Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
CASSIA
He moved closer. Not toward the equipment, toward her. Each step deliberate, measured, closing the distance she’d been so careful to maintain all day.
“Your magic responded to her presence.” No preamble. No context. Just the statement, dropped into the charged air between them.
Cassia’s heart stuttered. “My magic responds to everything lately.”
“Not like that.” Another step. He was near enough that she could smell him—something clean and sharp, underlaid with heat. Dragon metabolism running high. “When she touched me. When she stood close. You called a storm.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.” His voice was rough in a way she’d never heard it.
Raw. “I felt it. The barometric pressure dropped twelve points in ten seconds. The wind changed direction three times. Thunder rolled in from a clear sky.” He stopped directly in front of her chair, so near that his knees nearly touched hers.
“That wasn’t surge interference. That was response. Specific. Personal. Aimed at her.”
Cassia’s face burned. “You’re imagining things.”
“I don’t imagine things. I observe. I analyze. I draw conclusions from data.” His head tilted slightly, studying her. “The data is clear. Your magic reacted violently to Nerissa’s proximity to me. Why?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re lying.” He leaned down, hands bracing on the arms of her chair, caging her. Near enough to see the lightning flickering in the depths of his eyes. So close his breath ghosted across her cheek. “I can smell it on you.”
Neither of them moved away.
“I don’t—” Cassia’s voice came out strangled. “I can’t control—”
“I know.” His eyes never left hers. “I can’t either.”
The admission cracked something open in her chest. Aero Tau—ancient, composed, in control of every aspect of his existence—was admitting that he couldn’t control what happened between them any more than she could.
“What do you want from me?” The question came out a whisper.
He was so close. If she leaned forward two inches, her lips would brush his jaw. If she reached out, her hands would find the solid heat of his chest.
She didn’t move. Couldn’t. The pull between them held her frozen, waiting.
“I don’t know.” His voice had dropped to something barely audible. “That’s the problem.”
His eyes flashed—actual lightning, crackling beneath the surface. The storm in them matched the storm building in her blood.
“I’ve existed for eight hundred years,” he continued, each word pulled from somewhere deep.
“I’ve never wanted anything the way I—” He stopped.
Swallowed. “My dragon is convinced you belong to us. I’ve tried to analyze the response.
Categorize it. Explain it as surge interference or magical compatibility or any rational explanation that doesn’t require me to accept—”
“Accept what?”
He pulled back. Abrupt. Sharp. Put three feet of space between them in one fluid movement, and the loss of his proximity felt like a wound.
“That I might be feeling something.” His gaze fixed on the dark window, on the reflection of lights on water. “I don’t do that. I’ve never done that. Feeling things is—”
“Human?”
“Dangerous.” The word hung between them. “Cassia.” Her name on his lips sent a shiver through her. He’d never used it before. Always “Miss Gale.” Always formal. Always distant.
“And now?”
He turned back to face her. Something in his expression had cracked. Not broken—cracked. Like a fault line running through stone.
“Now I can’t stop thinking about you.” The words came out harsh.
Almost angry. “You’re chaotic and emotional and everything I’ve spent centuries avoiding.
You storm into rooms and the barometric pressure shifts.
You argue with me about data interpretation like anyone has ever dared to challenge my conclusions.
You’re mortal—sixty years, maybe eighty if you’re lucky—and my dragon wants you more than it’s ever wanted anything. ”
Cassia stood. The chair rolled back, forgotten. She closed the distance between them, stopping just out of reach.
“And what do you want?”
He studied her. Not analyzing or categorizing or maintaining professional distance—just looking at her with something unguarded and hungry and afraid in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said again. “That’s the problem.
I haven’t wanted anything in so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like.
And now—” His hand lifted, hesitated, then fell back to his side without touching her.
“Now I look at you, and I want things I can’t name.
Things I can’t quantify. Things that don’t fit in any framework I have for understanding the world. ”
“Maybe that’s the point.” She shouldn’t be saying this. Shouldn’t be standing this close, breathing the same charged air, letting hope spark in her chest. “Maybe some things aren’t meant to be understood. Just felt.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Neither do I.” Her laugh came out broken. “I’ve spent my whole life being told I feel too much. So I learned to push it down. Control it. Hide how much everything affects me so people wouldn’t run.” She met his gaze. “We’re the same. Just opposite ends of the same problem.”
Something flickered in his expression. Recognition, maybe. Understanding.
The silence between them held everything unspoken. She could feel the charge between them in her blood, in her bones, in the magic coiling in her chest. He radiated heat—dragon fire barely contained—and she wanted to touch him so badly, her hands ached.
Aero’s jaw tightened. His control visibly fraying.
Then he turned and walked out.
The door swung shut behind him. In his wake, every light in the weather station exploded—a cascade of sparks and shattering glass that left Cassia standing in darkness, electricity still arcing from her fingertips, her heart pounding against her ribs.
Gust woke with an indignant squawk.
What did you DO?
She didn’t have an answer.
She only knew that something had shifted between them. Something that couldn’t be unshifted. Something that terrified her and thrilled her in equal measure.
Outside, thunder rolled across Haven Shores.
Cassia stood in the darkness, surrounded by broken glass and fading sparks, and let herself feel it.
All of it.
Even the parts that hurt.