Chapter 3 #2
And then he saw it.
Nestled between her breasts, resting against her pale, wet skin, was a pendant.
A simple thing — a single uncut emerald, rough-hewn and unpolished. But it was the setting that made the blood freeze in his veins. Silver, intricately woven, shaped into the unmistakable spiral of a dragon's coiled tail.
He knew that pendant.
He had held it in his own hands three centuries ago.
He had placed it around the neck of his sister, Mairin, the divine feminine dragon that carried the goddess in her blood, Banríon na Síol, Queen of Seeds , on the day she died.
The day she made her final stand against Laoch na Corraí, The Warrior of Decay .
The emerald was hers. A sacred relic, a conduit of her power, lost to the decay of her fallen forest. Lost to the decay of her fallen forest, lost to history, lost to him —
And it was hanging around the neck of a wet, naked human female who was bathing in herbs and humming to herself like a child.
Rage, cold and absolute, obliterated desire.
For the first time in centuries, man and dragon were in complete accord.
A tidal wave of fury washed away every shred of control, every thought of honor and restraint.
His sister's relic. His sister's relic. Worn by this mortal as if it were a common trinket.
He didn’t remember moving.
One moment he was in the tree. The next, he stood beside the tub, water sloshing violently from the force of his arrival, and the dragon was so close to the surface, his breath churned with fiery sparks and smoke in the cool evening air.
Poppy shrieked. She scrambled to cover herself, eyes wide with shock and terror.
Alsander saw none of it.
His gaze was fixed on the pendant. On the blasphemous sight of it resting against her perfect skin.
His hand shot out — fingers like iron — and wrapped around her upper arm. He hauled her from the tub. Her naked, wet body slid against his clothes.
The scent of herbs and her own sweet, female fragrance flooded his senses. He paid no mind to her struggles, to the cry of distress that escaped her lips. He backed her against the rough stone wall of her cottage, his body a cage of fury.
"Where did you get this pendant?"
His voice was a low growl. A dangerous rumble that vibrated through his chest and into hers. He reached out with his other hand, fingers closing around the emerald — the metal cold as ice against his cursed skin.
"Where ? " Poppy stared up at him. Face pale. Eyes wide with a mixture of fear and defiance. "Let go of me!"
"Answer me!" His dragon roared inside him, raging just below the surface. He knew his eyes glowed with unholy green fire. He could see the reflection in hers. "This pendant. It does not belong to you. It is sacred . Where did you get it?"
Tears welled in her eyes but she didn’t look away. "It was my grandmother's." Her voice shook, but the words held truth. Conviction. "It's been in my family for — for as long as anyone can remember."
The truth and sincerity of words cut through his rage as no physical strike could have done.
Her family. For generations. It was impossible. It made no sense.
And yet, as he looked into her defiant, tear-filled eyes, he saw the truth. A flicker of something deep in their depths. A spark of the same ancient power he had seen in his sister's eyes the day she fell.
The dragon’s rage eased, replaced by a dawning, impossible understanding.
Perhaps the power held within the pendant needed a living conduit. His sister was gone. Maybe the pendant had sought another to wield its power. The same power that had led Poppy straight to him.
His grip loosened a fraction.
His body remained pressed against hers. His hand wrapped around the pendant that rested against her frantic heartbeat.
He could feel the rapid pulse of her life beneath his fingers — a desperate rhythm that called to the darkness within him.
The warmth of her skin under his knuckles.
The rise and fall of her chest. Her hard, taut nipples brushed his shirt with every shallow breath.
She was wet. She was naked. She was pinned to a stone wall by a creature that could turn her to ash.
And she wasn’t afraid of him. Or his dragon.
He could see it in her eyes. The fear had broken open into something else. Something hungry .
The dragon snarled inside him. Take her. She is ours. She was destined to be ours since the world was young. Take her, claim her, end this.
"I should let you go," he rasped as the last of the smoke disappeared along with his rage.
His thumb dragged across the pendant. Across the warm skin of her sternum. Across the swell of her breast where the silver chain disappeared.
She gasped.
He was lost.
He leaned in, his intentions a blur of confusion, yearning, and desperate, undeniable need.
And then he was kissing her.
Not gentle. Not careful. A brutal, desperate claiming — a collision of fury and longing, of accusation and desire.
His mouth crushed hers, demanding, punishing, taking .
He poured three centuries of pain and loneliness into it, a desperate attempt to possess, to understand, to claim the one thing in this dying world that could still make him feel.
She froze. Hands flat against his chest.
Then she melted into him. Surrendered. Her lips parted under the brutal pressure of his.
Her hands, which had been holding him away, fisted in his shirt and pulled him closer.
She kissed him back with a fire and passion that matched his own — a desperate, undeniable response that transcended fear and confusion.
He growled into her mouth.
His teeth caught her lower lip and pulled. She whimpered, and the sound went straight to his cock, his dragon, to the very marrow of his bones. He licked the place his teeth had been, tasted her, and the dragon inside him howled with satisfaction.
His heart raced. Blood pounded in his veins.
His cock was so hard against her bare hip that she had to feel it, had to know what she was doing to him, had to know that he was three seconds from sinking to his knees and burying his face between her thighs and finding out if she tasted as good as the rest of her smelled.
His mind flooded with images of her. Her skin. Her lips parted under his. The luscious curves of her body pressed wet and naked against him.
The emerald pendant caught between their bodies, the silver dragon’s tail glowing faintly against his shirt. He no longer cared. The world narrowed to the taste of his mate. The feel of her wet skin against his clothes. The frantic beat of her heart. Nothing else mattered.
He was lost. Drowning in a sea of sensation, of desire, of a hope so terrifying it was almost worse than the despair.
And his dragon, ancient and patient and very, very awake, settled into his bones and purred .