Page 29 of Davoren
I descended from the dais with deliberate steps, each one making the golden lines on my skin flare brighter. The collar at my throat caught the light, and I saw his eyes track to it repeatedly, unable to look away from the visible mark of my claiming.
"You offer to make me Lady Solmar, as if that title means anything compared to what I am now." I stopped just outside his reach, close enough that he had to feel the heat radiating from my transformed skin. "I am bonded to a Dragon Lord. I will live for centuries, perhaps millennia. I will see your great-great-grandchildren's dust blow away on the wind while I remain young, strong, eternal."
His mouth opened, probably to argue, but I wasn't finished.
"You ask what I am to him? What my place is here?" I let my voice drop to something almost intimate, making him lean in to hear. "I belong to my Daddy."
The word hit him like a physical blow. He jerked back, face twisting with revulsion and something else—fear, perhaps, at the implications of that specific term, the power dynamic it represented. The guards shifted uncomfortably, several looking away. Even the advocate made a small sound of shock.
"And that, Lord Solmar," I continued, returning to my place beside Davoren's throne, "is worth more than all your contracts, all your gold, all your human respectability combined."
The silence that followed was absolute. Solmar's face had gone from pale to flushed, rage and humiliation warring in his expression. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and I could see him fighting the urge to respond with violence despite knowing it would mean his death.
"This is not over," he finally managed, his voice rough with suppressed fury. "The Old Laws may hold sway here, but outside these walls, human law prevails. I will reclaim what is mine."
He turned sharply, gesturing for his guards to follow. As they retreated, I noticed how his eyes tracked details—the layout of the hall, the position of entrances and exits, the ventilation grates near the ceiling. My merchant training recognized the behavior immediately: he was gathering intelligence, planning something.
Scarlet noticed too. Through the bond, I felt Davoren mark every glance, every assessment. Solmar wasn't leaving defeated—he was leaving to regroup, to find another angle of attack. The ventilation systems particularly held his attention, the thermal exhaust vents that had to exist to keep the volcanic heat from cooking everyone inside the keep.
"Lord Solmar," Davoren called as the merchant reached the great doors. "Remember that you leave here alive only because Ancient Law demands it. That protection extends only to you, not to any forces you might gather, not to any schemes you might craft. Choose your next moves carefully."
Solmar paused at the threshold but didn't turn back. "As you say, Lord Davoren. We all must abide by the laws that bind us."
Chapter 7
Thegreatobsidiandoorsslammed shut with the finality of a coffin lid, sealing us in sudden, profound silence that pressed against my eardrums like deep water. The echo bounced off volcanic glass walls, fragmenting into smaller sounds that died like whispers in the vast space. Without Solmar's bluster and his guards' nervous shifting, the Great Hall revealed its true nature—not a throne room but a dragon's lair, dressed up in architectural pretense.
The magma veins pulsed slower now, their angry flare settling back to that steady heartbeat rhythm that matched my own accelerated pulse. Through our bond, I felt Davoren's fury banking from inferno to controlled burn, though embers of rage still sparked when his thoughts touched on Solmar's final words.
Scarlet melted backward into shadow with the fluid grace of someone who'd perfected the art of strategic disappearance. One moment she stood witness to diplomatic theater, the next she was gone, taking the lingering guards with her through exits I hadn't even noticed.
We were alone.
My body remembered exactly where we'd left off—him barely inside me, my desperate need cresting toward release, the chains holding me open and willing and ready. The memory sent fresh heat pooling between my thighs, and the collar at my throat seemed to pulse with its own awareness.
Davoren turned to me with the slow deliberation of a predator who no longer needed to hurry. The cold fury of the Dragon Lord dissolved like morning frost under sun, replaced by something hotter, hungrier. His ember eyes tracked over me with an intensity that made my skin prickle, cataloging every response—the way my breath caught, how my nipples hardened visibly through the thin silk, the slight shift of my weight as my thighs pressed together seeking relief that wouldn't come.
"He was plotting." The words rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest, more growl than speech. "He'll try something."
His hand cut through the air, a gesture of dismissal that carried finality. "But not tonight. Tonight exists outside his reach, beyond his small human schemes." His attention returned to me with laser focus, and the golden lines on my skin flared brighter in response. "Tonight, he will not steal another moment from us."
The distance between us evaporated without either of us seeming to move. Suddenly he was there, close enough that his heat washed over me in waves, close enough that his scent—smoke and spice and barely leashed wildness—filled every breath. His hand rose with deliberate slowness, giving me time to see it coming, to anticipate. When his finger finally traced the edge of my collar, the contact sent lightning straight to my core.
"I made you a promise, little one." His voice had dropped to that register that bypassed thought entirely, vibrating through the bond directly into my bones. His finger followed the collar's curve from one dragon clasp to the other, never quite touching skin but close enough that I felt the heat of him. "Threeedges left unfinished. Your body singing with need. The lesson incomplete."
His thumb brushed the hollow of my throat where the collar sat, and I couldn't suppress the whimper that escaped. Every nerve ending he'd awakened earlier came roaring back to life, demanding attention, demanding completion. Through the bond, I felt his matching need—not just physical but something deeper. The need to claim fully what had been interrupted, to mark me so thoroughly that Solmar's threats would seem like dust against mountains.
"But that chamber . . ." He paused, and something shifted in his expression. The calculated dominance of our earlier scene gave way to something rawer, more primal. "It feels insufficient now. After his words, his presumption, his dare to name you with terms that should see him flayed—" The temperature spiked for a moment before he controlled it. "No. Your claiming deserves more than a lesson in a room of pleasures and restraints."
His hand moved from my collar to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone with devastating gentleness. "It deserves ceremony. Ritual. A place of power where the mountain itself will witness what you become when you shatter for me."
The words sent fresh arousal flooding through me, my core clenching around emptiness that felt like grief. Ceremony. Ritual. The words carried weight that promised something beyond physical pleasure, something that would seal me to him in ways our interrupted scene couldn't achieve.
He took my hand with the certainty of ownership, his grip firm enough to feel like a shackle but gentle enough to be a caress. The dichotomy of him—destroyer and protector, ancient power and tender lover—made my head spin with want. He didn't lead me toward the lifts that would return us to his chambers.Instead, he drew me deeper into the hall, past the obsidian throne that still radiated authority from his presence.
Behind the throne, shadows gathered thicker than they should, as if light itself knew better than to venture there without permission. The wall looked identical to every other surface—volcanic glass polished to mirror perfection, reflecting our approach in fractured images. But as we drew closer, I felt it through our bond—power humming beneath the surface, old magic that predated the keep itself.
Davoren pressed his palm against the wall with the same casual authority he'd brought to destroying Solmar's contract. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the solid rock began to shimmer, edges blurring like heat mirages over summer stone. The shimmer spread from his palm outward in ripples, and I realized the wall wasn't melting—it was remembering that it had never been solid at all.
