Page 34 of Forged in Fire
For a woman I met hours ago.
A woman whose power calls to mine like a missing piece of my soul.
Dragon fire burns under my skin, responding to emotions I’m trying to keep controlled. Heat builds in my chest, spreads down my arms until my hands glow with barely contained flame.
The supernatural compulsion gnaws at me like hunger. Like thirst. Like need that goes beyond professional judgment or personal choice. Protecting her feels necessary in a way that transcends logic.
Which makes me compromised. Dangerous. Exactly the kind of liability the Guild eliminates without ceremony.
Outside, the wind moves through the pines with a sound like distant wailing. Inside, silence presses against my eardrums until I can hear my own heartbeat.
The enormity of what I’m contemplating is almost mind-numbing.
If I do this, I’ve chosen her over everything. Over my career, my world, my life. Over the only family I’ve known for most of my life.
And she doesn’t even know it yet.
If I do this, this is just the beginning of the end.
I can feel it in the way my fire responds to her presence despite her unconsciousness. In the certainty that whatever’s happening here is bigger than Guild orders or professional obligations or the simple mechanics of elimination contracts.
We’re balanced on the edge of something that will destroy us both.
I have to make a choice.
Chapter 11
Iris
Consciousness returns like a switch flipping—one moment nothing, the next complete awareness. No grogginess, no confusion about where I am. Just the immediate, clinical assessment that I’m tied up, in unfamiliar territory, and my captor’s scent still clings to the air around me.
Leather. Gunpowder. Something deeper underneath that makes my pulse quicken against my will—like banked coals and winter nights.
I don’t move. Not yet. My eyes adjust to the dim lighting—a single lamp casting amber pools across sparse furnishings, fireplace crackling somewhere to my right. The restraints around my wrists and ankles feel substantial. Heavy. Warm metal that hums faintly against my skin with a resonance I recognize.
Dragon-forged. Naturally.
The cabin around me screams temporary—functional furniture, no personal touches, high-tech security equipment blinking in the corner like electronic eyes. Motion sensors, communication gear, things that transform what should be a rustic mountain retreat into a professional safe house.
My shadows respond to the frustration building in my chest, testing the edges of my bonds, curling around my wrists. They encounter resistance immediately—not just the physical restraints, but something else. A subtle vibration in the air that makes my power recoil instinctively.
Wards. Specifically tuned to dragon magic.
Well, shit.
Whoever took me knew exactly how to deal with power like mine.
“Awake.” It’s his voice, stating fact rather than asking a question.
I turn my head toward the sound. He’s standing by the window, silhouette dark against the glass, watching the forest beyond. Wind moves through the trees outside, a lonely sound that emphasizes just how isolated we are. When he shifts slightly, firelight catches the hard line of his jaw, the controlled tension in his shoulders.
Something low in my belly responds to that controlled power before I can stop it.
Don’t be nuts, Iris.
I’m bound and helpless with a man who’s clearly a killer.
“I prefer ‘alert,’” I correct, keeping my voice level despite the unwelcome heat creeping up my neck. “Where am I?”
