Her father startled and dropped her bleeding arm. Elaina collapsed onto the coins, released from the mesmerizing moment.
Had he rethought his actions? Maybe she’d survive after all.
Or maybe she’d stop being a damn coward and find the strength to do what needed to be done.
She buried her injured limb in the cool metal coins and twisted to check on him.
His focus was on the cave entrance. “We have a visitor.” His head tilted. “No. Not merely a visitor. A legend.”
He spotted the position of her forearm under the coins.
“Good. Call on your treasure to heal. We want to be at our best for this.”
He faced the entrance again before she could register his words. He was giving her tips on how to heal the injury he’d made? The unpredictable nature of his insanity was enough to drive her crazy.
She concentrated on the gold and silver around her, drawing energy from the pile. A moment later, the pain receded, and she slid her arm back. No trace of the slash remained on her skin.
Her father had fallen into a wary crouch at the edge of the coin mound. She stood and shook out her wrist. Even though the healing was complete, odd tingles still exploded over her body.
She stepped alongside him, but not too close. “What is it?”
“Stay behind me. You are too young to fight this ancient enemy on your own.”
Now he was being protective of her?
“Yes, but what is it, Father?” She shook out her arm again, the prickles continuing to excite her skin.
He straightened and called out in deep, growling Drakish, “We are ready for you, beast.”
A running humanoid figure rounded the nearest mountain of treasure and skidded to a stop.
No, not a figure.
Not a beast.
Alex.
Her thoughts slammed into each other. What was Alex doing here? How had he found her? How had he made it over the chasm? How could she protect him now?
Her father spouted another warning, the Drakish words hard and guttural. “As you can see, you are outnumbered, beast. We will fight you, and you will lose.”
Alex drew himself up and lifted his chin. “I did not come here to fight, dragon.”
There was something terribly wrong with this conversation, but her mind was still stuck on the fact that Alex was here.
“You are not here to fight?” Her father scoffed. “Why else would a knight enter a dragon’s cave?”
Knight? Not this again. Her father’s assumption snapped her brain out of neutral.
“He is not a knight, Father.”
Both men startled and gaped at her.
“This is your father?”
“Of course he is a knight.”
She tackled her father’s surprise first. His instability was dangerous enough. If he felt threatened by a knight, he’d be even more unpredictable.
“I know it feels as if he is a knight, but he is not one. I tested him. He cannot see a dragon’s heart. Trust me, Father.”
His brows pulled together, judging her as the stupidest dragon alive.
“Then tell me, my daughter,” he paused, emphasizing his disappointment at her ignorance, “how is he able to understand and speak Drakish?”
Uh. Her brain crunched to a stop. She blinked, contemplated Alex, and blinked again. His incredulous stare matched hers.
Was this a hallucination? Maybe the size of her last claiming had driven her into a drunken dream. But her father’s slicing of her forearm had hurt more like a nightmare.
Making sure she was speaking Drakish, she asked Alex, “How did you get here?”
“I—” He stopped, and his jaw circled, as though he was trying to figure out how his tongue was forming the sounds. “This is Drakish? How do I know it?”
She didn’t want to think about that. “Answer my question. How did you get here?”
“I followed George and found your”—his lips pressed together, and then he apparently gave up trying to find a suitable word in Drakish and switched to English—“credit card numbers. You made a gas purchase in the town down the mountain this morning. From there, I followed my instincts.” He grinned and conceded with a shrug. “And your footprints in the snow.”
Her father’s gaze bounced between them, his eyes narrow slits. She didn’t know how much he understood English, but she needed to have this conversation with Alex.
“How did you make it over the abyss?”
A glint shone in his eye. “I’m stronger than I seem.”
Before she could decide if that was a good or bad thing, his smile tightened.
He tipped his chin toward her father. “Does Volus’s talk of teamwork mean things are patched up between you two, or did I interrupt something?”
Under her watchful eye, her father hadn’t made any threatening moves or reacted to any of their English so far, so she risked prolonging the conversation to give Alex the background. “Only if you count him slitting my arm open as something.”
He stiffened, and his focus jumped to her rolled up sleeve.
“It’s better now. He taught me how to heal it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, to be honest.” She gave him an apologetic smile and shrugged. “He’s very unstable. I’m afraid I’d be dead now if you hadn’t showed up and interrupted him, but I don’t think he wants to kill me.”
The warning sign she’d been watching for flamed across her father’s cheeks in a splash of red. In Drakish, he roared, “This is your male? A knight?”
Uh-oh. Her smile had probably given away their relationship.
“He is not a—”
“You tested him before your heart ignited. There was nothing to see.”
No... She staggered back, stumbling under the weight of her body. Her movement drew Alex’s attention. Was it her imagination, or did he glance at the bottom of her ribs?
She examined herself. Her torso now glowed, just as her father’s did. Alex hadn’t seen her heart before, but then again, neither had she. The claiming of Nastav’s pile of coins had ignited her heart and potentially changed everything.
Her father didn’t give her the chance to retest Alex. “I can feel that he is a knight. I can feel his power over my skin. And he feels it too. Do you not, beast? You feel our power. You cannot deny it. You cannot fight it. You are compelled to contain us. Oppress us. Kill us.”
Each threat sent shivers skittering over her skin, and each shudder grew in strength, building like a tidal wave. Especially because Alex knew exactly how to carry out all of them. She’d unintentionally taught him about every dragon weakness, including the vulnerability of a dragon’s heart. Her mouth grew as dry as coal dust.
No, it couldn’t be true. She swallowed past the lies in her parched throat.
He’d given her a logical explanation for how he’d found her—credit cards and footprints. It wasn’t as if he’d used a knight’s instincts to hunt her down. And sure, he was aggressive, but that didn’t mean he was a monster out to kill her. They’d even shared a smile a moment ago, as though he’d forgiven her for her lie in the letter and everything. He couldn’t be a knight.
She waited for Alex to deny her father. He didn’t have those urges. He wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t a monster. He loved her.
He drew himself up straight and answered in Drakish, “Yes, but—”
“See, my daughter? Even Nastav would tell you, this man cannot ignore his instincts. He is a beast. He is our enemy. He—”
Her father stopped his tirade at the look on her face. Whatever expression it held brought pity to his eyes.
Alex had said yes. He hadn’t denied a need to kill her.
For months, her body had known better than she did. The dangerous vibe. The warmth from his power. The energy between them, as no mere human could fill her with strength, claim or no claim. No, the energy came from her claim of a man with unnatural abilities of his own.
Understanding flowed through her, burning away her naïveté. He needed to fulfill his instincts, just as much as she needed treasure. He wouldn’t be able to ignore his urge to kill her now that she was full-dragon, no matter what they’d shared in the past.
Her ribcage was hollow and empty inside, everything scorched into unrecognizable, meaningless husks. She would die here—either Alex would kill her, or her father would.
But she didn’t—couldn’t—care. She was beyond caring about maintaining a brave façade in front of her father. She was beyond caring if she left this cave alive. She was beyond caring about anything.
There was no happy life waiting for her at “home.”
No, more than that. Her breaths stopped, and her new-and-improved heart ached with a heavy thud. Charred nausea singed her throat.
From this point forward, she had no life. No home. No one. Nothing.
“I am sorry, my daughter. No matter who you thought he was before, back when you were an immature dragon, now his instinct will be stronger, just as you are stronger.”
Alex strode toward her. “Do not listen to him, Elaina.”
Her father hissed and edged closer too. “Do you deny that your instincts are stronger now?”
“No, but—”
“Stop it, both of you.” She picked up the sword she’d used on Nastav and held it in front of her. The blade tip swung back and forth, pointing at each of them. She wanted both of them to leave her alone so she could mourn Nastav and her lost dreams in peace.
Alex halted his advance, and his gaze flicked to her torso and back several times, clearly noticing the change in her heart’s fire. Her father’s expression hardened, and he strode to Nastav’s charred body beyond the reach of her sword.
“You!” He knelt in front of what was left of the corpse. “You did this to her. You ruined my daughter just as you ruined me. All because of my precious mother.”
He picked up the charcoal-like form of scorched remains and threw them at the cavern wall. They smashed into a black cloud of dust. A soft patter of ash rained down and then faded. Nastav was truly gone.
Her sword drooped, and her father sauntered toward her. She tightened her grip and pointed it at his sternum. “Stop.” She spoke past the lump in her throat. “Nastav loved me.”
That fact seemed like the only thing she had left that wasn’t a lie.
“Nastav did not care about you. You were simply his latest attempt to justify his worship of my mother.”
The whisper fell from her lips. “That is not true.”
“What do you know of my mother?”
Considering that she hadn’t even known Nastav was her grandfather, she had to admit her knowledge of her grandmother was a big, fat zero.
At her silence, her father scoffed. “My mother was a weak human.”
Human? Was that even possible? Pregnancy between a dragon and a human?
No wonder Nastav hadn’t freaked out when she’d told him about Alex.
Her father swept his hand down his front. “She died birthing me. Nastav convinced himself that he loved her out of guilt. My whole youngling phase, he talked about the loving sacrifice she’d made to give me life. Told me to find a female I could love the way he loved her.”
“And you did.” Her tone didn’t disguise her sorrow. The puzzle of her father’s life assembled into a tragic picture.
“I tried.” His fingers curled into fists. “But Nastav forgot that loving a human woman was different from loving a competitor. And the idea of love is easier than actual love. He never had to live for years with the one he loved. Always trying to make it work.” He unfurled and contemplated his hands. “I could not do it. I failed.”
“I do not blame you.”
She really didn’t. Memories told her that he’d tried to make it work. He’d tried to create the first dragon family.
Her father focused on Alex. “Now you know why you must let me kill him.”
What? In her peripheral vision, Alex backed up a few steps.
“You know it is true, my daughter. He will kill us both if he gets a chance.”
“No.” Alex’s protest went ignored by both her and her father.
“I know he would.” She thrust the sword closer to her father in warning. “But that does not mean you should kill him.”
“Why do you protect him? For as difficult as Saština and my struggles were, any attempt you make to force it to work with him would be countless times worse. He is your enemy.” He stared into nothingness. “You would go to sleep as lovers and wake with his weapon impaling your heart.”
“Wrong.” Alex’s empty denial echoed through the cavern. “I would never hurt her.”
Her father’s voice deepened into cold hatred. “That is what I said too.”
Alex strode toward them, and she raised her palm for him to stop. His deceptions weren’t convincing—or helping.
He halted and squared his shoulders. “I am not a beast or a monster. I would not hurt her.”
“I will prove you a liar.”
Before she could tell her father that he didn’t need to prove anything because she already believed him, he smacked her backward. Her sword flew from her grasp and clattered along the rocky floor. She crashed onto her pile of coins, scattering them in her wake.
“Elaina!” Alex started toward her, but a growl from her father stopped him in his tracks.
She mouthed no to Alex to keep him from upsetting the situation more. Her father calmly strode away from them, heading to the open area between treasure mounds at the far wall.
Once he was in the open space, his form rippled, changed, grew. Her father crouched in his magnificent dragon form. Bright red scales covered his head, back, and limbs. Bone-white horns framed the top of the crimson frill standing up along his spine. Scarlet armor plates coated the front of his neck and belly. Air circulated in the cave from the beats of his devil-red, bat-like wings.
Alex’s mouth hung open, an understandable reaction to seeing his first dragon in dragon form.
Her father’s spiked red tail swished back and forth. “You feel it even more now, beast. Do you not?”
Alex’s body shook, but he tried to deny it. “No.”
“You want to pick up that sword behind you.”
“I will not do it.” Alex used his left hand to yank his right wrist behind his back, as though afraid his right arm had a mind of its own. His habitual gesture took on new meaning in the face of this temptation. It was the instincts of someone who knew a weapon in his hands would be deadly.
“You want to attack. You want to kill.”
No doubt her father’s taunting was having an effect. Alex’s limbs squirmed in a one-man arm-wrestling match. Still, he fought his impulses. “You are wrong. I am not the monster you think I am.”
“I will not let you trick and lie to my daughter.”
Her father reared his head back and inhaled. A jolt electrified her chest in recognition, and her heart thrashed, clawing at her ribs, desperate to stop the inevitable.
“No!”
Her instincts drove her to rush between the males. It didn’t matter that she and Alex couldn’t be together. He didn’t deserve to die in a ridiculous trial by her father.
Her instincts compelled her to prepare to block the flames. It didn’t matter how much damage she’d have to endure. She would protect him.
Her instincts urged her to change into her dragon form. Her heart’s fire spread to every cell of her body, forging a new form. A new existence.
Her instincts accepted the mission to defend the man she loved.
Love was worth more than her life.
Alex’s concentration on holding back his urges wavered at the sight of Elaina leaping into the open area between him and Volus. At the top of her graceful jump, the space around her body undulated. By the time she landed and challenged Volus, she was a dragon.
Elaina. A dragon.
A beautiful dragon—worthy of walking among gods.
Tension drained from his body, and a “whoa” sighed from his throat.
Every aspect that was fierce and terrifying about Volus was exquisite and stunning on her. White scales shimmered with blinding rainbows over her body. The ridge along her spine flowed with shades of yellow, amber, and brown. She opened her wings, displaying the same color pattern in hypnotizing swirls.
She was perfection. And he couldn’t look away from her magnificence.
Then the flames hit.