Page 107 of Forged in Fire
“I want you again,” she whispers.
“Already?” I ask, but my body’s already responding to her touch.
“Dragon metabolism,” she says with mock innocence that doesn’t hide the hunger in her eyes. “We might be here a while.”
My laugh turns into a groan as her mouth finds my collarbone, teeth grazing the mark she left there. I can feel her satisfaction at my response, taste the desire building in her system to match my own.
Outside, the world continues its business—normal people living normal lives without mate bonds or magical obligations or the weight of forever settling onto their shoulders.
But in here, surrounded by wards and shadows and the woman who’s rewritten everything I thought I knew about myself, forever feels exactly right.
I roll her beneath me again, capture her mouth in a kiss that tastes of blood and promises and the rest of our lives.
Let the world wait. We have claiming to finish.
Chapter 32
Iris
The Aurora Collective’s main conference room feels different this morning. Maybe it’s the mate bond humming between Riven and me, making everything sharper, more vivid. Maybe it’s having Kieran alive and sitting three chairs down, shadows moving restlessly around him. Or maybe it’s just what victory feels like when you’ve forgotten the taste.
I settle into my chair, hyperaware of Riven’s presence beside me. His shoulder bumps mine as he adjusts his position, and warmth spreads through my chest. The claiming marks on our throats are hidden beneath high collars, but the bond itself broadcasts what we are to anyone with supernatural senses.
Not that anyone seems surprised.
“Before we begin,” Viktor announces from the head of the polished conference table, his scarred features wreathed with something that looks like a genuine smile, “congratulations are in order.”
Heat creeps up my neck. Beside me, Riven goes statue-still.
“Another mating,” Elena says, grinning as she counts on her fingers. “Caleb and me, Dorian and Juno, Lila and Talon, Vanya and Hargen, now you two.” She looks around the table. “At this rate, we’re going to need a group discount for mating ceremonies.”
“We don’t need ceremonies,” I mutter.
“Speak for yourself,” Mara pipes up from across the table, the light touching blue streaks in her ebony hair. “I want the party. With cake. Lots of cake.”
Luke snorts. “You’ll get cake when you find your mate.”
“Working on it. Just need to find the guy who can take on all of this fabulousness,” she says cheerfully, then turns serious. “But first, we have bigger problems than planning parties.”
The mood shifts instantly. Viktor leans forward, all business now. “The intelligence reports from Romania?”
“Mixed bag,” Mara says, fingers flying across her tablet. “Good news: no mainstream media picked up the story yet. Bad news: local witnesses, satellite imagery, social media postings starting to build momentum.”
My stomach drops. “How bad?”
“Unexplained explosions, strange lights in the mountains, seismic readings that don’t match natural causes.” Mara’s expression grows grim. “We’ve got maybe a day before someone with a bigger platform grabs the story. After that, it’s damage control, not prevention.”
“What kind of damage control are we talking about?” Caleb asks.
“Memory modification for witnesses, data scrubbing for satellite feeds, plausible cover stories for the seismic activity.” Luke ticks off items on his fingers. “Standard containment protocol. Not as complex as the fuck-up at Craven Towers.” He grimaces as he touches on the dragon battle that had wagedaround Caleb’s head office, smack in the middle of Seattle’s business district. “But it’s going to need some careful attention.”
Viktor nods slowly. “That’s manageable. Luke, you’ll coordinate the Romania cleanup?”
“Already have teams standing by,” Luke confirms. “But I’ll need tech support for the digital scrubbing.”
“I’ll go, obviously,” Mara volunteers immediately. “This is my kind of chaos.”
“And I’m going too.”
