Chapter 22 Tyr
TWENTY-TWO
TYR
Her skin is pale beneath the bloodstains. Scars mark her torso—old ones, from training and combat and the costs of her bloodline. The wound in her stomach is ugly, still bleeding sluggishly, but no longer fatal.
I don’t waste time looking. Don’t have time to appreciate what I’m claiming.
I grip her waist. Pull her toward me. Her legs wrap around my hips with a strength that surprises me—the partial bond is flooding her with borrowed power, keeping her body functional when it should have failed hours ago.
“The mark,” I manage, my voice barely human anymore. “Shoulder. I need—”
“I know.” She tilts her head, baring her neck and shoulder in a gesture that’s both surrender and demand. “Do it.”
The dragon surges forward.
I bite.
Not a graze, not a symbolic gesture. My teeth sink into the muscle where her neck meets her shoulder, deep enough to scar, deep enough to mark permanently. Blood floods my mouth—her blood, hot and copper-bright, carrying the taste of her magic, her existence, her life.
Power explodes outward.
The mating bond completes itself in a rush of sensation that defies description.
Her lifespan locks to mine—I feel it happen, feel centuries open where moments remained.
Her magic tangles with my power, the two intertwining in ways that shouldn’t be possible but are.
We become bound at a level deeper than physical, more permanent than any oath or promise.
She cries out. Not in pain—or not only in pain. Her nails rake down my back, drawing blood, claiming marks of her own. Her body arches against mine, demanding more than the bite, more than the bond, more than the magical claiming that’s rewriting both of us.
The bond wants consummation. Bodies tangled, power shared, the claiming made complete through flesh as well as magic.
I give it what it wants.
There’s nothing gentle about what follows.
We crash into each other like violence, like desperation, like two people who almost lost each other and are determined to prove that loss impossible.
Her wound protests—she gasps when I jostle it—but she doesn’t stop.
Doesn’t slow. Her hands tear at my remaining clothes with a ferocity that matches my own.
I’ve wanted her since the first moment I saw her. That cold clarity. That absolute refusal to look away from what I am.
Now she’s mine. Bound. Claimed. Permanent.
The dragon roars in satisfaction with every thrust. The man beneath the dragon agrees completely. We’ve never been so aligned—never wanted the same thing with such absolute certainty.
Her. Only her. Forever her.
She meets me stroke for stroke, demand for demand.
Even bleeding, even barely recovered from near-death, she refuses to be passive.
Her hips rise to meet mine. Her teeth find my shoulder, biting down hard enough to leave bruises.
Her magic flares against my power, truth pressing against interruption, the two forces feeding each other in ways that make us both stronger.
The bond pulses between us with every movement. Not telepathy—I can’t hear her thoughts, can’t feel her emotions directly. But I know where she is. Would know it anywhere, now. The claiming mark on her shoulder is a permanent anchor, a connection that death itself couldn’t sever.
She’s going to live.
The thought crashes through me as I drive into her, as her body clenches around mine, as the pleasure builds toward a peak that feels less like satisfaction and more like survival.
She’s going to live. Centuries instead of moments. Years I thought were lost, restored through the bond that’s rewriting us both.
I couldn’t protect her from the blade. Couldn’t stop the Herald from wounding her. But I can give her this—my years, my power, my existence anchoring hers.
She shatters beneath me a heartbeat later, her cry echoing off the cave walls, her body arching against mine with a force that should be impossible given her injuries.
The bond absorbs the pleasure, amplifies it, sends it ricocheting between us until I can’t tell where my release ends and hers begins.