Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Anna
I spun on Caz as soon as I entered the room. “You aren’t going to stop me if I choose to do this.”
Caz’s mouth slammed closed. Then, slowly, he closed the door.
“You’re supposed to wait until the door is closed to start an argument.”
I crossed my arms defiantly. “If I’d done that, you would have spoken first.”
“Of course I would have!” he barked. “Because I would tell you that you aren’t doing this orb-damned thing. You aren’t going to just go throw yourself at their mercy. I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t allow it?” I asked icily.
“Anna …”
“No.” I sliced a hand through the air. “You don’t control me, Caz. You aren’t the boss of me. I don’t belong to you. So you don’t get to make these decisions.”
“That’s not how I meant it,” he ground out, his eyes bright and angry.
“Then what did you mean?” I challenged just a bit more belligerently than necessary. I didn’t enjoy being told I was wrong, even when I knew I had overreacted.
Not once had Caz ever tried to control me or tell me to do something. He’d bent over backward to do the opposite, to make me feel comfortable and secure in his world. My comments weren’t particularly fair to him, but I was so angry I didn’t care.
“Just that I won’t let it happen. I won’t claim you.”
My dragon slammed itself against me with furious roars of denial. He had to do it. He had to claim us! We were fated to be together. He had wanted this all along. How could he say now he didn’t want to?
“You don’t want me anymore?” I said, my voice hushed as I processed the shock of his words.
“There is nothing I want more,” he growled defensively, stepping up to me in a blur, cradling my head in his hand, and stroking my hair back over my head.
“You are all I could ever hope to be lucky enough to have. I would freeze the world over for you. But, Anna, I won’t claim you just to lose you.
You can’t ask me to sacrifice forever. Ask anything else of me but that. Please.”
I shivered. I’d never heard him speak like that before. Not to me, or to anyone.
“Well then, we’re at an impasse,” I told him. “Because asking me to sit back and live the life I want with you while I could still find my friend isn’t something I could ever do. That’s not who I am, Caz.”
“I know,” he rumbled. “You’re a better friend than that. But I can’t lose you. I can’t. If they kill you, the mate bond would take me too. Which would suck, but it’s better than living without you. And I would do it, if it were only you and me.”
My stomach sank as I realized where he was coming from.
Caz nodded. “Think of all the others who would suffer if I were to die now without an heir. Mirko would assume the throne, Anna. He and then his son would sit on it, and they would rule. If you think it’s bad now, you have no idea how much worse it could get.
Who knows when someone would step up and try to change things again. ”
“But Milly,” I said softly, not willing to let it go. Not yet.
“Anna—”
I pressed a finger to his lips, forging ahead. “Caz, you told me once that you didn’t care that I was wing-clipped. That I didn’t have a strong dragon. You swore it didn’t matter, that you didn’t care.”
“And I don’t care. You getting stronger is intriguing and I don’t think a negative, but it hasn’t made me care for you any more or less. Your dragon’s strength was never who you were.”
“Exactly.” I licked my lips. “Which is why you’re going to let me do this.”
“What?”
“Because you told me I could trust you. And I did, and I’m happy I stopped hating you. But now, Caz, you have to return that. You have to trust me. Trust that I can do this. You would let another elite do it. Which means if you truly believe what you say, you can’t stop me either.”
His mouth opened to counter my argument but then closed. I saw it on his face when he came to the same conclusion.
“Look at me,” I said when he glanced aside, emotions clouding his normally clear eyes.
Slowly, with a slight judder, his head came back around.
“I want this,” I told him, reaching up to undo a button on my shirt while never losing eye contact. “I want you. And not just because of this.”
Caz stiffened.
“Ella pointed it out to me,” I explained, undoing the next button. His jaw twitched, but he didn’t look away. “She told me how much more I smile when you’re around. That I’m happier. That I don’t care as much about my past.”
“Your past doesn’t matter to me,” Caz rumbled, his lips barely parting. His dragon had to be riding him hard.
“I know it doesn’t,” I said, smiling and reaching for the next button. “That’s my point. I used to care about it a lot. Worry about it. Think I was nothing without the memories. Now … now I’m nothing without you.”
His dragon whined. I didn’t know if I heard it, or just sensed it, but somehow I knew it.
“What are you saying, Anna?” Caz rasped, eyes aglow, on the edge of losing control.
“That this isn’t some spur of the moment thing. I had already come to the decision that I wanted this, us, you. Forever, until we fly west together one day.”
His mouth was hanging open slightly as I shucked the shirt from my shoulders, letting it slowly fall to the floor.
“Are you certain? There’s no going back from this. Once I bite you, I—”
His mouth slammed closed as I raised a single, solitary finger. I wasn’t done speaking.
“Claim me, Caz,” I whispered, my knees and hands trembling with excitement and a healthy dose of nerves. “Make me yours. Forever.”
He came at me in a rush, a mix of man and beast but all mine.
My dragon roared its approval, and we arched up to meet him.
Casimir, our mate.