2. Leif
Leif
She’s mine.
I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.
On Earth, I knew it. I just thought it was me.
I have spent centuries overruling instinct. Hunger, rage, fear — every impulse that ever made me less than useful. Control isn’t something I do. It’s what I am.
This is different.
It’s not one voice anymore.
My dragon knows it too.
On that side he was a weight. Distant. Muffled, like a storm on the far side of a mountain. Here he is wide awake, pressed up under my skin, looking at her through my eyes.
The sound I made against her neck wasn’t a decision. I would like to claim it was.
It wasn’t.
He wanted her scent and he took it, and neither of us was ready for what we found. Her scent changed the moment we crossed. On Earth it was night-blooming cereus. Faint. Easy to argue with.
Here, she smells like this side of the sky.
My dragon is finished pretending she’s optional.
And god, she’s beautiful.
I’ve had a long time to look at beautiful women. Long enough that beautiful stopped being interesting. Long enough that it became a fact about a person, like height.
None of them hold a candle to her.
There’s something else. Something I couldn’t have seen on Earth — and I spent the day close enough to see everything. I know what she looks like when she thinks no one is watching, which is exactly what she looks like when everyone is, because she has no idea how to be anyone but herself.
But this? I would have seen this.
This is new.
There’s light around her. Faint, but there. A ring of it sitting against her skin. It moves when she moves. It’s been getting steadier since we started walking.
Nobody has said it out loud. Brock keeps looking at her exactly when she isn’t looking at him. He sees it too. I’m sure of it.
Rayner looks like a lovesick fool and my dragon agrees.
We’re all acting like we have any say in anything anymore.
I wonder how long until they figure that out too.
Erik stands half a step behind her shoulder like the light is a threat he might need to step in front of.
Of the five of us, I’m the controlled one. Erik watches, Gunnar talks, Rayner feels, Brock reads — and I hold the line. I’ve held it through wars, through the Vestry, through every impossible thing this unit has ever been handed.
Because my dragon is the worst of them.
He always has been. That’s what the control is for. The others manage their dragons. I contain mine. I’ve had lifetimes to get good at the harder one.
We’ve reached an understanding over the centuries.
He pushes.
I win.
Today…
I’m not sure that’s still true.
Right now he wants me to stop walking, close the distance, and put my mouth back on her neck where it belongs.
He wants Erik’s hand off her spine. He wants to carry her the rest of the way so her feet never touch ground he hasn’t checked, he wants to fight something on her behalf and he is not particular about what, he wants—
Enough.
He moves under my skin, too close to the surface.
The growl was the first leak in longer than I can remember.
There will be more.
My eyes move down. I don’t authorize it.
Her eyes are the problem. They have been the problem all day.
When she pins me with them, I swear she sees the whole way in, and no one can blame me for what happened back there — a man wearing nothing at all has no secrets, and with her eyes on me there wasn’t a chance in any realm my body was keeping that one.
The curve of her neck. Her collarbone, which is begging for my fucking lips. The swell of her —
This is not helping.
Not sure I care.
The softness of her stomach. The fullness of her hips. The way she keeps almost looking back at me and losing the fight —
“Leif.”
I blink.
Gunnar has drifted in beside me, voice low, grin loud. “You want to calm down on beautiful over there before Erik has a stroke?”
“You think Erik is the problem right now?”
He stops grinning. “Yes?”
“Erik is not the problem.”
I look at him. The grin doesn’t come back. He doesn’t know the half of it.
“Well, obviously I know that now.” He points at me. “We are never speaking of this again, and keep that fucker contained.”
We are absolutely speaking of it again. He’s earned that conversation twice over today.
He thinks he’s needling the controlled one. If he really knew how close my dragon was to the surface right now, he’d walk somewhere else.
Up ahead, she stops and turns.
My eyes find hers before I can stop them.
Mistake.
I’m not sure it matters anymore.
The light turns with her, and for a moment the whole clearing tilts toward her without moving an inch — I feel Rayner shift, I feel Erik go still, I feel it in my own chest like a hand closing.
“Hi. Yes. Hello.” She plants her feet. “I asked a question and everyone just kept saying nothing, which, fine, apparently that’s a thing we do now, but I would like it noted that I have had an extremely long day, my cat is a person, and nobody will tell me where I am.
So. Somebody. Anybody. Where the fuck are we? ”
Four sets of eyes come to me.
Mine never left hers.
Of course they do. That’s the job. Assess, decide, answer. I’ve delivered worse news to harder rooms. I’ve briefed the Vestry with a straight face while a city burned behind me. There is a version of this answer that is measured and calm and gives her exactly as much truth as she can carry tonight.
“Somewhere safe,” I say.
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” I agree. “It isn’t.”
Her jaw sets. The light around her flares. Quick. Bright enough that Brock’s eyebrows go up and Gunnar mouths something I choose not to read.
She doesn’t notice. Of course she doesn’t notice. She’s glowing with temper in the middle of a realm she doesn’t know exists, and she has no idea, and every dragon in this clearing just watched it happen and said nothing.
I make a decision, the way I make all decisions. Fast, final, and aware I’ll be paying for it later.
She gets the truth. Tonight. All of it that she can hold.
But she gets it warm, fed, and behind walls — not in the open dark, three hours from home, wearing the day on her face. We’ll take her to the cabin. Hidden, at least for a little while.
“Walk with me,” I say, and start moving before she can argue. “You can yell at me the whole way.”
“That’s not—” She catches up. The light comes with her. “Fine. I have a list.”
Of course she does.
So do I.
And under my ribs, the dragon settles in content.
He likes it when she argues.
That is going to be a problem.