I rumble low in my throat, pleased at the sound of her voice. I want more of it. More of her. More of everything.

Mine. I want to curl my claws around her and draw her close to my breast. I want to protect her and hold her close. I want to bury my nose in that soft-looking mane of hers and breathe in her scent.

The fear-smell she is emitting makes me pause, though. I do not want for her to be frightened. I want her mating scent to fill the air. I want for her to snarl and confront me, to challenge me like a drakoni female would. If she challenges me, I can conquer her and mount her, claim her as my own.

Take her as my mate.

The thought fills me with a burst of joy, and I realize how long it has been since I felt…happy.

Kill her, the ravens mutter in my ears. Kill. Hurt like you are hurting.

But…looking at her makes me hurt less. Looking at her makes the maddening sounds, the constant cries of the birds pecking at my mind, go silent.

She is mine.

She is also frightened, and I do not know how to fix that. How do I please her and have her stop making the fear-smell and change to the arousal-smell? Drakoni females are aggressive. They find a male dragon and approach him, claws bared and fangs exposed. Perhaps she needs time to do so.

I settle on my haunches and wait for this female to show me a sign. A flash of claw. A hint that she will change to battle form. Something. Anything.

So I stare and wait.

Time passes. The small female continues to drip water from her eyes, her breathing gasping and choked. She sounds distressed, and this bothers me. Is she sick? Injured?

I watch her closely, looking for blood or limbs bent the wrong way. There is a darkness on one side of her face that concerns me, but it is hard to tell because her features are small and delicate. When she shifts her weight, pressing farther back against the wall, I see that one limb is bound tightly and she favors it.

She is injured.

Have I done this to her? Horror fills my gut. I have wanted nothing more than a mate all this time, and I have injured the female I have chosen as mine. Even a male challenging a female will not harm her. There might be light bites or pressure on her limbs to make her give in, but never injury. It makes no sense to harm the one you wish to carry your young.

As if sensing my thoughts, the ravens dive in again, their thoughts twittering in my ear. This one is weak, they cry. Kill her and choose another. Pluck another female from the human hive—one that is strong and brave.

Compelled, I step forward, lowering my head. The ravens talk sense. A mate should be bold in body and spirit. This one is not. Would it not be kinder to rid this world of such weakness and select another? I lean in, ready to bite, to destroy and dismember.

The female cringes back against the wall, averting her face and pushing flat against the stone. She closes her eyes and makes no sound, waiting. She knows.

I hesitate. The scent of her—female, gentle, soft—tickles at my nose. Even though she is weak…I like her scent. I rub my nose along her skin and find it soft and pleasant. Lust rushes through me, and I growl low in my throat with the pleasure of it even as the ravens scatter back again.

It does not matter if this one is weak. She is mine.

Mine mine mineminemineminemine.

I flick my tongue against her skin, tasting her, but the acrid scent of her fear overwhelms my senses. It fills me with frustration. Why is she so frightened of me? I watch as she twists her body, trying to get away from my touch, and as she does, again she favors her side. It is then that the scent of blood washes over me.

A sinking, awful feeling shakes me, and I rear back.

Is she afraid because I have injured her? It was me that caused her wounds? I try to think back to when I snatched the female from the air, of how I held her, if anything snapped, but the ravens and buzzards cry out in my thoughts, laughing at me, mocking me.

I wounded my mate.

I hurt her.

I almost destroyed her. She bleeds because of me. She hurts, because of me. The thought fills me with horror. Even now, the ravens urge their awful suggestions in my ears, telling me to harm her. To rid myself of her before others see how weak my mate is. She is small and fragile, wrong for one as strong and mighty as myself.

But…because she is small, should I not want to protect her? Even now, I feel a fierce need to shield her from the vultures in my thoughts. To keep her safe. I bite them back, snarling. I will not listen to their lies. Not this time. I take another deep breath of her scent. It is tinged with fear-smell, but underneath it is a sweet, pleasant scent that makes the bad thoughts retreat. I inhale deeply again, and the ravens scatter.

She will keep them at bay, I think. And once she is my mate and I claim her—like Kael claimed his mate—the ravens will go away forever.

I settle on my haunches to wait.

2

SASHA

He’s not leaving. The dragon just stares and waits, a few feet away from me.

I…don’t know what to do.

I ache all over, and my mind is a scattered mess. I feel dizzy, though I know a lot of it is because of fear. I can’t seem to catch my breath. I’m hysterical, my thoughts flying in every which direction, and I keep waiting for the dragon to move forward and eat me, but he doesn’t. He waits. And that makes me crazy with anxiety—what is he waiting for?

Calm down, Sasha, I tell myself. You’ve been in bad situations before. You’ll live through this, and if you don’t, at least you’ll stop hurting. You’ve survived Tate. You can survive a dragon. If he wanted to eat you, he would have done so already.

Strangely enough, that realization helps. I focus on calming my breathing, taking deep lungfuls of air. I don’t look at the dragon, because if I do, I’m going to freak out again, and I can’t do that. Calm, I remind myself. Relax. I exhale slowly and go to the place in my mind where I’m detached and safe, like I do when I have to visit Tate. I pull myself out of my surroundings. I tell myself that everything is temporary, and all I have to do is get through this. My breathing slows down and I calm. The tears stop pouring from my eyes and I’m able to think clearly.

I can get through this.

I’m strong. I will survive whatever this dragon wants from me. I’ve survived Tate. I’ve survived the Rift. I can survive anything.

I close my eyes and mentally assess my wounds. My broken arm is throbbing with pain, but I don’t think it’s any worse than before. My splint needs to be adjusted, but I can do that later, when the dragon’s not watching me like a hawk. Just the thought of the dragon so close by sends a tremor through me, destroying my Zen, and I take a few deep gulping breaths to try to get it back. When I settle my mind once more, I continue. My ribs hurt badly, but they’re survivable. I don’t feel as if my chest is collapsing, so they’re likely just bruises. My hip feels hot and painful, and my clothing is wet with blood. Okay, that means that I’ve been shot. It can’t be a bad wound, though, or I wouldn’t be conscious. I’d be dead. So it’s got to be insignificant. All right. I can deal with that.