To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,10

her voice. “Cetolea, bless this womb. May it nurture and protect the seed it has been gifted, and may it grow strong new life in its loving embrace.”

Those words were as comforting as they were strange.

Continuing the soft slide of her hands over his scales, she repeated her words, and Falthyris focused on them. They were spoken like some sort of prayer, it seemed, but it was the words themselves that warranted closer attention—because though he understood them, they belonged to a language he’d not heard in several hundred years. She was not speaking in the tongue of dragons.

Something soft tickled his snout, and he released a huff through his nostrils. Awareness—both of himself, his female, and the situation—rushed to him, nearly as overwhelming as the pleasure-pain of moments before.

There was something wrong here. Falthyris himself felt wrong.

He lifted his head to look down at his mate. Her dark eyes met his gaze—human eyes.

For the first time in his existence, Falthyris’s heartfire felt like it had been snuffed out, leaving him cold and empty inside. His mind raced, desperate to make sense of what he was seeing, of what he was feeling, of what had happened.

She was a human. She had touched him.

He had mated with her.

Falthyris shoved away from her, withdrawing from her wet heat, and rose on unsteady legs. He snapped his wings against his back. Fire blazed through his muscles and into his bones, suffusing his being—reminding him of the immense, disorienting pain he’d endured when she’d first touched him and forced the mating bond upon him. He’d been too caught up in the Red Heat to realize what had happened, to realize what she was.

To realize what he’d become.

He looked down at his hands and did not recognize their long, dexterous fingers or the claws at their tips. Nor did he know the arms those hands were attached to, or the accompanying chest and abdomen, pelvis, legs, and feet, all oriented in that upright, human fashion.

This was not his shape. This was not his body. This was not him.

His heart pounded strongly enough to make his whole body pulse—including his still extruded cock, which glistened in the moonlight.

He clenched his fists as his confusion gave way to fury. This was not happening. It was simply one of the many dreams he was experiencing during his decades-long slumber, and he was still secure in his lair, curled atop a bed of sand in his natural state.

Succumbing to the red comet was shameful enough, but this? The mighty Falthyris had seen human cities crumble and civilizations collapse in his time; he could not be brought low by humans, much less a single female.

Humans were diminutive creatures. Tiny, weak, fragile. Little more than insects to the likes of Falthyris. Even at the height of their power centuries ago, when they’d possessed the weaponry and organization necessary to slay a dragon, humans had been nothing but a minor irritant to him, easily dealt with when necessary—and easily ignored the rest of the time.

And now I am one of them.

Fire swelled in his chest, making his scales glow orange. He lifted his gaze to the human. “What have you done to me?”

She had sat up, and her long, black mane hung around her shoulders, brushing that smooth, soft skin. Her dark eyes met his, and her lips curled into a smile. “I made you mine.”

Her reply would have been infuriating enough by itself. Dragons were the apex species on this world, the most powerful creatures, the most dominant. Falthyris could not be owned. His kind were the rulers, whether or not these insignificant mortals acknowledged it. But paired with what he felt at his core—that she was right, that he was hers—it sparked a rage in him that burned hotter than anything Dragonsbane could emit.

Falthyris filled his lungs with air and roared, ignoring how much weaker a sound this body produced. The female recoiled, her eyes widening in surprise. She threw her hands out to either side and frantically raked her fingers through the grass.

He stalked toward the human. Her eyes glimmered with uncertainty and fear, but she held his gaze as she brought her hands together, crunching something between them. Falthyris bared his teeth and reached for her.

The human lifted a hand, palm flat, and blew across it.

The dust on her palm sprayed into Falthyris’s face just as he inhaled. He flinched back, squeezing his eyes shut. His nose strung and burned. Shaking his head sharply, he forced himself forward