Chapter 27
AURA
I open my eyes.
The room is vast. The walls are smooth and white, and the windows darkened with the night.
Beneath me, a circular bed the size of a banquet table sprawls in crimson velvet.
Around it, the chamber rises: high ceilings, low light, and ancient-looking decorative objects; everything unfamiliar.
In the corner stands a tall column, topped by four carved wooden dragons.
For a moment, I don’t breathe.
I don’t move.
I listen.
But there’s nothing.
I try to sit up, but something holds me back. My wrists are tied in front of me and tethered to the bedframe. The restraint pulls tighter when I move. Panic hits me so hard that my vision goes white.
I flex my hands, but there’s no magic. A heavy fabric covers my body, pressing down like a weighted blanket. I squirm, trying to get free from the uncomfortable feeling.
My pulse hammers.
I’ve woken like this before, helpless and bound.
Gregory’s rooms. Gregory’s hands.
My stomach twists violently.
The room is empty, but I can feel danger in the air. Whoever took me from the forest can’t mean well. My heart pounds as I realize I’ve been undressed and tied to a bed in a stranger’s house.
A sound escapes me before I can stop it—a rough gasp that hurts my throat.
No. No, no, no.
Not again.
I search for the golden hum beneath my skin, the thrum of rune-light along my ribs, any sensation of my magic.
Nothing.
The emptiness feels wrong, like reaching for a limb that isn’t there. Dread rises in my throat, sharp and hot.
Then the sound of heels clicks across the stone, and I turn toward the doorway.
She enters like a burst of fire, graceful, terrible, made of sharp lines and colder intentions.
Tall, silver-haired, and wrapped in layered robes of flame-colored silk, she looks like an empress sculpted from glass.
Her eyes are amber, slitted, and narrowed.
They settle on me with curiosity… and something more.
Possession.
“You’re awake,” she says, voice silken and precise. “Good. We were worried you might miss everything.”
I don’t answer. I watch her instead, listening to the weight of her steps, to the way the tether hums slightly as she nears, recognizing her.
Runes pulse on her arms, like Kelan’s, Ronyn’s, and Darial’s.
She’s a dragon.
The moment I meet her gaze I understand that she isn’t here to comfort me.
“Where am I?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, gliding closer. “You’re where you’re supposed to be, about to fulfill your destiny.”
“I’m not—”
She lifts a finger. “Oh, but you are. The goddess has chosen you. You carry her light in your womb. You will carry the future of our kind.”
Her words have the same cold zeal as Gregory’s before he hurt me. I shiver and flex my tied hands, wishing my magic would come back and protect me.
I pull hard against the tether. It bites into my wrists. The heavy cloak tightens.
I yank again, harder, desperate, the bed creaking beneath me.
Nothing gives.
“Whatever you think I’m here for—”
“It isn’t what I think, girl. It’s what I know.”
“You’re keeping me prisoner?”
“We are keeping you safe,” she replies. “Your power is wild. The cloak suppresses it for your own good. If we wished to harm you, we could have let your magic destroy you in the forest. But we didn’t. We rescued you.”
Her voice is full of fake kindness.
Rescued.
My stomach lurches. I drag my feet back beneath me, bracing as if I might lunge. If I could reach her—
If I could get one hand free—
Behind her, I catch the sound of footsteps and deeper voices echoing from a nearby room.
She notices me looking and smiles, but there’s something dangerous behind it.
“My mates,” she says. “They are preparing a meal for you. Restoring their strength.”
“Your mates?” I repeat.
She turns toward the doorway. “Brax. Tael. Loriek. They are strong dragons. Powerful. Virile. They deserve offspring that I cannot produce, but you will. You will make them fathers and secure their line for centuries to come.”
My stomach drops so violently, I almost gag.
The three come in, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing dark silks.
Each one looks like the perfect dragon. Brax is tall, with dark skin and sharp cheekbones, his silver piercings shining in the candlelight.
Tael is all muscle and has bronze eyes, watching me like a predator.
Loriek, the tallest, has pale hair and a smile that makes it seem like he already knows my secrets.
They bow, but it’s layered with false respect.
“Is she ready?” Brax asks, his black eyes glinting with anticipation that makes my skin crawl.
My entire body recoils.
I drag backward across the bed until the tether snaps tight and jerks me forward again.
A sound escapes me, half snarl, half plea.
“Not yet.” The female dragon’s eyes narrow, as though his eagerness has angered her.
I cannot understand how a woman could want her mates to be with another. The idea of Kelan, Ronyn, and Darial taking another female makes me want to tear them limb from limb.
“My name is Lythian,” she says. She crosses the room and lifts my chin with one claw-tipped finger.
I try to jerk away, but she’s too fast.
Her grip tightens.
My pulse slams in my ears.
“I was the last fertile dragon female… until the goddess stripped me of my magic and marked you.”
I jerk my face away. “Don’t touch me—”
“Those three half-wild males should never have tasted your power,” she says sharply. “Kelan, Ronyn, and Darial… they bound your magic. They claimed what wasn’t theirs to claim.”
“They are my mates. They protected me.”
Lythian smiles again, coldly. “Did they? Or did they trap you and use you to test their ideas?”
My chest tightens. “You don’t know anything about them.”
She shrugs. “Perhaps not. Maybe they didn’t know what you are. The prophecy passed from mother to daughter. Maybe they didn’t know that filling you with dragon seed would be their chance to claim the mother of another generation of dragons.”
Anger cuts through my fear.
I surge forward against the tether with everything I have.
The silk burns into my skin.
The cuff holds.
But for a second, my runes flare hot beneath the cloak.
She steps back and raises her hand, pointing to a huge mural on the far wall. It glows softly, as if there’s a light inside it.
Dragons of all colors swirl in flight around a central figure of a woman draped in fire and runes. Her stomach is round with pregnancy. Beneath her feet, eggs crack open, and dragonlings spill out, ringed in divine flame.
“It has been told,” Lythian says, “that when dragon blood ran thin, and our females fell barren, the goddess would send a vessel. A fertile one. A conduit. She would awaken the sleeping womb of dragonkind in a human woman.”
She looks at me with an intense stare. “You are that vessel.”
My heart pounds like thunder.
“I won’t—”
“You don’t have to decide now,” she says sweetly. “You’ll eat. Rest. Heal. Then we’ll begin the preparations for the ritual. When you’re ready, you’ll receive each of my mates, one by one. And you will give birth to the future.”
A wave of terror hits me so hard I almost pass out.
My hands shake. My throat burns. But I lift my chin anyway.
“I would rather die.”
The words come out hoarse but laced with deadly menace.
For the first time, something besides dark control flickers in her eyes: annoyance, calculation, menace.
I lay frozen as the tether binding my wrists burns cold on my skin. The cloak glows with hidden enchantment, and across my body, my runes flare in opposition as though to remind anyone who I belong to.
Kelan.
Ronyn.
Darial.
They will come.
They will find me.
And until they do, I will not break.