Chapter 22 Izan
TWENTY-TWO
IZAN
The kiss isn’t gentle. Can’t be gentle, not with the dragon surging against my restraints and her body pressed between me and the wall and the need howling through me to claim, mark, take.
My hand fists in her hair—the dark strands she keeps pinned so carefully, controlled, perpetually contained—and I ruin that discipline with a single grip.
The other hand stays on her hip, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, holding her in place while I devour her with all the desperation I’ve been choking back for weeks.
She doesn’t resist.
She responds.
Her hands find my chest, grip the fabric of my shirt, pull me closer instead of pushing me away.
Her mouth opens beneath mine, and the sound she makes—half gasp, half moan, entirely devastating—sends fire roaring through my veins that has nothing to do with dragonfire and everything to do with pure, consuming need.
A lifetime of refusing to let myself want anything this badly, and she’s undoing all of it with a single kiss.
I want her.
The admission crashes through me with the force of a collapsing wall.
I want her in ways I’ve spent decades learning not to want anything.
Want to taste every inch of her skin. Want to burn my claim into her flesh so thoroughly that no one could ever mistake who she belongs to.
Want to mate her, bond her, transform her into the other half of my existence.
The mating instinct roars.
And I listen.
My teeth find her throat. Not biting—not yet—but grazing, testing, feeling her pulse hammer against my lips. She arches into me, and the motion presses her wound against my palm, and the sharp hiss of pain that escapes her cuts through the haze like cold water.
Pain.
She’s in pain.
I hurt her.
The realization hits with enough force to make me stagger. I wrench myself back, putting six inches of distance between us that feels like miles, and stare at her with eyes I know are burning full volcanic red.
She looks ruined. Beautiful. Her hair is tangled from my grip, her lips swollen from my kiss, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The wound on her ribs is bleeding again—I must have pressed against it without noticing, too lost in the haze of want to register the damage I was doing.
This is what I am. This is what I’ve always been—a monster barely contained, a predator pretending to be civilized, a threat to everyone stupid enough to get close.
Including her.
Especially her.
“Izan—”
“I hurt you.”
“It’s nothing—”
“I hurt you.” Raw. Shattered. I stare at my hands like they belong to someone else. At the skin that was touching her moments ago, that could have torn her open, that was desperate to mark her in ways that would never heal.
The dragon screams at me to go back. To finish what I started. To claim her before anyone else can take her from me.
I refuse.
“Izan, listen to me—”
I can’t.
If I listen to her, I’ll go back. If I go back, I’ll finish what I started. And if I finish what I started, I’ll mate her.
I know this with the same certainty I know my own name. The beast is too close to the surface, too desperate, too far beyond the restraint I’ve built over a lifetime. If I stay in this room one more moment, I’ll claim her.
And claiming her now—before she’s chosen this, before she’s ready, before she’s made the decision with clear eyes and full understanding—would make me no different from the Blood Regent and his blood-oaths.
It would be ownership without consent.
I won’t become that.
Even if being anything else is becoming impossible.
“Don’t.” My voice barely functions. “Don’t follow me.”
I turn. Walk to the door. Every step feels like tearing off pieces of my own flesh.
“Izan!”
I don’t stop.
The door slams behind me, and I stand in the corridor with my forehead pressed against the cool stone wall, trying to remember how to breathe, trying to cage the dragon that’s screaming at me to go back and take what’s mine.
The wall cracks beneath my palm. I watch fissures spread through volcanic stone, absorb the damage I’m doing to my own stronghold, and understand with perfect clarity that if I go back into that room, I will destroy everything I’m trying to protect.
Including her.
So I stay in the corridor. Stay with my forehead against stone and my hands leaving scars in walls that have stood for ages. Stay until the red fades from my vision and the scales recede beneath my skin, and I can think again with my mind instead of instinct.
The Blood Regent is planning to bind a city.
Thousands of lives hang in the balance.
A war is accelerating toward a conclusion that could reshape Pyraeth forever.
And I’m standing outside a witch’s door, trembling with the effort of not going back in and claiming her.
What have you done to me?
The question has no answer. No solution. No strategy that can make this need manageable.
Alerie Narayan has broken through walls I spent a lifetime building, and I don’t know how to rebuild them.
I’m not sure I want to.
But I know—with the certainty that keeps me standing in this corridor instead of surrendering to instinct—that when she becomes mine, it has to be her choice.
I won’t take her.
I’ll wait until she gives herself.
And if that wait destroys me, so be it.
Some monsters are worth becoming.
I find the observation balcony an hour later.
The city spreads below me—Pyraeth in all its volcanic glory, the lower districts wreathed in industrial smoke, the upper reaches where dragons rule from heights no human could reach without invitation.
I stare at it without seeing. My hands have stopped shaking.
The red has fully receded from my vision.
The dragon has retreated to the depths where it usually waits, patient and terrible and eternally hungry.
I want her. I crave her with an intensity that’s rewriting everything I thought I knew about myself—about discipline, about the difference between a predator who takes and a predator who waits.
And I can’t have her. Not yet. Not until she chooses.
So I’ll burn with need and cage the beast and maintain what discipline I can manage.
I’ll fight the Blood Regent and protect the city and pretend that I’m still the enforcer everyone needs me to be.
And every moment, every breath, I’ll know that she’s three corridors away.
Healing from wounds she hid. Probably hating me for walking out.
Probably wondering what kind of creature she’s agreed to ally herself with.
The night air carries ash from the lower districts.
I breathe it in, let it coat my lungs, let the taste of the city I’ve sworn to protect ground me in the present moment.
Somewhere below, the Blood Regent is preparing a ritual that could enslave everyone I’m supposed to defend.
Somewhere in my stronghold, a tactical council is assembling to plan our response.
Somewhere, Alerie is touching her swollen lips and remembering the way I kissed her.
War is coming. Real war, not the skirmishes we’ve been fighting.