Page 53 of Dragon Kissed

“Draquonir,” Rook said. “The oldest predators on earth.”

“What do you want?”

“To kill monsters before they decide the world belongs to them again.” He swiped through photographs — bodies, burned buildings, claw marks. A child beneath a sheet. Nica made herself look, because looking away was a tell, but her mind setthe images beside another set: a man kneeling to bring himself level with her, warming cold tea between his palms, holding fire back from her body because she hadn’t chosen it. “You think Demetri is civilized because he wears a suit.”

“I don’t think he’s human.” The answer surprised them both. “But I know what humans did to Faelar Aldrith. You chained him to a chair. Burned him. Forced him to make your weapons.”

“Crowe did.”

“You use them. You keep sayingmonsteras if it excuses everything.” As if the word were a door you could put between yourself and what you’d done. She knew that trick too; she’d watched people use it her whole life.

Rook rose. “You have no idea what they’ve done.”

“And you have no idea what I’ve read.” His attention sharpened, and she felt the balance of the room tilt a degree toward her.There.The manuscript remained her value; as long as she was the only one who could read it, she was worth more alive. She leaned back. “The book isn’t a history. It’s a bloodline register.”

“Which lines?”

“A section on the Ruby Line.” His eyes changed. Demetri’s line. She built the lie carefully, out of the real grammar of the manuscript, so it would sit true. “That the Ruby Draquonir have a hereditary vulnerability. During a mating cycle, their fire moves out of the heart and collects along the spine. For several hours, the scale over the sternum weakens.” The lie tasted bitter — but if they believed Demetri had a soft spot over his heart, they’d aim there, and he’d see the strike coming.Wouldn’t he?She refused to imagine him failing. She had watched him take a sword to the ribs and heal in minutes; she made that the picture in her mind and held it.

“What triggers it?” Rook asked.

She looked him in the eyes. “The mate.”

His satisfaction told her he believed she’d just confirmed his theory. “You,” he said. “You are his mate.”

The word entered her and rearranged everything it touched. Not girlfriend. Not lover.Mate.Fated. Bound.Is that what Demetri couldn’t tell me? Is that why there was no one else, why he knew immediately, why his body answered my touch, why the broken silver at his wrist lit up under my hand?Every impossible tender thing he’d done reorganized itself around the single word, and it fit, God help her, it fit perfectly.

“He didn’t tell you that either,” Rook said. Pain cut beneath her ribs, sharp and specific. “No.”

“They never tell the human until it’s too late. Until you’re marked.” The manuscript’s mating passages flashed through her memory — fire, silver tracery, two bodies becoming one law — and Nica’s pulse raced. Demetri had stopped the heat. Twice. She’d felt it gather at the place where they joined and felt him lock it down, and been half-annoyed, half-frightened, and never understood. He’dpreventedsomething. He’d protected her choice while she accused him of hiding the truth for his own convenience. He had held the most powerful instinct in his ancient body at bay, every time, because she hadn’t said yes.

Rook misread her expression. “He was preparing to enslave you.”

“No.You don’t know what the bond does.”

“Neither do you.” His hand struck the arm of the chair. “You think he’ll trade himself. For you? Without hesitation.” Nica closed her eyes.Of course he would. The idiot. The terrifying, impossible idiot who offered me a car and a security detail and stepped out of my way every single time I told him to.“What happens after he comes?”

“We kill him.” Fear arrived sharp and total — not fear of Demetri, fearforhim, a kind of terror she had spent fifteen yearsarranging her whole life to never feel again — and Rook saw it. “You care.”

She’d spent half her life running before love could make her vulnerable, and it had found her anyway, walked into a storage bay in a custom suit and caught her out of the air. A man had caught her falling and somehow become the ground beneath every step since. She loved him. The realization tore through her, too big for the concrete room. A dragon. A liar. A man who’d held back magic while making love to her because she hadn’t chosen it. A man who’d burn kingdoms rather than let their law kill her. She loved him. And she had left him standing on the steps in the fog, and told him trust mattered more than protection, and driven away.

Rook touched her bruised cheek. Nica turned and bit his hand, hard, tasting blood that wasn’t hers, and he shouted and struck her again, the chair tipping and she hit the floor, concrete cold and gritty against her cheek. “Bring the equipment,” he said. One of the men opened the door.

A roar shook dust from the ceiling. Not sound alone. Power. It came up through the floor and into her chest and she knew it, knew it the way she’d known it on the balcony. Every light went out, and emergency lamps flashed red. Nica smiled through blood. “My dragon is here.” Rook’s face changed. Real fear.

Gunfire erupted in the corridor. A blast of blue-white light tore beneath the door, and water flooded through the gap — not a leak, a moving wave — and the steel door bent inward, then exploded off its hinges. A man walked through the spray. Tall, pale hair, ocean-blue eyes. Benedikte. “Hello, Gideon.”

Rook fired. Benedikte lifted one hand, and the bullets stopped in midair, water closing around each in a perfect sphere. He turned his wrist, and the bullets reversed, and Rook threw himself aside. Two hunters fell. The woman lunged for Nica with the enchanted blade, and Nica rolled the chair, and the knifestruck concrete beside her head, sparks flying. Benedikte moved — too fast to see — and threw the woman into the wall. Nica heard bone break.

Rook ran. “Demetri!” Nica shouted. The bunker answered with fire: a ruby column burning through the corridor, heat rolling into the room in a wave that dried the water to steam. Benedikte tore the restraints from her wrists and ankles. Nica stood, her knees failed, and Benedikte caught her — and a growl shook the tunnel, deep enough to loosen grit from the walls, and he released her instantly and stepped away, hands raised.

Demetri filled the corridor. Not human. Ruby scales reflecting emergency light like molten gems, shoulders scraping concrete on both sides, smoke pouring between his teeth. He was enormous, and impossible, and every terror Rook had shown her on the tablet should have been standing in that doorway — and instead her whole body went toward him. His eyes found Benedikte’s hand near her, and fire gathered in his throat with a sound like a furnace drawing breath. “No!” Nica ran between them. “He helped me.” The dragon’s head lowered — enormous, beautiful, terrifying — and there, in that vast face, were Demetri’s eyes. Gray shot through with ruby, and behind them, unmistakably, him. Her fear vanished beneath recognition, the way it had every time since the beginning. “It’s you.”

The dragon breathed her scent, the great sides heaving with it, and a vibration rolled from his chest, not quite a growl. Her name, shaped by a throat never built for human words. “Nica.” She touched his snout. The scales were hot, smooth, real beneath her palm, and his eyes closed and the dragon leaned into her hand, all those tons of ancient predator gentling to the weight of her fingers. A sob rose in her throat. “I’m sorry.” For leaving. For the wall. For needing the truth more than she’d needed the only thing he’d been able to give her, which was her life.

His eye opened — ruby light, understanding, forgiveness she hadn’t earned —

— and then Gideon Rook stepped from the side passage and drove an enchanted spear beneath Demetri’s foreleg. The blade entered between scales. Demetri roared, the sound turning to agony. Nica fell backward. Rook pulled a trigger built into the shaft, and green fire exploded through Demetri’s body, and the dragon crashed into the wall, concrete fracturing in a spray of dust.