Page 26 of Dragon Cursed
Mate.
The word filled him from the inside out.The dragon had known.The dragon had known from the first moment in the forest clearing, and Alsander had refused to listen.His dragon had been patient.Waiting.
The dragon wasn’t waiting anymore.
Mate.Mate.Mine.
And under the word — hot and rising — a second thing.
The fire.
The slow build at the back of his throat.The instinct as old as his line.Breathe over her.Mark her.Bind her.Wrap her in dragonfire so every Draquonir from here to the end of the world will know whose she is.His magic would not burn her.It never burned the chosen one.It would settle on her skin like gold dust and sink into her bones and she would be his.Irrevocably.For as long as either of them drew breath.
No.
Alsander fought the dragon with everything still man buried inside the great black shape of him.The dragon turned its head toward her.Lowered its long neck.Alsander hauled at the reins of his own body and couldn’t stop the lowering, could only stop the fire, could onlyjuststop the fire.
She hadn’t moved.
Run,he tried to warn her.Run, you brave foolish girl, run while I am still holding it back.
All that came out was the dragon’s deep, ferocious roar.
The air was electric.
She didn’t run.
She walked toward him.
Across the firelit floor of his lair, in her bare feet and her sweater that hugged the lines of her body, she walked toward the dragon as if the dragon were a horse in a stable she had come to greet, not a fierce predator that could fit her inside his giant maw.
Smoke curled lazily from his nostrils.
Stop smoking!You’ll scare her!Alsander commanded the dragon.
The dragon rumbled low in his chest, the equivalent of a dragon chuckle.Best to show mate we are strong, fire-breathing beast capable of incinerating anyone foolish enough to attack.Dragons without fire are weak.Get mate killed.
Alsander couldn’t argue with the dragon’s logic, but he wasn’t convinced.You’re just preening.
I am courting our mate.Something you should have been doing for the past three days.You almost lost her.Now it is my turn.Watch and learn, fool.
The cave shook as the dragon stretched to his full height, spread his wings, and breathed fire across the stone ceiling of the cave.
The flames rolled across the ceiling in a river of molten gold.
Heat crashed through the cavern.The shelves rattled.Shadows leapt wild across the stone as fire licked over the vaulted roof in branching veins, bright enough to turn night into something feverish and alive.
Alsander tensed deep within the dragon.Now she would run.She would run, as she should, and he would go back to the business of dying.Alone.Pain struck his heart with such force that had he not been in dragon form, he would have wept.
Poppy stopped beneath the flame.
Not fleeing.
Looking up in wonderment.
The dragon swelled with satisfaction so intense Alsander felt it in his own ribs.
See?the beast purred.Mate understands wonder.
