he holds me still.
“I was immortal!” he screams in my face, rising up to straddle me. “I was respected, uncontested, powerful! You have taken that all away. Now I am doomed to perish—not in battle, not with elder honor—but by weak and sickly human ways.”
He raises his hands between us, his furious eyes tearing from me to his arms. They’re so big that with one sure hit, I’d be gone from this world in a blink.
His voice lowers. “My claws are gone, replaced by these things that will not even be able to shred the jungle.” I watch as he touched them, his face growing with disgust. His tongue comes out and rubs his teeth. “My fangs are gone. Gone!” He twists around and roars. “My tail!”
“I’m sorry,” I barely manage to whisper.
His hand is back on my neck before my words end, his face directly over mine. “Sorry is not good enough, wretch. Sorry will never be good enough. You will spend the rest of your days paying for what you have done. We are bonded now, you and I, for as long as we live. Do you realize what that means?”
I shake my head.
His lips pull back, baring his teeth. “If you die, I die. If I die, you do too. Your touch has woven us together, irreversibly. There is no escape! That is why you understand me! Why I understand you! We are bonded!”
My eyes wrench closed as his hot breath slams my face, his anger filling my ears. What have I done? I feel the bond he speaks of, the disparate pull in me that delights in his nearness, but I still feel everything I did before, and it hurts. Rationality, fear, even regret.
I didn’t think my actions through, didn’t even truly believe I’d even find a dragon, let alone touch one—bond with one. It was just a rumor, and I had time—reckless freedom from my duties for the first time since Leith was born.
I went from one male ruling my life to another. In less than a day.
The hand on my throat releases and I shakily inhale.
“Open your eyes,” he demands.
I open them.
“Take me to your territory, wretch.” He rises off me but stumbles, catching himself on a low-hanging branch. A hiss escapes him but I can’t see his face. He pivots back to me. “Get up!”
Pushing my hands slowly under me, I rise, wet and aching, our gazes attached. The toil of his transformation didn’t just hurt him but me as well. Pounding bruises make themself known under my flesh, scratches and cuts. I curl my toes in my waterlogged sandals and tense my legs, testing my body. A wave of relief goes through me, realizing nothing was broken. I manage the shock next.
“Quickly!” He scowls down at me.
I glower but stand, straightening out my netted top and skirt. When I’m done, I glimpse his face. His darkly shadowed eyes, hued by the dim glow of the comet streaming from above, are on my body, roving, stilling on the chest, where my legs vanish under my skirt.
A shiver grips me.
His focus on me is so heavy I feel it to my soul. The thick, hard outline of his shaft is almost glowing from the gloomy light, beating red, twitching, angry, and exposed entirely for my view. My skin flushes involuntarily, and I wrap my arms around myself.
He must notice because he closes the distance and grips my hair, tilting my head back. My neck strains.
“It is not meant for you,” he rasps, his voice a brewing storm. “It was for the great femdragon hunting me.”
I lick my lips, and my heart stutters. “Hunting you?” I ask.
He releases me with a jerk, flicking his hand as if he can’t stand the touch of me. I take a quick step back as he sniffs the air.
“She is nearby, searching. She smells me thickly here. She is ready to mate.” His eyes slant back to mine. “We must leave now or she will kill us both. Me quickly, out of pity, but you, she will take her time with you. And it will be all the worse because of our bond.”
As if on cue, the yelping high-pitch dragon’s call fills our ears. It’s all the warning I need.
“Okay,” I say, moving around his large frame to the edge of the river, stopping short before falling in. “We’re on the right side.” Thankfully. I search for anything left of my belongings, the raft, my weapons… when I see