37. Lucy
Lucy
Plant thyme along your western wall. The west is where the dead go to think, and they will stop to rest in your garden instead of your bedroom.
Igave myself to the Ossira. It would lead, and I would follow, and I could only hope that compliance would come with hidden clues and new direction. And maybe even a Fury with answers. The fog tasted like iron and old snow as I passed through. Then it broke, and the night poured in.
Sharp and vast and full of stars that the fog had been hiding.
With the Ash spread below me, I could feel the collar register my compliance like a loosened leash, the pressure easing just slightly against my throat.
The compulsion that usually dragged me forward softened into something more like guidance.
But as I flew, it tightened its grip again, pulling harder at the edges of my thoughts. Threading through my mind like smoke, claiming space the woman usually occupied. I pushed back, afraid of losing control entirely, but without my anchor—
What was my anchor?
There had been something. Someone. A presence that kept me tethered to myself even when the beast tried to take over. But I couldn’t remember what it was or why it mattered. The woman inside went quiet and I was only a dragon with a singular purpose.
HUNT.
I flew southeast, following the pull. Everything below sharpened into perfect focus, beasts moving through the Ash, their shapes barely visible against the charred landscape. Small deposits of purple flame scattered across the ground, flickering like dying embers that refused to go out completely.
Purple.
Something about that color tugged at me, trying to surface a memory that stayed just out of reach.
Important. It was important. But the thought slipped away before I could grasp why.
The collar pulled harder and I followed, scanning everything.
Measuring distance. Tracking the frequency of the pull that grew stronger with every mile.
Then I caught the scent. Everything that made me anything other than a hunter vanished in an instant.
TARGET.
Every rational thought left me. Pure instinct took over, consuming everything else.
I folded my wings and dropped from the sky like a stone.
The lycan looked up too late, eyes going wide as my faint shadow fell across him.
He was massive even by human standards, broad through the chest, his shift half-done so that his jaw had lengthened and his hands had become something between fist and claw.
Silver-tipped fur ran in a ridge down his spine, catching the sliver of moonlight like a blade.
He started to run but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere that would save him.
MINE. CAPTURE. DELIVER.
My claws extended, reaching for him.
Something massive slammed into me from the side.
Purple scales. A dragon intercepting my dive, throwing off my trajectory. We tumbled through the air together, his weight forcing me away from my target as he roared.
No!
I didn’t know him. He was an interference and nothing else mattered beyond that.
We hit each other the second time with enough force I lost my breath.
My shoulder screamed. My vision fractured at the edges.
The world spun, horizon trading places with ground, stars with ash, and I roared into it, pure fury without language, without thought, only the absolute animal certainty that something was between me and what I needed, and it had to be destroyed.
Tangled in the air, my claws found purchase along his flank and I pulled, tearing through scales, feeling the resistance of them and ripping through anyway.
He answered with his teeth at my wing joint, the pressure enormous and precise, not breaking but warning. The warning made me wilder, not less.
I twisted my neck and snapped at his throat. Missed. And tried again.
We fell together, locked, neither flying now, just falling and fighting. The ground was coming fast and I didn’t care because the collar was screaming and my lycan had run, and this damn dragon ruined everything.
We hit the ground hard enough that the stone beneath us gave.
Cracked outward in a spiderweb from the point of impact.
The force of it rattled through my jaw, my spine, every place where scale met bone.
He had me pinned before the ringing stopped.
Full weight pressing down, wings spread wide over mine to keep me grounded.
I roared and thrashed, desperate to break free. The collar was screaming. I had to complete the hunt. Had to deliver—
But he didn’t let go. His forehead pressed against mine and everything stopped.
His voice found the crack between beast and woman and pried. “You don’t want this. Stop fighting.”
I thrashed and threw my weight sideways. He absorbed it.
The collar burned. I snapped at his face.
He moved his head just enough that my teeth caught nothing but air, and then his jaw came down on the ridge of my neck.
Not breaking through, just warm and deliberate pressure.
A nip that ran from the base of my skull along the edge of my scales in a line so precise it pulled every nerve ending to the surface. To attention.
I went still for exactly one second.
He did it again before his voice rolled through my mind like thunder. Take control, Lucette. You know how. You’ve done it before. Come back to me.
I used his chest as leverage and shoved, every ounce of my weight and fury behind it, rolling him in a single violent motion that pinned his wings against the ground.
He let it happen. I realized that a half-second too late, the way he moved with it instead of against it, and then I was on top of him, forelegs pinning his shoulders, my face inches from his, staring into beautiful golden eyes.
There she is. His tone was rough and warm and devastatingly pleased. That’s my girl.
I snarled.
He didn’t look afraid.
Riot’s scales shifted beneath my claws, that deep violet catching the moonlight, and he stretched deliberately beneath me, unhurried, a slow roll of muscle and weight that had absolutely nothing to do with escape. His tail curled once around mine, loose and easy.
“You can let go,” he said quietly. “Or you can stay exactly where you are. I find I don’t have a strong preference at the moment.”
The collar still burned. Still pulled. But it was distant now, muffled beneath the heat radiating up through every point of contact between us. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm I felt in my own ribcage.
His eyes found mine. “Lucette. Come back to me, beautiful.”
The woman surfaced in my mind. Slow at first. Then all at once. I didn’t move. This wasn't a fight anymore. I wasn't sure it had been one for a while.
He nipped at my jaw and I pushed off of him. He made a sound like he was unmistakably pleased with himself.
Fucker.
HUNT, the collar tried.
I launched myself at Riot instead. He tilted his head, exposing the line of his throat with far too much confidence, believing I wasn’t going to bite him anymore. He was mostly right.
“You’re still here,” he practically purred through a deep rumble in his chest.
The sound settled low in my stomach. I didn’t answer. Didn’t trust what would come out.
His wing slid against mine in a slow, deliberate drag that sent a shiver through me I absolutely refused to acknowledge. He felt my response anyway. I could tell by the way his chest rose on a longer breath than the ones before it.
HUNT, the collar whispered, desperate to pull me back.
I pressed down harder against his shoulders instead.
He made a sound low in his throat. Not pain. Pleasure that curled at the edges of pain and became entirely different, and the woman inside me went very still and very awake at once. As did the beast.
“Careful,” he said, though his voice had dropped impossibly lower.
My head dipped without my full permission, drawn toward the ridge of his jaw, the place where scale gave way to something warmer. I could feel his pulse there. Steady and fast. Not afraid. He was never afraid of me. Even when I lingered between a collared beast and a complicated woman.
His tail unwound from mine and wound back slower, more deliberate, relearning the shape of me. But right now, even while touching, I controlled the form.
“My Tilouri,” he murmured. “Stay.”
I should have pushed off him and put the sky between us and remembered every reason this was complicated and dangerous and not what either of us needed right now with the collar still burning and the wards separating us and everything that had been taken from him in the span of days.
His wing curved up along my side, slow and exploratory, tracing the place where my scales ran thinner along my ribs. I felt every inch of it.
You’re fighting it, he said quietly into my mind.
I’m always fighting something. I sent the words through my mind without effort, and it startled me how easily they went, how little I had to try.
The first time I’d managed it, it felt like shouting in deep water.
Now, it was as simple as speaking aloud, the space between his mind and mine thinner than it had been even yesterday, like our connection was still growing.
He noticed it too. I could tell by the stutter in his wingbeat. A low sound rolled through his chest, pleased and possessive. Then let me distract you.
The worst part was that I wanted him to. His body shifted below me, just enough to remind me of every single point I had him pinned to the ground, and every single way he was still the one in control.
I’m not going anywhere, beautiful beast. Take all the time you need.
Riot’s wing pressed closer but he understood I couldn’t be rushed into anything.
That pushing would only make me dig in. That the only way to keep me here was to make here feel like the only place worth being.
I had the absurd urge to move closer still, to fit myself against him like there was a shape in the world carved specifically for me against him and I had accidentally found it.