19. Jalen
JALEN
Morning sun is in the room, and I run a fast inventory before I move one muscle. For the first time in a week, my nose doesn’t itch. There’s no burn at the root of it and no smoke waiting behind my eyes. Shelly’s tea gets some of the credit. I have a theory about the rest.
Zuri is knocked out cold on my chest, and she’s snoring. It’s not a cute sound. She snores like she means it, deep and steady against me, and I lie still so it keeps going. I’d burn the world down to hear this sound every morning for the rest of my life.
She scared me last night. She went out like a blown lamp with my name still half-finished in her mouth, and I spent the first stretch of the dark listening to her heartbeat and rehearsing what I’d say to Dr. Ayanna if it stuttered.
It never did. She slid from passed-out into plain sleep somewhere in the small hours, and only then did I let my own eyes close.
The bite on my neck sits warm where she left it. I can’t quit touching it. Out of everything in my hoard, it’s the finest thing I own.
And her scent has changed. The burnt caramel is still all hers, but there’s smoke braided through it now, and the smoke is mine. She smells like the two of us. I keep pulling it in.
She stirs against me, and I smile at my ceiling. She has no idea what she gave me last night. Dragons wait whole lifetimes for what she did on night one, and half of us never get it. I plan to spend the rest of her life making sure I never take it for granted.
I put a gentle hand on her back and rub slow circles into it.
My dragon is beside himself with joy. He has also already moved on to the next order of business. He wants us planning for hatchlings.
I roll my eyes at that, because of course he does. My dragon can’t just lie here and enjoy the woman. He wants her pregnant by lunch.
What I’m not ready for is the size of my own joy, and it’s not even breakfast.
Her snores taper off. She shifts against me, and her eyes finally come open. She lifts her head off my chest to look at me, and I watch last night arrive in her face by degrees.
My blood has dried on her, a dark stain across her lips and down her chin. Her hair has gone every direction there is, and it’s a beautiful wild. She has never looked better to me, and I’m counting the day I met her.
“Hi, baby,” I say.
She gives me a sleepy smile. Then the rest of last night catches up to her, and her eyes go wide.
I knew this was coming. She’s human, and no one ever taught her what the mate bond is. I just hoped for a little more of the snoring first.
She sits up in a rush, rubbing at her face, and her hand comes away with flakes of dried blood on it. Then she sees the smear of it across my sheets, and her scent goes sharp with panic.
I sit up with her. “It’s okay, baby. Calm down.”
She looks at my neck, right where her bite healed over in the night, raised and catching the morning light. “I bit you.”
“It’s perfect,” I tell her, and I mean every letter of it. “I’m thinking about getting my collars cut lower.”
Her hands have started shaking, so I drop the joke. I reach to pull her into my arms and catch a fistful of air. She’s off the bed and across my room, naked and quick, gone into the bathroom on bare feet.
I count her footsteps to the sink.
Then she screams.
I groan and climb out of bed to go handle it. She found the mirror.
She’s standing at the sink with both hands over her mouth when I get there, looking at a horror movie that’s actually a wedding. I don’t start with words. I pull towels and washcloths down and set them on the counter, and I lean into the shower and turn the water on hot.
When the steam rises, I peel one of her hands away from her mouth and pull her into the shower with me. She comes without a fight. I turn her back against me under the spray and wrap both arms around her.
“It’s okay, Zuri baby,” I say into her wet hair. “You didn’t hurt me.”
She turns her head up to look at me. Her shaking eases off under the water. It takes time, and I hold her through every bit of it. I’d stand here until the mountain runs out of hot water, and knowing Malachi’s plumbing, that’s never.
“I swear you didn’t,” I tell her. “What you did was a blessing. Ask any dragon in this valley what that mark is worth.”
She turns to face me. “I couldn’t control it. I... I...”
I chuckle and wet one of the washcloths. I start cleaning the dried blood from her face, her lips first, then her chin.
I keep the washcloth moving. “That’s right, baby. Let me.”
She closes her eyes and leans back into my hands, and I move her another step under the spray. The water drenches her hair.
I slide my fingers into it and work them through her curls so the water gets all the way in. She used to keep this pinned away from the whole world. Now my hands are in it, and she hasn’t stopped me.
She opens her eyes and finds mine through the steam.
“You’re in good hands, baby,” I tell her. “I’m here. I’m gonna take care of you.”
I saw it when the cloth came away, and I’ve been waiting for her to catch up. There’s clean brown skin where the bruise sat yesterday, and no swelling left anywhere under it.
She goes still under my hands. Then she puts her palm to her cheek, the sore one, and presses. She pushes harder. Nothing hurts her.
She looks up at me again, and this time there’s no panic in her eyes. There’s a question.
I reach up and stroke her cheek while the water runs down her face. “All gone,” I tell her. “The mate bond makes you heal faster. You’ll get sick less, too.”
“Ahhh. Yes. This is what everyone was going on about.” She presses at her cheek again, still hunting for an ache that isn’t there. “But this fast?”
I answer by turning around and showing her my back.
Her fingertips move across my skin, searching, and her scent goes soft with wonder behind me. “The bullet wounds. It’s all gone.”
“Yes.” I turn back to face her. “Human bullets don’t work on me.”
“But...” Her hands press flat against me, and she searches my face for the rest of her own question.
I cup her cheek and tilt her face up until her eyes meet mine.
“But you’ve been sick since I met you,” she says.
I’m the dragon who knows everything in this valley. Being the thing that’s wrong in it is new.
“Yes,” I tell her. “And that’s abnormal. I’m having a reaction to Delilah’s magic.”
“Ohhh,” she says.
Then I watch it stack up in her piece by piece: Delilah, the sneezes, me sick for a week straight. The worry in her scent goes hot at the edges. My mate is angry on my behalf. No one has ever been angry for me before.
“Let me take care of you, and I’ll explain the rest,” I say.
Then I make a choice Soren would frown at from all seven feet up. The males of this valley keep the fight away from their women. But my woman walked into Stillwater every day for a year and walked out with the folder that started all of this. She was in this fight before I was.
“In fact, I know how to put a stop to all of it. To her.” I hold her eyes. “But I’m gonna need your help to do it.”
Her fingers trail down my front. Then she looks lower, right at my dick, and it stiffens under her attention immediately.
I spread my arms. “We can go again if you want. I’m always down for it.”
She looks up at me. “No. We’ll never get out of bed.”
“That’s fine. When it’s all done, we won’t get out of bed for a long time then.” I wink at her.
Her scent has gone warm and thick under the water, and I know exactly what that means now. Last night is playing through me on a loop I have no plans to cancel. Getting kidnapped is the least of this woman’s worries. My dragon is ready to burn whole zip codes over her.
Then, under all that warm, a thin thread of mischief curls into her scent, and she looks at me sideways with half a smile she thinks I can’t read.
I can. Yesterday I told her I’d always bend when it comes to her, and she promised she’d think of a way to test it.
Whatever she’s got cooking behind that smile, I can hardly wait.
We finish up slow. I wash her hair myself, working the shampoo in with both hands, and she tilts her head all the way back into my hands and closes her eyes. No one has ever taken proper care of this woman. That ends on my watch.
I keep quiet while I work, but my dragon is pacing again.
She claimed us first. He wants to answer it, wants his teeth in the curve of her shoulder so the world runs in both directions.
It’s me holding him back. When I mark my mate, I want the moment to be worthy of her, and I’m willing to wait for it.
I condition and rinse her hair. I wash her from her head all the way down to her feet, and then I scrub myself down quick while she finishes. I shut the water off and pull her out, and I wrap her in a towel straight off the rack.
We brush our teeth side by side and lotion up, and there’s nothing worth reporting about any of it.
Then I walk her out and sit her down on the edge of my bed. I go digging in her drawers for fresh underwear and clothes, and I dress my mate with my own hands, one careful piece at a time. She watches my face the whole time, quiet, and her scent stays soft.
I pull on boxers, a shirt, and sweatpants.
Then I sit behind her with the leave-in and her comb. I work it through her curls section by section and comb them smooth. Then I gather everything up into a bun. It’s not sisters-level work, but it holds, and she pats it and approves.
I take her hand and lead her downstairs.
Halfway down, she slows. “Wait. Do you think they heard us last night?”
I laugh. They definitely heard us. Every wall in this mountain is honest. She doesn’t need that confirmed while she’s still holding the rail.
Then I hit the last turn of the stairs and groan out loud.
The whole family is waiting at the bottom, and all four of them are smirking.
Dorian’s grin goes first. He looks at me, then at Zuri, and he frowns while he searches the sides of her neck.
“All that noise,” he says. “Where is her mark?”
Zuri slaps both hands over her face and groans into them. Her mortification rolls off her so thick I could bottle it.