Chapter twenty-four
Final buzzer – The signal that the game has officially ended.
Dante
I woke up warm.
That was the first thing I registered—warmth everywhere, surrounding me like a cocoon.
Theron was curled around me from behind, one arm heavy across my waist, his chest pressed flush against my back, his breath slow and steady against the nape of my neck.
His leg was hooked over mine, pinning me in place like even in sleep he couldn’t bear the thought of me being anywhere else.
I didn’t move. Didn’t want to. Just lay there in the early-afternoon light of his bedroom—our bedroom, I corrected myself—and let the reality of it settle over me like a second blanket.
We’d made it home around six this morning.
Ignatius had used his plane, and Theron had held my hand the entire way back to Denver while I dozed against his shoulder.
My family had been incredible at the party—they’d all had a good time.
Nicky wouldn’t know his boss had died in a tragic fire until he went back to work on Monday, but the Council—apparently there was a Dragon Council—would step in and clean everything and make sure all the humans got other jobs.
Ignatius had told me personally not to worry.
But it was Cinder who’d pulled me aside. Cinder—Taz’s partner, quiet and steady and human, like me. He’d found me on the balcony of the hotel suite while the party roared inside, and he’d sat down next to me with two beers and said, “You have questions I can actually answer.”
And God, had I.
“You’ll live as long as he does,” Cinder had said, his voice matter of fact in that way people got when they’d already processed something earth-shattering and come out the other side.
“The mate bond changes you. Not overnight—it’s gradual.
But your body will match his timeline eventually.
Dragons aren’t immortal, but they live for hundreds of years. Taz is over five hundred.”
I’d nearly dropped my beer.
“What about my family?” I’d asked, and my voice had cracked on it because that was the thing, wasn’t it? That was the price.
Cinder had been quiet for a moment. “That’s the hardest part,” he’d admitted.
“I won’t lie to you about that. Your mom, your brothers—they’ll age.
You won’t. Not at the same rate.” He’d taken a sip of his beer, his eyes distant.
“But your brothers are older than you. You’ll have decades with them.
And when you reach whatever age your body decides to settle at—could be your forties, could be later—that’s what you’ll look like. Forever. Or there abouts.”
“Forever,” I’d repeated.
“Yeah.” Cinder had looked at me then, really looked, and something in his expression was both kind and unflinching.
“Every so often, dragons have to move. Reinvent themselves. New city, new names sometimes, new lives. It sounds terrifying, and honestly? It is, at first. But you won’t be playing hockey then either.
You’ll have had your career, had your time.
And then you get to figure out what comes next.
Together.” He’d smiled. “And you will always have all of us.”
“Does it get easier?” I’d asked. “The knowing?”
“No,” Cinder had said honestly. “But it gets worth it. Every single day, it’s worth it.”
I lay there now, feeling Theron’s heartbeat against my spine—steady, strong, alive—and thought about centuries. About watching my brothers grow old while I stayed the same. About leaving Denver someday, starting over somewhere new, being someone else on paper but always being his.
It should have terrified me.
It didn’t.
Because the alternative was not having him at all, and I’d seen what that looked like. Had lived through those hours in that chair, those endless minutes believing he was dying in a room full of poison. Nothing—no amount of time, no sacrifice, no complication—was worse than that.
Theron stirred behind me, his arm tightening, his nose pressing into the curve of my neck. I felt the exact moment he woke up—the shift in his breathing, the way his body went from relaxed to aware in the space of a heartbeat.
“Morning,” I murmured.
His response was a low rumble against my skin—not quite words, more like his dragon acknowledging me before his human brain caught up. His hand spread flat against my stomach, thumb stroking lazy circles.
“How long have you been awake?” His voice was rough with sleep, that particular gravelly echo that did things to me I wasn’t prepared to examine this early.
“A while. Thinking.”
“About?”
“Centuries.” I turned in his arms so I was facing him, and the sight of him—sleep-soft, hair a mess, those gray eyes still half-lidded—made my chest ache. “Cinder told me. Last night. About the bond. About how long—” I swallowed. “About time.”
Something careful moved across his expression. “And?”
“And I’m terrified,” I admitted. “About my family. About watching them—” I couldn’t finish that sentence. “But I’m not scared of the rest of it. Of being with you. Of whatever comes next.”
His hand came up to cup my face, his thumb tracing the edge of the bruise on my jaw that was already fading to yellow-green. “I was going to tell you today. All of it. Everything.”
“I know. And you will. But right now, I just—” I leaned forward and kissed him, morning breath and all, because I needed to. Because after everything we’d been through in the last week, I needed to feel him alive and whole and here.
He kissed me back slowly, thoroughly, like we had all the time in the world. Which, apparently, we did.
When he pulled back, his eyes were fully open now, that faint copper glow warming the gray like embers banked in ash. He looked at me the way he had in the kitchen two days ago—like I was something he couldn’t quite believe was real.
“You’re sure,” he said. Not a question, exactly. More like he needed to hear it one more time.
“I’m sure.” I ran my fingers through his hair, marveling at how it had already started growing back—thicker than before, the salt-and-pepper coming in with more silver at the temples.
Dragon healing was something else. “I’m sure about all of it.
The centuries, the moving, the reinventing. All of it.”
His expression did something complicated—relief and joy and a vulnerability he rarely let anyone see—and then he was kissing me again, deeper this time, with intent. His hand slid from my face down my neck, across my shoulder, trailing fire everywhere it touched.
I arched into him, already half-hard from nothing more than his proximity and the lazy heat of his mouth. He smiled against my lips—I felt it, the fucker—and then he was moving down. Kissing my jaw, my throat, the hollow behind my ear that made me shiver.
“Theron—”
“Shh.” His mouth found my collarbone, teeth scraping lightly. “Let me.”
He worked his way down my chest with devastating patience, lips and tongue mapping every inch of skin like he was memorizing me.
When he reached the waistband of my briefs—the only thing I’d bothered putting on before collapsing into bed—he looked up at me through his lashes, and the copper in his eyes was brighter now, pulsing with something primal.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said, already hooking his fingers into the elastic.
“If you stop, I will literally kill you.”
He laughed—low and dark and pleased—and pulled my briefs down in one smooth motion. The cool air hit me for maybe half a second before his mouth was there, and every coherent thought I’d ever had evaporated.
He was—fuck, he was good at this. Obscenely good.
His tongue did something wicked along the underside that made my hips jerk off the mattress, and his hands pinned me back down with that effortless strength that shouldn’t have been as hot as it was.
He took me deep, the heat of his mouth almost scorching, and I fisted both hands in the sheets because I needed to hold onto something or I was going to fly apart.
“Oh God—” My voice cracked embarrassingly. “Theron, I’m gonna—if you keep—”
He pulled off just long enough to say, “Not yet,” in that commanding coach voice, and my whole body shuddered.
Then he swallowed me down again, setting a rhythm that was deliberately, torturously slow.
Building me up and easing back, over and over, until I was shaking and sweating and making sounds I’d be mortified about if I had any capacity for shame left.
His hands moved—one sliding up my thigh, the other reaching for the nightstand. I heard the click of a cap, felt the cool slick of lube against my skin, and my breath hitched.
“Yes,” I said before he could ask. “Yes, please, yes—”
He worked me open with the same patience he’d used on everything else—one finger, then two, his mouth never stopping its devastating work. The dual sensation was almost too much. I was trembling, my thighs shaking, every nerve ending lit up like a live wire.
“Ready?” he asked, pulling off me with a wet sound that made my toes curl.
“Five minutes ago,” I gasped. “Ten minutes ago. Yesterday. Always.”
He moved up my body, settling between my legs, and I wrapped myself around him—arms around his neck, legs hooking over his hips, pulling him close until there was no space left between us.
No need for condoms. He pressed his forehead to mine, his breathing ragged now, and I could feel him there, hot and slick and waiting.
“Look at me,” he said, echoing what he’d said in the kitchen two mornings ago.
I opened my eyes. His were full copper now—blazing, beautiful, inhuman—and I wasn’t afraid. I would never be afraid of this. Of him.
He pushed in slowly, and my breath left me in a long, shuddering exhale. The stretch was intense, the fullness overwhelming, and I gripped his shoulders and breathed through it while he held perfectly still, his jaw clenched with the effort of waiting.
“Move,” I whispered. “I need you to move.”
He did.