she stood up, brushed her hands off on her clothing, and looked at Arysteon. She seemed slightly unsteady, her skin a shade paler than when they’d first arrived here.
“It is ready,” she said.
Though he knew he should have kept his distance, Arysteon moved closer to the female, dipping his head to study her work. She swayed back but did not retreat.
He was so near to her now that he could smell her clearly even without catching the air on his tongue. It took a surprising amount of willpower to ignore the warm, tingling sensation that her scent reawakened within him.
All she would have had to do was lift her hand and lean forward, and her soft skin would meet his scales and…
Arysteon grunted and curled his fingers, scraping his claws over the floor. The spines along his spine and tail flared briefly. What had overcome him today?
“Take the hatchling and back away,” he said, his voice unnecessarily harsh even to his own ears.
The female nodded. She walked over to the hatchling, slung her bag over her shoulder, and lifted the tiny human into her arms, carrying it toward the entrance.
Arysteon tensed, his chest suddenly tight and hot, and barely resisted the instinctual drive to give chase. That tension eased when the female stopped just before the entryway and turned to face him, though the heat in his chest did not fade.
For an instant, he had thought she was going to leave.
And what if she had? She is not beholden to me.
But that word rose from his core again, blasting through his mind in a bestial snarl.
Mine.
He drew in a deep breath, hoping it would clear his mind, but her fragrance lingered on the air, her taste lingered on his tongue. A shudder ran down his spine all the way to the tip of his tail. Arysteon clenched his jaw and forced himself to focus on the smell of the storm instead. Rain usually instilled him with serenity, comforting him in a way little else could since the loss of his clan.
He needed to find that calm, needed to achieve that stillness of mind now. His spark was always amplified during weather like this. He needed to concentrate on controlling it, lest he injure the humans.
Arysteon turned his attention back to the kindling the female had arranged and called upon his spark. It crackled within him, and its power thrummed across his scales. Lightning buzzed in his chest, eager to escape—hungry for anything it could strike.
He focused that power down, muscles straining to maintain control. Holding his breath so as not to unintentionally disturb her arrangement, he dipped his head close to the kindling, parted his lips, and released a single, tiny bolt of lightning. Small as it was, it briefly illuminated the large chamber—the carved stone columns, several of which were tilted or fallen, the sculpted walls that were mostly overgrown with tangled roots, and the worn stone of the floor.
Arysteon clamped his mouth shut, cutting off the flow of power, and lifted is head. Smoke curled from the fuel, and the small orange flames at the base of the pile quickly grew as more of kindling ignited.
The female ran across the room and dropped to her knees next to the fire. Carefully setting the hatchling on the ground beside her, she snatched up a stick from the nearby pile, bent forward, and used the stick to shift the wood and kindling, spreading the flames more evenly. Within moments, there was a respectable blaze within the little stone circle.
The female sat back on her haunches and closed her eyes, body sagging. Her features were tight—brow creased, lips pressed flat together, eyelids squeezed shut. Her expression eased when the hatchling, having dropped the fruit, reached out and grasped her arm.
When she opened her eyes again, she turned them up to meet Arysteon’s.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. Absently, she curled an arm around the hatchling, steadying the little human as it crawled onto her lap.
Arysteon found himself once again holding back a song, though this one was quite different in nature than those used to soothe younglings. This song threatened to rise from his core, from his very spark, and he knew without letting it out that he’d never produced it before.
It was a song meant only for his mate.
The wind flowed into the chamber through the opening, creating little swirls of dust on the floor and kicking up loose leaves. The female’s fiery hair fluttered around her