Page 179 of The Dryad Storm

“I’m ready to be with you fully,” I tell him.

Yvan nods, desire burning in his eyes. “I want you so much, I’m feverish with it. If there was no danger to this Forest...”

He grows silent, want burning through his power. And I know, if we could giveourselves to each other without risking harm to the Forest, he’d unleash himself on me right now.

And I’d unleash myself on him.

But this Forest is not the Zhilaan... it can’t handle our fire.

Yvan and I stare sparks at each other, so much want and love in that stare that I feel as if we’ll melt into each other.

There are not enough words. There never have been.

We’re two fiery stars on a collision course, and we both know how this will end.

Unless the Shadow takes us down first.

I hold back from touching Yvan, and I can sense him holding back from touching me, both of us full of the unspoken understanding that if we touch, we’ll take each other fully.

“I know that... this has been difficult for you,” I falteringly say. “I know that for our Wyvernbond to reach its full strength, we need to have sex.”

Yvan exhales, his fire incandescent with longing as he pushes himself back a fraction more and reaches up to rake his fingers frustratedly through his hair. “Elloren, that word is sowhollyinadequate. It doesn’t evenbeginto describe what I want with you.” His eyes take on a hotter glow, a frisson of heat coursing through our bond. “The words in the West,” he says, then pauses for a moment, his crimson brow furrowing, as if he’s casting about for the right explanation. “They feel allwrong. There are no words for what I want in the Common Tongue. Ihatethe way Westerners talk about intimacy. I always have. So base and empty.”

“What is it you want, then?” I half whisper.

He takes gentle hold of my hand, his thumb caressing the edge of it, tracing heat. “I want...tiev’ssssithra’ohvrasssil.”

The sibilant Wyvern words send a line of heat through me, our bond newly alight with a palpable level of emotion just from his uttering them, a quaver kicking up along his hand and body.

“You’re trembling,” I marvel in a whisper. “What does it mean?”

He swallows, attempting to pull in an even breath as he looks to the heavens.

“It’s almost impossible to translate. It means too much. Runs too deep.”

“Try,” I encourage.

He lowers his gaze to mine, the level of emotion in his eyes an unbridled, Erthia-upending thing. “It’s the joining of my love for you to desire. The joining of the deepest core of our fire to the joining of our bodies.”

His words bolt fire through my heart, as I realize I desperately need a new language too.

“I love you,” I say, the words ripped straight from my heart, achingly raw, even as a piece of my heart shreds over the cruel finality of Lukas’s death. “I love you so much.”

“I know you do,” he says, eyeing me meaningfully before reaching up to caress the side of my face.

And then he leads me to a mossy patch of ground, and we lie down next to each other, his arm and wing embracing me, my fire reaching for his with just as much intensity as his is reaching for mine, our eyes locked. And then Yvan raises my hand to his mouth and runs his tongue sinuously along the back of each finger, kissing each one’s tip with a spiraling heat that makes my pulse trip over itself.

“I love you, Elloren,” he says in Lasair, his flame pulsing hot around me. “You’re in the very center of my fire.”

“You’re in the center of mine, as well,” I say, voice hitching, the emotion I’m feeling for him suddenly so hot and tight, it’s an ache against my chest.

Yvan’s fire gives a harder, passionate flare toward me. “I will love you forever,” he tells me in Lasair.

I nod, my fire returning the sentiment, grief and love and lust balling up tight in my chest.

And then we fall asleep, our fire power linked, hearts binding tight.

A few hours later, Yvan and I follow our horde’s fire to find both them and our allies gathered around the ledge’s runic bonfire, the predawn light just beginning to illuminate the sky to the East, Or’myr’s line of purple moons still glowing bright to the West. It’s clear that the shifters and even the non-shifters can sense the new turn of Yvan’s and my relationship in our close embrace and the steady blaze of our fire around each other and through our Wyvernbond.

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