Excerpt from Barrow’s Journal – My Year with Dragons
Like many creatures in the animal kingdom, dragons mate for life. There are possible true mates, which provide dragons with a bond so deep that the dragons can hear each other’s thoughts, sense each other’s feelings, and sometimes see what their mate can as though viewing it from their eyes. But this bond has its dangers. If one of the dragons in a true-mated pair dies, the other suffers from mate grief, an emotional response so strong that the remaining dragon dies shortly after its mate. It is the curse of dragonkind to have such a weakness.
Madelyn leaned against the banister at the top of the stairs in her palatial home in the wilds of Russia.
“Grigori, come put Jackson to bed!”
After four years, she was still getting used to living in such a massive house, with crown molding on the ceilings, gilded furniture, and priceless works of art hanging on the walls. It felt like a museum at times, but a comfortable one that she could live in.
“Grigori!” she shouted again. “Your son. Bed. Now!” She knew he could hear her. She’d used her “mom” voice, with a bit of her own thunderbird voice thrown in, something she had learned could travel very, very far.
The door opened at the end of the hall, and Grigori stepped out. She had not realized he was so close.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were downstairs with Rurik and Mikhail.” She had last seen her husband and his two younger brothers having a drink in his study. It made her heart swell to see all three of them talking together. The last few years, they’d been separated across the globe: Mikhail in England, Rurik in Michigan, and Grigori here in Russia. This was the first time in the past year that all three brothers, their wives, and now their drakelings were under one roof. It was wonderful.
Madelyn smiled as her husband sauntered up to her in his sexy way. He still wore a three-piece gray suit because he’d had virtual meetings with his offices in Moscow most of the day. It reminded her of the first time she’d met him. He’d almost stalked her like a dragon hunting its prey, and she loved being the focus of his intense interest, like she was right now.
“Jackson needs tucking in, does he?” Grigori’s hands went to her hips, holding her still as he leaned in to kiss her. He inhaled her scent and groaned softly. “I never tire of your delicious smell, wife.” He nuzzled her throat, and Madelyn responded with weak-kneed desire. “It makes me want to devour you over and over.”
That brought back wonderfully erotic memories of when he’d threatened to eat her because she had been a virgin . . . and the way he’d eaten her out. She’d nearly died from pleasure.
“Keep doing that and Jackson will have a sibling,” she warned.
Her husband chuckled and gently bit the lobe of her ear. “Perhaps that is exactly what I want. Another little drakeling to run about the house.” He squeezed her bottom, and she melted into his arms to deliver a much deeper kiss.
“Hmm . . . I’m not opposed to that either,” Madelyn whispered. “Let’s go tuck our son in, and then we can find a quiet room with a bed and work on giving him a sister.”
Grigori growled in approval, his dragon rising to the surface and causing his eyes to swirl with gold.
A little boy’s voice piped up from down the hall. “Eww . . .”
Madelyn and Grigori stiffened and turned to see their son standing in the doorway to his bedroom.
“Jackson.” They sighed and tried not to laugh.
“Dad, will you tell me a story?” the boy asked.
Grigori scooped him up and carried him toward the child-size four-poster bed. It was a grand piece of furniture, but the grandeur was slightly offset by the brightly colored superhero sheets. Jackson adored all things superhero. Grigori grumbled all the time about how the boy should have dragon sheets since he was a dragon shifter.
Madelyn reminded Grigori that Jackson might also be a thunderbird. He’d sneezed last week and knocked his father and two uncles flat on the front lawn. If Jackson turned out to be a thunderbird like her, he would be a natural enemy of dragons (at least those who meant his family harm), and if he was able to transform, he could flap his wings and create a sonic boom that would knock any nearby dragons unconscious.
Madelyn, being the last of her kind, secretly hoped for Jackson to at least be partly thunderbird. She still had plenty of years to have drakelings; she just wanted one child to be like her. It wasn’t easy knowing she was the only one of her kind left because dragons like Grigori’s father had hunted her people down.
Grigori plopped Jackson into the bed and tucked him in, then sat down on the edge. Madelyn took the other side of the bed and brushed a hand over Jackson’s blond hair.
“What story do you want me to read? We have . . .” Grigori reached for the top book on the stack on the nightstand. “Harry Potter? You love him.” Grigori flipped through the pages, searching for a bookmarked spot to pick up where they’d last left off.
There was nothing more attractive to her than seeing her fierce, dangerous, sexy husband paging through a book about a boy wizard and gazing fondly at their son. Maybe it was time to work on another drakeling.
Jackson was four in human years, yet he had aged quicker mentally. His verbal communication skills were more like those of an eight-year-old.
“Not tonight. Tell me about the lost Barinov dragon.”
Grigori laughed. “But I thought you wanted to finish The Half-Blood Prince?”
“I know.” Jackson glanced down sheepishly, his tiny fingers playing with the bedsheets. “But the lost Barinov is my favorite story.”
“Very well, but you know I’m dying to know if Harry finds Sirius Black or not.” Grigori made a show of settling in, removing his suit coat and rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. Madelyn noted his muscled forearms and made herself a promise that later tonight she’d drag her husband to the nearest bed and enjoy all the things those arms could do.
“Once upon a time, there were two brothers. The brothers Barinov. Vasili, the elder, and Ivan, the younger. Vasili was a questing dragon, and Ivan was a hoarding dragon, the guardian who protected their treasures. The two brothers were close, like I am with your uncles. They loved each other fiercely and always protected each other. But the day came when it was time for Vasili to hunt for a dragon heart stone called the Heart of Sorrows. It was a sapphire the size of an apple, and it was said that the stone held the souls of ancient dragons.”
“Ancient dragons?” Jackson murmured in wonder, his blue eyes bright with excitement.
“Yes.” Grigori chuckled. “The most ancient. Some of them possessed powers we do not. They were said to be able to control the elements, and some could even see the future.”
“Tell me about Vasili’s mate,” Jackson prompted, keeping his father on track.
“Marina was a powerful battle dragon, the last in a line of ancient dragons who could control the elements. Much like your mother, she could make it rain or storm when she was upset, or even make the mountains rumble when she was angry. When she went to war against her enemies, she was almost unbeatable.”
“Tell me about the mountain,” Jackson said.
“She accompanied Vasili to a land far away with snowcapped mountains to find the Heart of Sorrows. They knew that if they could find the dragon heart stone, many lives would be saved. A new age of cooperation between the dragon clans might have been possible. But there were some dragons who didn’t want them to succeed. It was said that a great army was sent out to stop them, but if that is true, none of them are known to have returned. She and Vasili were never seen again.”
Madelyn heard the pain in Grigori’s voice that he could barely hide from their son. He had been close to his uncle, as had Rurik and Mikhail and losing him had hurt all three brothers deeply.
“But Vasili is not really gone,” Jackson said.
Grigori gave his son a little pat on the shoulder. “I am afraid he is. He and his mate died a long time ago.”
“But he didn’t die—he was lost,” the little boy said with solemnity.
“Yes, but—” Grigori started to say.
“But he’s not lost anymore, Dad. She found him,” Jackson said.
Grigori looked toward Madelyn helplessly. Trying to explain death to a child was not easy. Neither of them really knew what to do.
Jackson yawned. “You’ll see. She’ll bring him home.”
“Who is she?” Madelyn asked her son. “Do you mean his mate?” A breeze rippled along her skin, but none of the windows were open.
Her son nodded.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Grigori said. “She died too.”
“She did, but she came back for him,” the little boy said, as though it was so easy to understand.
“Okay, I think you have had too many of Dad’s stories tonight.” Madelyn stroked a hand through the little boy’s hair. “Now go to sleep.” She kissed him, and Grigori did the same before they turned off the lights and stepped into the hallway.
“Why was he talking about Vasili’s mate?” Madelyn asked.
“I don’t know. Children often try to change the parts of stories they do not like. I think it’s why he likes superheroes so much. They always save the day.” Grigori put an arm around Madelyn’s waist as they walked down the hall, but he paused at the top of the staircase.
“When did you first tell him about Vasili?” Grigori asked her.
“Me? I haven’t. I thought you had been telling him the tale for a while.”
Grigori shook his head. “I never told him the story until tonight.”
“Never? But he said it was his favorite. Someone had to have told him.” Madelyn pursed her lips in thought. “Could it have been Rurik or Mikhail?”
“Why don’t we ask them?”
Madelyn nodded. She’d had a strange feeling all day, like she had perceived a shift in the wind, perhaps even the earth. Something had changed, but she did not know what, and now their son was acting strangely. It could just be the fantasies of a small child, or it could be something else. They were beings of magic, after all.
She and Grigori found his brothers still in the study, talking and sipping cognac. Rurik, the powerful battle dragon, and Mikhail, the brooding hoarding dragon, were relaxed and smiling.
Mikhail saw Grigori’s and Madelyn’s worried expressions first. “Brother, what is the matter?”
“Did either of you tell Jackson the story about Vasili and the Heart of Sorrows?”
Mikhail and Rurik exchanged looks and shook their heads.
That feeling of something having changed now intensified. “Then how did he know about it?” Suddenly her stomach cramped, and she bent over to clutch at her midsection as she nearly threw up.
“Madelyn!” Grigori gently helped her to a chair. The three dragon brothers gathered protectively around her.
“Grigori . . . It’s like when we first met. It’s like I’m near dragons . . . or sensing them.”
She could not easily explain it. The first time she had been around Grigori, his being her future mate had canceled out her thunderbird’s natural instinctive response to his being her enemy. But his brother Rurik had not been her mate, and the thunderbird side of her had reacted in a similar way. But she had long since ceased to see the brothers as a threat, at least on a primal level.
Grigori knelt in front of her. “Are you feeling sick?”
“It’s like . . .” Madelyn was too afraid to say the words, because they sounded crazy. They did not quite make sense, even to her. “I sensed a dragon, a powerful one, maybe more than one, being born. Or coming into existence?” She closed her eyes as images flashed across her mind, the thunderbird inside trying to communicate with her.
She saw icy-cold caves and smelled the scent of dragon upon the breeze. The scent was laced with pain, grief, and death. It was a scent both old and new. She opened her eyes to stare at the three Barinov brothers.
“What once was lost has been found.” She swallowed and spoke the name to make them understand. “Vasili. The lost Barinov dragon . . . has been found.”
She’d woken a sleeping dragon.
“Oh my God . . .” Tasha scrambled backward, trying to put as much distance between her and the waking dragon as possible.
This wasn’t good. This was very, very bad. If he woke up, a lot of very dangerous things could happen. He could bring the entire mountain crumbling down around them or . . . he might be hungry. Did dragons eat people? She’d never thought to ask, but hopefully not. They were people too, after all—right?
But this dragon had been here God knew how long. Maybe he was like a grizzly bear waking up from hibernation, grumpy with an empty stomach. Maybe this one was vegan?
“Nice dragon . . . easy . . .” Her voice shook as she watched the dragon stretch its scaled limbs, extending black taloned claws into the rock, scraping and gouging as the beast shook its head. It reminded her of a dog that had just woken from a nap, much like the mountain had.
Its frill unfurled, and it widened its jaws, yawning. Then it released a cry of pain, its sharp shriek deafening. Tasha threw her hands up over her ears and closed her eyes. Then the sound changed, turned softer, hoarser. She opened her eyes, and her heartbeat came to a stop.
The dragon was gone. In its place lay a human man wearing slightly loose brown leather trousers. He was facedown, and his muscled form shook as he slowly rolled onto his back. Now she could see the wound more clearly along his side. It had healed and mottled into a dark scar. He breathed hard, slow, each inhalation drawing her a step closer to him until she was within two feet.
Tasha stared down at him. The man was massive, at least six foot four and broad-shouldered, every inch of him a physical manifestation of strength. He was gorgeous too. His face was a series of angles and hard lines, yet it all came together in a way that would have made the angels weep. Older scars stretched across his stomach, and there were a few more along his arms, similar to the fresh wound on his side but not so deep. His eyes were closed, his long dark lashes resting against his cheeks.
“Hey . . .” She hoped not to frighten him.
His eyes shot open, and she shrieked as he swung an arm out, sweeping it across the backs of her legs. She fell on her backside, and he leapt onto her, snarling, eyes glowing. The slitted dragon pupils were gone, and instead a pair of stormy blue eyes gazed back at her, storms cut by golden swirls. His weight nearly crushed her as he roared. The sound wasn’t quite human. Blind rage was carved into his features.
“Please, I’m sorry . . .” She wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, but the pain and anger within him reached out to her. Such loss, such overpowering grief turned into fury because it had nowhere else to go.
Whatever this man—this dragon—had lost, it had been everything to him. She felt a need to soothe him, to calm him. She reached up and placed a tender palm on his jaw.
He flinched but did not pull away. His roar died faded and he sagged against her, then slumped over and fell on his side. He shuddered, his gaze locked on hers as they both lay on the floor of the cave. Tears began to stream down his face, but he made no sound. He simply quaked, like tectonic plates cracking apart.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and kept her palm on his cheek, hoping that her touch helped ease his pain. His tears slowed and the shuddering eased to a stop. Her heart ached as she watched this stranger in such pain. It was as though his pain hurt her too.
He spoke rough words in Russian, and she was thankful she understood him.
“Marina, my love, Marina . . . I thought you had left me.” His eyes rolled back into his head as he sank into unconsciousness.
Vasili wished he were dead.
Perhaps he was and this was some private hell for dragons who allowed their mates to die but could not follow them into the next life.
That was the only explanation he could think of as he woke in the cave for the second time. His left side burned where Dimitri had slashed him, but that pain paled in comparison to the pain he’d felt drawing breath while his mate lay dead at the foot of the mountain. Touching the place where he expected to feel blood, his fingers numbly bumped into thick scar tissue, tissue that would fade over the next few hours into a thin, pale scar. His thoughts were jumbled at first, a chaotic dark swarm that left him confused. The last thing he remembered was the rockslide that had blocked his exit and kept the Drakor dragons out. At least the stone was safe.
The stone—
He struggled to sit up, ignoring the protests of his stiff body. He glanced about the dark cave and spotted the stone, glowing in the gloom.
“You’re awake,” a soft voice said, echoing off the walls. He turned to find a woman pressed flat against the wall farthest from him. Her body was clothed in a strange puffy black garment that covered her from the neck down to her feet. Her feet were covered by strange boots that looked as hard as armor.
“Who . . . Who are you?” he asked. His voice felt like grinding rocks, each word causing pain as they came out.
“Tasha. Tasha Bellamy.” Her voice, on the other hand, caressed his ears and made his body flood with warmth.
“Tasha,” he murmured. It was a good name. Her eyes were a warm shade, the color of topaz stones. Among all of the jewels he had hoarded over the years, topaz had always been his favorite. Her hair, a soft russet, hung down in damp tendrils around her face.
“Who are you?” Tasha asked. “And who is Marina?” Her Russian accent was good, but her words were hesitant, as though she wasn’t used to speaking the language.
“Marina was my . . .” He halted before he said the word mate. This human woman would not know what that meant. “She was my wife . . . and she died.”
“I’m so sorry.” The woman’s voice was full of compassion.
“It was not your fault,” he said. “But I wish to speak no more about it.”
He climbed to his feet and examined his side. It was healing, but slowly. He needed to rest and find some food. “I need sustenance.”
“Sustenance?” She said the word in Russian haltingly, as though she did not understand him.
“Food,” he tried again.
“Food.” She nodded. She dug around in the puffy garment she wore and held something out to him.
He came toward her and took the rectangular object from her. It crinkled a little as his fingers closed around it.
“What is this?”
“Food. A protein bar,” she said. “I doubt it will be enough, since I’m not sure we’ll find a way out of here. The tunnel is high up and narrow, plus it’s really slick and I couldn’t get a decent foothold to climb out.”
In another life he would have laughed, but laughter would never come to him again. Fortunately, he wasn’t likely to live long enough to miss it.
“This is not food,” he said, handing the strange object back to her. “And we will not die in here. I will get us out.” He didn’t care if he stayed in here, but if he had but a handful of days left to live, he could do some good for others, like helping this poor human out of here.
To his surprise, she then tore the shiny thing open, exposing something soft and brown beneath the reflective surface. He raised it to his nose, inhaling. It smelled like food, but it also smelled off somehow.
“Just try it,” she said, slowly getting to her feet.
He peeled a bit more of the shiny wrapping away before taking a bite of the thing. It tasted like dust and grain. He swallowed, his throat dry. He did not have time for this. He needed meat and a stout beer in a large tankard. It occurred to him then that he must have fallen into a deep sleep after he was wounded. The cold, the loss of Marina, and his wounds combined had sent him into hibernation.
He handed her the food back. “You are small and female. You eat first. I can last a little longer until we get out of here. Wait here. I will return.” He began to follow the source of the moonlight up a tunnel. He transformed his hands enough to claw at the ice and drag his body up several feet. The opening was large enough for them to both climb out, and the tunnel was sturdy enough to support their weight. He returned to where she waited.
“We will go now.”
“Go? How? I can’t climb out of here. I tried.”
He sighed. “Yes, your human hands are not suited to the task.” He retrieved the dragon heart stone and handed it to her. “Secure this to your body; the straps will stretch to fit you. Then put your arms around my neck. I will get us out of here.”
She wrapped the stone and its pouch around her chest, then came up cautiously behind him. Normally a stranger coming up behind him would put him on alert, but there was something soothing about her, something that calmed his dragon.
Her arms curled around his neck. “Am I choking you?”
“No, little one.” His human body was almost as resilient as his dragon body. He dug his clawed hands into the ice tunnel and began to climb. Tasha’s legs locked around his hips, and the feel of it was good. He had to shake off the image of her sliding around to his front so she could rub her body along his and he could—
Vasili slammed the door in his mind against such thoughts. Marina was his mate . . . and she was gone. This woman, even though she did not look like Marina, strangely reminded him of her. What was a mated dragon to do when his mate was dead? He had never heard of a dragon surviving mate grief before. Some lasted a few days at most, but in the end, they always died.
The dragon inside him was a separate being, a creature all its own. What did it feel now? The grief and pain of losing Marina had been excruciating. He remembered waking, howling, attacking this woman Tasha and pinning her down. Then the grief had overwhelmed him again. He must have passed out.
Now his dragon was quiet. He could actually picture the beast in his mind quite clearly. It was still there in his head, but curled up protectively, as though it was guarding a hoard of jewels. But if it was protecting something, what was it?
He tried to coax his dragon into answering his question, but the dragon bared its teeth in warning. That was unexpected. He and his dragon had always been close, closer than most mortals who carried dragon souls within them.
The woman on his back had been silent so far during the long climb up, so Vasili spoke to her. “You know what I am, yet you are not afraid of me.”
Her warm breath escaped in a soft exhalation against the back of his neck, and his dragon lifted its head, a rumbling purr of reptilian contentment escaping it. Vasili was confused more than ever by his dragon’s reaction to this mortal woman.
“I know what you are. I was a little afraid at first, but then you changed into a man, and you aren’t so frightening now. You are just—” She cut off whatever she had been about to say.
“I am what?” he asked.
“You are . . . well . . . this gorgeous hunk. That’s also a little intimidating, but in a different way.” She said the word hunk, and he did not understand her meaning. This seemed to confirm that Russian was not her first language.
“Hunk?” He couldn’t help but wonder if he was causing her some kind of pain.
“Oh, you’re probably too old to know that word. How long were you in that cave?”
They had reached the spot where she had fallen through the ice. “I am not sure. What year is it?” His head cleared the snowy tunnel entrance, and his eyes swept over the valley below.
The world as he remembered it was suddenly ripped away from him. It was night, yet the valley sparkled with an impossible amount of light. It bloomed all over on the snowy slopes just below them. The trees were on fire. His panic halted, however, when he noticed the fires weren’t spreading. They were staying still in white orb shapes and not growing larger.
“It’s 2022.” Tasha slid off his body and dropped down into the snow beside him, her gaze slowly shifting between him and the village below.
“2022 . . .” He repeated the year, his mind numb with shock.
Tasha placed a hand on his bare shoulder. The dragon tattoo on his left pectoral moved, rippling in response to her touch.
“When did you go to sleep?” she asked.
“Time was hard to measure then . . . but it was perhaps 1292.”
“What?” Tasha gasped. “But that is . . . more than seven hundred years!”
He had been around two thousand and five hundred years old. Now it was seven centuries later. He was three thousand and two hundred years old. He had imagined it had been a few months, perhaps years, but no more. He had lost centuries in a deathlike sleep. That mountain cave should have been his tomb. He struggled to breathe as the reality of it all set in and fresh panic overtook him.
“Hey . . . just breathe, okay?” She waited while he got his breathing back under control. “You never told me your name.”
He stared at the village below that was full of strange lights. “I am Vasili.”
Tasha pulled her hand away from him as though he had burned her. He turned and saw her eyes wide with confusion.
“Vasili?” she repeated. “I feel like I know that name. How would I know that?”
“Are you Russian?” The Barinovs were well known among the Russian people who lived near their territory, but he was a long way from his homeland.
“No, I’m American, but my father was Russian.”
She bit her bottom lip in frustration, and Vasili sighed. He turned his focus back toward the village. He did not know what American meant. He added it to the growing list of questions he would ask her later.
“Has the world changed much in the last seven hundred years?”
“Yes. More than you will likely understand,” she warned him. “The technology has advanced.”
“Technology.” He rolled the funny word over on his tongue. “What is technology, and do I need to slay it?”
“Slay it? No, technology is—oh God, how do I even explain it?” She suddenly pointed to a distant ball of the fire that did not spread. “You see that?” When he nodded, she continued. “That light is made with something called electricity.”
“This is a type of fire?”
“No, not fire at all.” Again, she struggled for an explanation. “You know what lightning is?”
Vasili’s brows rose. “That is lightning? Your people have harnessed the weapons of the thunder god?”
“The what god? Never mind. No, it’s not lightning. It’s powered by the same . . . I mean . . . well, it just looks like it.” Tasha gave up trying to explain. Her teeth started to chatter, and he realized she must be freezing. The breeze coming down the side of the mountain was far colder than the air inside the cave.
“You need to get warm,” he said, and before she could argue, he scooped her up in his arms and started to carry her down the mountain. He had to face this new world—a world where lightning was harnessed—and he would need this woman to help him and his dragon find their place . . . if they could ever belong to it again. Marina would not have wanted him to die, and while his body still had breath in it, he would honor her by trying to live, trying to find new purpose in a new world.
Inside his mind, he felt his dragon look down at Tasha, and Vasili was flooded with his dragon’s contentment. What did this mean? How could she soothe him so much? The answers may come with time, but he just was not sure how much time he had before the mate grief claimed him. If it claimed him. Until then, he would watch Tasha and learn from her.
“You don’t need to carry me,” she said. “I can walk.”
“You can,” he agreed. “But your odd shoes will only slow us down. Is it some type of foot binding? I once visited the Chinese Serpent dragons, and the humans they ruled bound the feet of women.”
“They did?” Tasha’s voice was filled with horror.
“Yes. Human males claimed it was beautiful and desirable for women to have small feet, but all it did was hobble the females and make them barely able to move, and even then with great pain.” The Chinese dragons of his time had remained out of human affairs, but Vasili had often wondered if they had intervened, the humans might have ceased such a barbaric practice.
“History is full of men hurting women to control them. How do you treat lady dragons?” Tasha asked.
Vasili almost laughed. A harsh snort escaped him instead.
“Any male who is foolish enough to think he can control a dragoness is a dead dragon. Mates, by our definition, are equal partners. My own mate, Marina, was a battle dragon, and I was proud of her strength and ferocity.”
Some of the tension in Tasha’s body eased. “For an ancient man, you have some pretty modern thinking.”
“Ancient? I am not old,” he protested. The idea of her thinking him old bothered him.
“You’re at least seven hundred years old, right?”
“About three thousand and two hundred,” he reluctantly corrected.
“That is by definition ancient.”
He growled softly. “Once a dragon hits twenty-eight years of age, they do not physically age. Not by human reckoning. We age in appearance only one year for every few thousand human years. I am a male in my prime.”
“You certainly are.” Tasha murmured something else, and he heard that word hunk again.
“What is this hunk word you keep saying?”
“It’s, umm . . .” Tasha cleared her throat. “It means you’re sexy.”
“Sexy . . .” That he partially understood. Sex meant mating. But he was still baffled by her word choices.
“I am not mating you.”
“Not sex, sexy. It means you’re good looking. That you make women think of sex.”
“You think I am attractive.” He understood now, and for some reason it delighted him to know that.
As a dragon who’d had a true mate, he would not have given another female even a thought, but he was no longer mated. That bond was broken. Guilt washed over him at the realization that he wanted Tasha to find him attractive. That part of his mind found her attractive as well. That despite what he had just said, he could imagine mating with her.
His dragon was not bothered by this. In fact, the damned creature was practically preening over the human female’s attention. It made no sense. It went against everything he knew of dragon lore. Maybe his dragon, unable to die over Marina, had a death wish. Perhaps it wished to find a true mate in this human, knowing his life would be cut short and he would perish shortly after her death, whenever that came. What were mere decades to a dragon?
Is that what you want, you daft beast? To lose another mate and die?
All the dragon in his mind did was roll its eyes and curl up in contented peace once more, its focus completely on Tasha.
With a low growl that Tasha couldn’t hear, Vasili glared at the distant human village. He chose to ignore his dragon—and the unexpected temptation of the human female in his arms.