Chapter 10
Nadia
I jolt awake with my back against stone and his scent in every breath. That’s the first thing I notice. Not the cold. Not the muscles locked from dozing upright. His scent—even suppressed by the cuffs, even across eight feet of shelter—threading through the air.
Clean. Male. Dragonfire buried beneath metal and runes, but not hidden. Not from my wolf.
She stirs. Hungry.
I keep my eyes closed and try to remember why I hate him.
The memories come: Chance’s funeral. The phone call that shattered my world.
The grief that emptied me out and filled the space with rage.
But underneath those memories, my body hums. Heat simmers low in my belly despite the cold. Despite everything.
Traitor.
I force my eyes open. He’s sitting exactly where he was last night. Back against the wall. Cuffed wrists still in his lap. Watching me with those unsettling gray eyes. Not mocking. Not threatening. Just… watching.
“Storm’s breaking,” he says quietly. His voice does something to my spine. Travels down it like a caress I didn’t ask for.
I push myself up before my body can betray me further. Every muscle protests. “Good.”
Silence fills the space between us. Awkward in a way violence never was. I should acknowledge what happened. The fight. The heat. The breakdown where I curled against a wall and came apart.
I don’t. Just stand and brush ash off the coat. Check my weapons. Keep my eyes on anything except him.
“We’re leaving,” I announce.
“All right.” That’s it. No argument. No questions about where or why or what happens next. Just agreement.
It troubles me more than resistance would. I expected him to push back. Assert dominance. Make demands. That’s what Syndicate commanders do. What dragons do.
Instead, he waits for me to decide. Like my choices matter more than his. I hate that this bothers me.
We leave the shelter in silence. Step out into a world scrubbed white. Snow has stopped but lies thick across everything. No tracks. No sound except wind through pines.
I start walking. East, back toward where the convoy burned. He follows. The awareness hits immediately. Fifteen feet behind me. Then twelve. His boots crunching through snow in a rhythm my wolf tracks automatically.
Heat builds beneath my skin. Low. Insistent. Wrong.
I count steps. Focus on terrain. On maintaining distance. On anything except the way my body keeps trying to turn around. Keeps wanting to close the space between us.
Thirty minutes pass. Maybe forty.
The heat doesn’t fade. Just simmers. Constant reminder that my biology has rewritten years of certainty into something I can’t control.
My wolf wants to slow down. Let him catch up. Let him get close enough that—
No.
I walk faster. He matches my pace without comment. Stays exactly twelve feet back. Giving me space I desperately need and somehow making it worse by being thoughtful about it.
An hour passes. The sun climbs behind clouds. Visibility improves. Forest thins as we approach the road. Smoke rises ahead. The convoy site. We stop at the tree line.
Bodies lie where they fell. Frozen. Aurora guards who died protecting a Syndicate defector they probably hated. The transport van is crushed. Lead vehicle overturned. Debris scattered across bloodstained snow.
“Aurora will send teams here,” I say. Breaking the silence before it crushes me. “For recovery. Investigation. It’s our best chance at intercept.”
He doesn’t answer immediately. Just surveys the wreckage with the same cool assessment I’m making.
“How long?” he asks.
“Hours. Maybe a day.”
He nods slowly. “We should approach carefully.”
“I know—”
“I’m not questioning your competence.” His voice stays even. “Just stating the obvious.”
I glance at him. His expression is neutral. Not condescending. Not challenging. Just careful. Like he’s trying not to provoke me. This should feel like control. Like winning.
But it makes me want to snap at him just to get a reaction that isn’t this measured calm. I start forward instead. Push through the tree line toward the wreckage.
“No survivors,” I murmur unnecessarily.
“No,” he agrees, taking in the scene. “Rear vehicle is largely intact.” He pauses. “They had my bag packed there. Can I get it?”
“No.” My response is immediate.
“It’s not a trick. You have my word.” His eyes are on mine. “It has things we may need. Clothing. Provisions.”
“Weapons,” I say flatly.
“No,” he responds. “Aurora wouldn’t allow that,” he adds. Makes sense. “But you can check it if it will make you feel any better.”
“Fine,” I say. “Make it quick.” I jerk my head to the vehicle, then watch as he moves toward it with that same economy of motion he applies to everything.
He’s back in seconds, extending a heavy duffel bag toward me unopened. I reach for it and sling it over my shoulder, still taking in our surroundings.
“It seems too quiet,” I mutter. My hand rests on my rifle. Eyes scanning for threats that should be gone, but—
His hand closes around my arm. The contact burns. Not pain. Something else. Something that floods my system faster than adrenaline and makes my wolf surge so hard I nearly shift.
I spin on him. “Don’t—!”
“Something’s wrong.” His voice drops. Urgent. “We need to move. Now.”
“What are you—?”
The shot cracks across the clearing. Sound reaches me before understanding. Before pain. Just that sharp report every combat veteran knows.
Sniper.
Shit!
Allon tackles me. We go down hard. His body covers mine. Snow explodes around us. More shots in rapid succession. Rock shatters where my head was. He’s heavy. Solid. His chest pressed against my back. Heat radiating through too many layers.
My wolf howls recognition.
What the fuck?
Wrong time. Wrong everything.
“Move!” He’s already pulling me behind the overturned vehicle. We slide into cover. Bullets punch through metal above us.
My shoulder burns. I look down. Blood is spreading across the coat. The sleeve is torn where a round caught me. Clean. Through and through. But bleeding.
“How bad?” His voice is clipped. Professional. Career commander surfacing.
“Fine. Flesh wound,” I play it down.
More shots. Methodical. Someone up there has position and patience.
“Syndicate,” I say.
“Kill team.” He’s scanning the ridge. Calculating. “They knew we’d come back.”
“How many?”
“Two shooters minimum. Maybe more.”
We’re pinned. No comms. No backup. Blood soaking through my sleeve faster than I want to admit. I check my rifle. Eight rounds. Not enough for entrenched snipers with high ground.
“What are our options?” I ask, before realizing what I’m doing. Why should I be deferring to him?
“Limited.” He’s still watching the ridge. “They have position. We’re exposed. Even if we retreat, they can track us.”
“So what do you suggest?”
He looks at me, eyes steady despite bullets tearing through metal.
“Let me help.”
“No.”
“We’re pinned down. You’re wounded. They have every advantage.”
“I can handle—”
Another shot. Rock explodes beside my head. Shrapnel stings my cheek.
“You can’t.” Quiet. Certain. “But I can get us out.”
“How?”
“I can shift.”
I stare at him for a second, not sure that I heard right.
Shift. Dragon. Fire. Everything that makes him dangerous.
Everything that makes him useful.
I calculate rapidly. Wounded. Outgunned. No backup. Two barely armed against at least two trained snipers with position. I have no doubt those weapons are designed for shifters.
The odds are not in our favor. And if he wanted me dead, he’s had chances. The shelter. Last night. This morning, when I walked ahead through the forest. He could have killed me a dozen ways.
He didn’t.
I reach into my pocket. Pull out the cuff key. Our eyes meet.
“If you—” I start.
“I know.”
My hands tremble as I unlock the cuffs. From blood loss or this decision, I don’t know. The runes die. His power floods back. The air changes instantly. Thickens. Heat slams into me—not temperature, but presence. Dragonfire unbanked and surging.
My wolf throws herself against my ribs. Wanting. Desperate. I bite down on the response that wants to escape.
“Get down,” he says.
I do.
He stands. The shift starts before he’s fully upright.
I know I shouldn’t look. I should give him privacy for the transformation. Should do anything except stare as he strips off his jacket and shirt.
I can’t.
Scales ripple over his hands first. They spread over his knuckles, his wrists, up his forearms in overlapping patterns that look like armor forged by something ancient.
The sound is jarring. Not wet or organic. More like stone grinding against stone. Like tectonic plates shifting. Each scale locking into place with a soft click that I feel in my teeth.
His shoulders broaden. Muscle expanding beneath skin that’s no longer skin. His spine curves, elongates. I hear the crack of bone reshaping itself. It should be sickening. Horrifying.
It’s not.
Wings manifest. Massive things that unfold from his shoulder blades like they were always there, just waiting. Membrane stretched over bone. Darkly iridescent. Each movement sends ripples of color—oil-slick purples and greens across black.
His face changes last. Features elongating. Jaw extending. Teeth becoming something made for tearing. But his eyes—those stay the same. Pale gray going to burning white, but somehow still his.
Then the full shift takes him. Man becomes myth.
He’s easily twenty feet of muscle and scale and barely contained violence. Built for destruction. Every line of him screams predator. Apex. Unkillable.
And the scent—
It crashes over me like a wave. Dragon. Pure. Undiluted.
Mine.
The word surfaces, shaking me. My wolf recognizes what I refuse to acknowledge.
My body responds before my mind can stop it.
Heat floods through me. Not the simmering awareness from before.
This is fever. This is need stripped down to biology and instinct and something that doesn’t care about grief or vengeance or hate.
He’s beautiful.