Page 23 of Dragon Cursed
She looked the same now.
Whatever had passed through her, whatever the shrine had given her, she had taken without struggle.The worst parts of him — the dragon, the thing that had been pacing the cage of his ribs since the moment he scented her on the wind — understood what that meant before the rest of him caught up.
She was meant for this place.
For the first time, the shrine hadn’t attacked.Hadn’t taken.
Whatever power resided within its walls hadrecognizedhis mate.Called to her.
He couldn’t leave her here.He couldn’t take her home.
He gathered her closer.He turned his face into her hair and breathed her in.The dragon inside him purred — a deep, possessive sound that vibrated through both man and beast as he tightened his arms around what washis.
Then he carried her out under the falling water and into the green light of the wood.
He didn’t look back.
He didn’t need to.
The figure he had once tried to chisel out of the stone was burned into the inside of his eyelids — and Poppy, soft and silent against his chest, forced him to confront the memory he had spent what seemed like an eternity trying to forget.
The day his sister died at the same altar.
The woman he hadn’t been able to save.
And the slow, terrible understanding that the same shrine had just chosen another.
He walked.
He didn’t know yet where he would take her.
He only knew he would rather die than let her go.
7
Alsander
The Next Day
Alsander hadn’t slept.
He sat in the deep shadow at the back of the chamber, shoulders against cool stone, and watched Poppy on the bed of furs across the firelit room.He didn’t move.Hadn’t moved in hours.His body ached from the stillness.
He welcomed the ache.
It gave him something to feel that wasn’t the slow turn of his stomach every time her breath caught.
The fire had burned down to embers.He hadn’t risen to feed it.He didn’t want to cross the room.He didn’t want her to wake to the sight of him at her side as if he had the right to be there.
He had no rights.
He had carried her through the wood.Lain her down.Pulled a fur over her shoulders.Then he had retreated to the dark, and there he had stayed.
She slept the way she had slept in her own small bed three nights ago.One hand curled near her mouth.The other open, palm up, as if she expected something to be placed in it.Firelight caught in her hair and edged it with copper.
He had brought a human into his lair.
The act had brought fresh waves of shock every quarter hour through the long night.No foot but his own had crossed its threshold since he was cursed.No dragon, no one from the Secret Kingdoms.Now a human, his true mate, lay on his furs with the rise and fall of her breath the only sound in a room that had known only his silence.
