Page 10 of Davoren
"Not a man who can become dragon." The words thrummed through stone and air and flesh with equal ease. "But a dragon who chooses to walk as man."
The truth of it hit me in the gut. All that careful control I'd seen in his human form, the way he'd moved with such deliberate precision—it wasn't human restraint. It was a dragon remembering to be small, to be weak, to fit into spaces never meant for his true nature.
My knees gave out.
I slid down the wall, legs simply refusing to support me any longer. The volcanic glass that had been cutting into my back barely registered compared to the overwhelming presence before me. My mind kept trying to process what I was seeing, to fit it into categories I understood—animal, monster, force of nature—but he was all of these and none of them.
The mark on my shoulder blazed in recognition, and I felt an answering pulse from him that nearly stopped my heart. Not pain this time but connection—two pieces of something broken finding each other across impossible distance. My body knewhim, accepted him, even as my mind screamed in primitive terror.
The eldest drake lifted her head slightly, speaking in a series of clicks and whistles. Davoren responded with a sound like controlled thunder, and all three drakes belly-crawled backward out of the cave. As the last tail tip disappeared, I found myself alone with a creature from mythology.
A creature I was apparently destined to spend my life with.
The absurdity of it—me, Kara Lyris, cosmically bound to a dragon—should have made me laugh. Instead, I felt tears tracking down my cheeks. Not from fear, exactly, though terror certainly played its part. More from the sheer overwhelm of having my understanding of the world shattered and rebuilt in the space of minutes.
"I am going to be sick," I informed him, my voice barely a whisper.
"That is a common response," he rumbled, and was that amusement coloring his inhuman voice? "The first viewing often overwhelms human senses."
I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block out the impossible sight of him. But the image had burned itself into my memory—every scale, every horn, every impossible inch of him. When I lowered my hands, he was still there. Still real. Still mine, according to the mark that wouldn't stop singing in my shoulder.
"What happens now?" I asked the dragon who held my fate in claws the size of sword blades.
His great head tilted slightly, considering. When he spoke again, I felt the words as much as heard them.
"Now, little one, we fly."
Fly?
"Stand." The command in his dragon voice allowed no disobedience, no hesitation, no thought beyond immediate compliance.
My legs moved without consulting me, muscles obeying an imperative that bypassed my brain entirely. One moment I was crumpled against the wall, the next I stood on feet that screamed their protest. Blood had dried between my toes, gluing them to the cave floor, and fresh wounds opened as I shifted weight. The pain should have dropped me again, but the command held me upright like invisible strings.
"I didn't—I can't—" My voice broke as I tried to process what had just happened. My body had betrayed me, responded to him like a trained dog to its master's whistle.
"The mark allows it." No apology in that rumbling voice, just acknowledgment of fact. "Your feet require tending, and the fortress has supplies." His great head lowered toward the cave floor, neck creating a scaled ramp that led to the spot where his wings joined his body. "You will ride."
The logistics alone made my head spin. He wanted me to climb up that neck, position myself on his back like the heroines in children's stories who rode dragons to defeat evil sorcerers. Except those stories never mentioned the sheer physical impossibility of it. Never described how every movement sent scales sliding against each other with sounds like armor plate grinding. Never warned that dragon-heat could dry your throat to sand in seconds.
"Now climb," he rumbled, "or I will lift you in my jaws like a hatchling."
The threat should have terrified me more, but the mark interpreted it differently. Not danger but protection. Not predator but guardian. The distinction made my head ache almost as much as my feet.
I approached his lowered head with all the enthusiasm of a condemned woman approaching the gallows. This close, I could see how his scales overlapped like the world's most perfect armor, each one catching light and throwing it back transformed. They looked sharp enough to flay skin, but when I tentatively touched the side of his neck, they were smooth as polished stone.
The contact sent lightning through every nerve.
I jerked back with a gasp, palm tingling where it had made contact. Not pain—definitelynot pain. The sensation was closer to touching a live wire, if electricity could be made of liquid pleasure and molten need. My knees went weak for entirely different reasons than terror.
"That is the bond." His voice held neither mockery nor pity, just understanding. "It will grow stronger with proximity. Mount, little one. Let me carry you to safety."
Safety. Right. Because climbing onto a dragon the size of a house while my body betrayed me with unwanted arousal was definitely safe.
I reached out again, this time prepared for the jolt. It still stole my breath, sent heat pooling low in my belly, made me bite my lip to keep from making sounds I'd regret. But I gripped the ridge where two scales met and hauled myself up. My feet screamed protest at taking my weight, but the sensation of scales sliding against my palms drowned out everything else.
Each movement was torture of the sweetest kind. His scales might be smooth, but they had texture—tiny ridges that caught at my torn dress, pressed against skin in ways that made me gasp. The dress, already ruined from glass and blood and rough stone, gave up entirely as I climbed. Silk tore away in strips, leaving more and more skin in direct contact with dragon scale.
By the time I reached the junction where his neck met his body, I was trembling with more than exertion. Every breathbrought his scent—smoke and spice and something wild that made my mouth water. Every shift of muscle beneath those scales sent new waves of sensation through contact points I couldn't escape. My thighs gripped his neck for balance, and the pressure combined with the bond's influence pushed me toward a edge I didn't want to acknowledge.
