hear me.

His gaze flew over my face as though he expected to find some physical explanation for the voice he'd just heard.

You can hear me too?

Yes.

“Holy shit.”

The words came from his mouth this time, but his hand remained pressed against my scales, keeping the connection between us open.

Ash didn't know what it meant.

That realization arrived immediately behind my wonder and lodged painfully beneath it. He knew nothing about dragon mating or the connection that could form between a dragon and the person his dragon had chosen. As far as Ash knew, this was simply another impossible ability to add to the morning's rapidly expanding list.

I knew better.

My dragon had recognized him. Ignatius believed Ash was my true mate. I'd felt the pull toward him strengthening for weeks, and now Ash had placed his hand against my dragon and spoken directly into my mind.

Proof.

It should've erased every doubt I had.

Instead, the word lifebound whispered through everything else, because even with this, I still didn't know enough. Ignatius had something to tell me but I didn’t know what that was.

I wouldn't ruin this moment by giving him another edited version of the truth.

But I would tell him.