Chapter 3 #2
He turned away, facing one of the obsidian walls where our reflections stretched into infinity. Through the bond, I felt him building walls, preparing defenses against what came next.
"Two options. We can slow the process, keep it at this level—you'd be marked, connected, but still essentially human.
Still mortal. You'd age, eventually die, and the bond would break naturally.
" The words came out steady but I felt how much he hated them, how every dragon instinct railed against letting something his go, letting time steal what the bond had given him.
"Or?"
"Or we can make it permanent now. Complete the transformation fully and immediately." He turned back to me, and his eyes held centuries of weight. "The Caretaker Pact would bind us eternally. You would become fully dragon-kin—immortal, tied to the stone as I am. Unable to die unless I die first."
The words hung between us like a physical thing. But he wasn't done.
"The Pact isn't just physical transformation," he continued, each word seeming to cost him. "It establishes roles as fundamental as breathing. I would become your protector, your provider, your teacher, your guardian, your . . ." He struggled with the word, jaw clenching. "Your Daddy."
Heat flooded through me that had nothing to do with the thermal vents. The word hit something deep, something I hadn't known existed until he said it.
"And you would be my Little. Not just in play or scene, but as fundamental truth.
The young eternal, learning and growing forever under my protection.
Your body would remain as it is now—young, small, preserved at this exact moment.
But your mind would continue to develop, to learn, to experience.
The paradox that dragons call the Little Mystery. "
My hands shook where they rested on Pebble's warm scales. "That's . . . that's a lot."
"It's everything," he corrected, and the bond cracked open enough for me to feel the full weight of his doubt. Images flooded through—Edda again, but younger, laughing as he'd tried to explain dragon customs.
But also other memories—the loneliness that came after, centuries of empty chambers, the other Dragon Lords, the way they looked at him with pity or contempt for his attempt to take a non-bonded mate.
Davoren especially, whose Little had chosen the Pact within hours of meeting, who never tired of noting Garruk's empty halls.
"You loved her," I said, not a question.
"Yes." Simple, honest, devastating. "Without a bond, without the Pact, without fate's permission.
The others called it false love, incomplete.
Said a true bond would have manifested if it were real.
" Bitterness colored the words. "But it was real to me.
Real enough that I swore never to put another through that choice, never to watch another age while I remained stone. "
"But the marks—"
"The marks chose without my consent. Or yours.
" He sat beside me on the bench, careful to leave space between us even though the bond hummed with the need for contact.
"Dragons don't get to refuse fate when it finally arrives.
But humans do. You can choose to remain essentially human, let the bond fade to a whisper, leave when you're ready.
Or you can choose the Pact, choose to be mine completely, choose a different kind of life entirely. "
Through the bond, I felt the truth he wasn't speaking—how much he wanted me to choose the Pact, how his dragon nature roared for it, demanded it. But also his iron control, his determination to give me true choice despite what it might cost him.
"When do I have to decide?"
"Before the physical changes become irreversible. A week, perhaps less." He stood, suddenly seeming eager to leave this chamber of infinite reflections and terrible choices. "For now, you need rest. Food. Time to understand what this means."
But I already understood more than he realized.
Through the bond, I'd felt the shape of what the Pact would mean—not just submission but complete trust, not just protection but absolute safety, not just being owned but being treasured.
The little girl who'd protected Mica all these years, who'd never had anyone strong enough to protect her, ached for it with a ferocity that frightened me.
"Garruk?" I said as he moved toward the door.
He paused but didn't turn. "Yes?"
"Thank you. For explaining. For giving me the choice."
Through the bond, I felt something crack in his control—a flash of pure want so intense it made my thighs clench. But he just nodded and led us from the chamber, leaving our infinite reflections behind to stare at each other in the darkness.
Garruk's quarters were a monument to self-denial.
The main room held only what was absolutely necessary for function, nothing for comfort.
A desk carved from a single block of polished granite dominated one wall, its surface covered in geological surveys that looked hand-drawn, each line precise as scripture.
The ink had faded on some to barely-there brown, suggesting decades of age.
Others were fresh, black lines mapping new tunnel systems, recent cave-ins, the ever-changing geography of a living mountain.
His handwriting was precise—each letter looked constructed rather than written, with spacing so uniform it could have been measured with calipers.
Notes in the margins referenced depth, pressure, mineral composition, magical resonance.
One survey was titled "Proposed Northwest Extension—Abandoned," with a date that corresponded to three hundred years ago.
Around Edda's death, my mind supplied, and through the bond I felt his awareness of my thought, his flinch at her name even in my consciousness.
A single chair sat before the desk. Not pushed under but positioned precisely parallel to the desk's edge, as if he'd measured the distance.
The seat showed no wear, no impression from use.
He stood to work, then. Or sat on the floor.
Anything but allowing himself the simple comfort of a chair that had probably been Edda's, that probably still smelled like her to his dragon senses.
Shelves lined another wall, holding mineral samples that gleamed in the crystalline light.
Each one labeled with location and magical resonance readings—"Northeast shaft, depth 2,847 feet, resonance 7.
3 thanums" and similar notations that meant nothing to me but everything to him.
Some specimens were beautiful—amethyst geodes, gold-veined quartz, something black and iridescent that seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly at it.
Others were plain granite chunks that must have held significance only he understood.
"My workspace," he said unnecessarily, because what else could it be? Through the bond I felt his discomfort at having me here, in his space, seeing how he lived. Or didn't live. Existed.
The bedroom was worse.
A sleeping platform carved from bedrock took up most of the space—not even a separate piece of stone but part of the mountain itself, shaped to support a body but offering no softness.
No cushion, no blankets, nothing to ease the hardness.
Just stone worn smooth by centuries of use, with a subtle depression where his body had gradually carved its shape into rock.
"You sleep on stone?" I couldn't keep the shock from my voice.
"Dragons don't require softness," he replied, but the bond betrayed him—flashes of memory, Edda laughing at his attempt to use human furniture, her insistence on bringing blankets that he'd kept using until they fell apart, then sleeping on stone as penance or preference, I couldn't tell which.
An archway led to another room, darker, door partially open. I moved toward it instinctively, curious, but Garruk stepped into my path with speed that made me stumble back. His hand came up as if to catch me, stopped inches from my arm, dropped.
"That's not for you to see," he said, voice carefully controlled.
But the bond cracked open with his agitation, and I saw-felt-knew what lay beyond.
A nursery, frozen in time. A crib carved from rose quartz, blankets folded with military precision, waiting.
Toys arranged on shelves—wooden dragons, cloth dolls, rattles made from polished stone.
Everything covered in dust but perfectly preserved, waiting for a child that had never come.
The shame that flooded through him was overwhelming—shame at the presumption, at the hope, at the evidence of dreams that had crumbled when Edda couldn't conceive, wouldn't accept the Pact that might have changed that.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, not for trying to look but for the pain that room represented.
He turned away, moving back to the main room with rigid control. "Your quarters are across the hall. The elementals have prepared them."
I followed him out, Pebble trotting beside me, his small claws clicking on stone.
The room across from Garruk's was everything his wasn't—soft, warm, welcoming.
A bed with actual mattresses, layered with blankets that looked handwoven, patterns of mountains and dragons worked in blues and grays.
Running water from a hot spring trickled through a carved channel in one corner, filling a basin that steamed gently.
A small table where Pebble immediately claimed a corner, curling up like he'd always belonged there.
"This was . . ." I started, then stopped, realizing.
"Edda's guest room," he confirmed. "For when she needed space, time alone. I've had it maintained." Three hundred years of maintaining a room for a woman who would never need space again. The weight of his grief pressed through the bond like a physical thing.
He stood in the doorway, not entering, hands clasped behind his back in that way that meant he was holding himself in check. "Three rules while you're here."