Chapter 9
KELAN
I leave the cave before the night can settle too deeply into my bones.
To do so, I need to rebel against every instinct.
The dragon inside me is restless, desperate to claim his mate.
Her presence is a gravity that tugs my skin in a constant pull, sharpening every sense and fraying my control.
If I remain, I will hover at her side like a sentinel while my dragon paces, as desperate to claim her as he is for revenge.
So I step out into the cold and let the change take me.
Flesh yields to scale in a rush of heat and release.
Bones stretch, wings unfurl, and the night opens beneath me, vast and waiting.
I rise with almost no sound, cloaked in the same ancient magic that has hidden us from mortal eyes for centuries, my shadow swallowed before it can touch the ground.
Blackwood Forest spreads below, dark, and so old it remembers the first dragons.
I circle high above the treetops, senses flaring outward, tasting the air for corruption, for the oily residue of stolen magic, for the heavy, brutal imprint of bear shifters who have forgotten restraint and wolves whose only language is cruelty.
If they are close—if any of them dared linger after what they did to Aura tonight—I will end them.
There will be no warning or mercy.
Fire gathers in my throat at the thought, eager to destroy. I would reduce them to ash, scatter them to the wind, erase them so completely the forest itself would forget their names.
But there’s nothing.
There are no cowards in pursuit or ambushes waiting in the dark. Whatever had hunted her fled when she vanished.
I bank once more over the canopy, then turn back toward the cave, my dragon reluctant to descend. The night is the best time to fly, when the air is cool and the moon is high. The freedom my wings afford me will never be taken for granted.
The cave comes into view, and it is only when stone and shadow close around me again that I shift, drawing myself back into human form with effort that’s heavier than it should be.
Inside, the fire burns and Aura sleeps, curled on her side in the nest we built for her, red hair spilling across pale furs.
Her breathing is quiet and even, and in sleep, the sharpness fades from her features, leaving her looking less like a survivor carved by fear and more like the young woman she should be.
The sight of her in our nest settles the restlessness inside me for a few seconds until my dragon reminds me she is unclaimed.
Darial and Ronyn sit nearby, their voices low, their attention divided between Aura and the cave’s entrance. Even at rest, we are a protective wall around her.
“She exhausted herself,” Darial murmurs. His gaze rests on her, as soft as the furs beneath her, following the rise and fall of her chest. “Healing costs more than magic. It takes something from the soul, too.”
Ronyn’s jaw tightens. “We can’t keep avoiding it.”
Darial glances at him. “She’s been hunted, wounded, and controlled against her will.
If we tell her what and who we are, it could feel like another trap.
Three more shifters who are looking to take her power for themselves and put her in a position she doesn’t want to be in. Dragons who would contain her magic.”
“And if we wait,” Ronyn counters quietly, “then everything from the day we met her until the day we tell her will be a lie.”
They both look at me.
I think of the way Aura fought through the forest rather than surrender. The way her magic answered fear with fury. The way she looked at us as potential threats she would face head-on if she had to.
“She’s strong,” I say at last. “Stronger than she knows. She deserves the truth from us. The bond we have with her is a blessing, not a curse. She will never fear us, never have to run from us, never be hurt by us. All the pain she’s suffered will be like dust when we claim her. We tell her when she wakes.”
The words settle between us, and even if my friends disagree, they will follow my decision.
I turn for another glimpse of the most beautiful woman my eyes have ever had the privilege to observe, and find Aura’s eyes open silently, her green gaze sharp and alert even through exhaustion.
She watches us from the bed, her stillness more unsettling than panic would have been.
How much did she hear?
“Dragons?” she says. The word is flat and disbelieving. “That’s what you are?”
I step forward, careful not to crowd her.
“Yes.”
Her eyes flick over me, searching my face for lies. Searching for madness. For delusion. For some crack in the story she can pry open and dismiss.
“Dragons don’t exist,” she says, but there’s less certainty in it now. “They’re stories. Myths parents use to scare children.”
“And yet,” I reply evenly, “you’ve seen your own magic flatten trees and sprout rock from the earth.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
She opens her mouth then clamps it shut, considering her answer.
“It just is,” she snaps. “Magic is one thing. You’re talking about creatures that breathe fire and fly and hoard virgins in towers.”
Ronyn huffs softly behind me. I silence him with a glance.
“We do breathe fire,” I say. “And we do fly. But we don’t hoard virgins.” A beat. “We hoard gold.”
Despite herself, her brow twitches. “This isn’t funny.”
“No,” I agree. “It isn’t.”
Her gaze sharpens again, desperate now. “If you were dragons, I would have felt it. I sense magic. You would have felt wrong.” Her throat works as she swallows, and silence thickens between us.
“And yet,” I continue, softer now, “your magic didn’t destroy us.”
Her fingers curl slightly in the furs. “It should have,” she whispers.
“Why? Haven’t we fed you, clothed you, and kept you safe from your enemies?”
Her eyes lift slowly to mine again, searching still, but now for more than cracks in the story. For proof that she hasn’t missed something monumental.
“You’re telling me,” she says carefully, “that three dragons have… discovered me in this cave.”
“Yes.”
“And that I’m supposed to believe I’m what? Special? Chosen?”
“Yes. Fated.”
She blinks.
That word settles differently.
“Show me,” she says, voice hoarse.
Fully shifting would overwhelm her, but I let the truth of what I am surface enough to prove my second form.
Scales bloom over my arms and legs, dark and ridged, catching the firelight.
My tail unfurls behind me, heavy enough to sweep loose rocks across the floor of the cave as I curve it before me.
Heat rolls off my skin in controlled waves as my wings partially emerge; their vastness hinted at in shadow and muscle rather than fully revealed. Ridged horns curl from my skull.
My eyes blaze silver.
For a heartbeat, it seems like the cave holds its breath.
Aura scrambles backward on the bed, fear flashing bright and raw, hands clutching the furs as if they might anchor her. I stop immediately, freezing where I stand.
“You have nothing to fear from us,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “Not now. Not ever.”
Her laugh is sharp and broken. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because the goddess herself carved this path. Because the alpha dragon in me bows to her with absolute certainty and now bows to you.”
I lower my head and kneel, fixing my gaze to the rock beneath me, unaware of Aura’s response to my moment of deference. She is our mate and our queen. I am alpha, but she will know my worship.
“Because,” I say quietly, rising to look her in the eye, “you're our fated mate.”
In the silence that follows, I let the truth stand bare between us. I watch her face carefully as shock hollows her features and denial rushes in to seal the cracks. Then, beneath it all, something far more fragile rises to the surface.
Grief.
It’s different from the sharp grief of loss but rather the kind that comes when the shape of your future shifts without your consent.
“No,” she whispers. “That’s not—no.”
“We will protect you,” I continue. “We will burn the world before we allow you to be harmed again.”
Her head shakes once, then again, harder. “You don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to walk in here and rewrite my life with a word.”
“We aren’t rewriting it,” I say softly. “We are part of it.”
“I didn’t ask for this.” Her voice fractures. “I didn’t ask for dragons. Or fate. Or a goddess tying me to anything. I didn’t ask for any of the other shit that has happened in my life.”
Her hand presses to her chest like she’s steadying her own heartbeat.
“I finally learned how to survive on my own,” she continues, eyes bright and furious. “And now you’re telling me I’m back to square one, with no autonomy and no independence? No choice or freedom?”
“That isn’t what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?” she demands.
“That you were never meant to be alone.”
Her breath stutters. Alone has been her armor. Her refuge. Her proof of strength.
“You don’t know what it has cost me,” she says, voice low now. “To need no one. To rely on no one. To trust no one.”
“I do,” I answer.
She studies me like she wants to disprove every word I say.
“We will protect you,” I continue, quieter now.
She looks at me like I’ve stolen from her the one thing she fought hardest to claim: control.
And I’ve yet to tell her that we came looking for her to suppress her magic for good.