Chapter 25
Zan and I are quiet as we return to the cottage.
Our cottage.
I suspect we’re both thinking about the same thing.
Which is not the Order and what we’re going to do about them.
But that we have time.
And I think that means different things to us.
“Do you want children?” I ask him abruptly.
Zan looks at me. “Do you?”
He didn’t answer, but I can go first—my answer’s easy, after all.
“I have no idea. Sages don’t have children, because then we might have other priorities besides the Order’s.
I don’t know what childhood or parenting even look like—I never even considered that as an option before I started imagining you doing Kovan’s child’s hair and getting squishy feelings before I really felt like I should be having them.
” Zan’s eyes crinkle with humor. “Have you?”
“I have,” he admits. “But in the way of a nebulous fantasy, not something I expected to be possible in reality.”
Because he knew I was it for him, whoever I might be, and I wasn’t available—not even to know.
“And now?” I ask.
“I think I would,” Zan says carefully. “But only if you wanted children, too. The reality of you with me is more important to me than the possibility of them.”
Okay, wow. Children. Guess I’m going to have to think about that after all.
But: we have time.
“Until I decide,” I say, “Nomi mentioned there are herbs—”
“Ah, those won’t work,” Zan says apologetically. “Dragon magic circumvents herbal contraception.”
I frown. “Oh. I suppose that makes sense, given that dragons in general don’t ask permission to steal children, though that’s kind of horrifying in an additional way.”
“Quite.”
“But—”
“Magical contraception does still work,” Zan adds.
That’s something, but... “Damn it. I never learned how to do that, and that’s... not forms I want to be messing with, without some knowledge. Do you think Jiran would know? We can probably catch up—”
“Dragons only have children on purpose,” Zan says. “If you... trust me, that need not be a concern for us.”
I let out a breath of relief. My trust in him isn’t a question at this point. “Oh, phew. That can be your problem. I love that for me.”
Zan doesn’t laugh as I expect; like my trust is an unbelievable gift he can’t believe I’m granting him by default. “Yora. Why are we talking about this right now?”
Fortunately we have reached the door to the cottage, so I have a brief reprieve from answering as we unlock the door, set down our things—
And then Zan tugs me to him, his tight control of his instincts snapping.
Finally.
“Yora,” he growls.
I wrap my arms around his neck and look him in the eye.
Take a breath.
“Because I want to mate. Today.”
Zan’s eyebrows snap together. “We talked about this. We have time—”
“Exactly.” I tangle my hands in his hair, like I am already tangled in him. “You know that I absolutely don’t have a plan yet for tomorrow.”
“So rather than work on one—”
“I don’t need to think, I need to move.”
“You have many, many katas for that, and not one of them involves my cock.”
I let out a crack of laughter. “None of them are as satisfying as your cock though, I bet.”
“Yora.”
“I want it, Zan.”
Zan closes his eyes as if in pain.
“I mean—yes obviously your cock too, but I meant I want a life with you. I was going to let you get used to the idea, I really was, but you need to believe that I am going to try to stay with you. That I’m going to do whatever I can to stay alive.
And I think...” I swallow. “I think I need to know that from you, too.”
Because if we’re bonded, if one of us goes, so does the other.
That’s why he wants to wait, in part—to not risk me.
And that’s why I don’t want to wait.
I want him to know in his bones that I am in this for the long haul.
I can feel Zan’s tension; his rapid pulse beneath my hands.
Finally he says slowly, “You only agreed to take things slow for my sake?”
“Yeah. I don’t have five hundred years of believing the one person who I wanted would never be available to untangle.”
“No, you have five hundred years of believing no one wanted you, and you shouldn’t have to settle for the first—”
“Settle?” My wrath pulses over my skin, and my hands tighten in his hair.
“You think I am settling for a person who refuses to put others at risk for his own benefit, who has spent literally centuries risking himself for strangers because it was the right thing to do and he could, who has been doing everything in his power to not influence me with it?”
Zan opens his mouth as if to interrupt, but I flare my magic brightly between us to distract him.
I’m not done.
Not even close.
“You think I am settling,” I growl, “for a person who has been my anchor and my light and who I want so badly I have been exploding furniture to bring closer to me? A person who has been supporting me figuratively and literally in everything I can imagine and more that I can’t?
A person who makes me laugh with horrifying puns when I’m doing the scariest thing I can imagine, and cleans the kitchen so I can make more ice cream, and doesn’t flinch when I lash out and steps up to meet me? ”
Zan’s eyes have changed color.
I made them do that.
I lean in so close our noses are touching and whisper, “You think I am settling, for a person who enables me to fly?”
Zan’s mouth crashes to mine.
I open for him, the wave of him crashing over me.
But it’s over almost as quickly as it began, Zan’s breathing hard like he has just run up a mountain.
Running up a mountain didn’t wind him, though.
The person he’s obsessed with seeing him—wanting him—is what he doesn’t know how to contend with.
And he may be trying not to influence me, but I am not so noble.
“You’ve given your home up, over and over,” I tell him. I know my eyes are glowing, because I’m really, really pissed about this. “I want you to keep it. And I want it to be me.”
“You already are, Yora,” Zan whispers. “You don’t need—”
“Zan, I have five hundred years of magical meditation behind me to enable me to process shit extremely goddamn fast,” I snap. “I don’t need more time to be sure that I want this. If you do, that’s—”
“You need to be very careful right now, Yora.”
Something in his voice makes my being still, focusing on him in a different way.
An intonation shift; there’s more growl in it.
More dragon in it.
I meet his eyes, and they’re beginning to glow.
“There is nothing in the world,” Zan says clearly, “not freedom, or vengeance, or anything else, that I want more than to claim you.”
My heart pounds.
Claim me?
That sounds...
“I am fighting my deepest instincts right now, so that you can choose,” Zan growls.
“I am trying to give you space, and distance, because I know that you have been claimed before. It’s unbelievable, but I know you’re not going to tell me to stop being who I am. But if you tell me to make you mine...
“I’m going to, Yora. And I’m not going to stop.”
Maybe this is something the Order taught me, to want to be possessed. Maybe I should unlearn it.
But I don’t want to.
I love how obsessed with me Zan is.
And the difference, I think, is that I want to possess him, too.
I smile at him, and his eyes sharpen.
He knows me. He knows me.
And he knows what kind of smile this is.
A snarl cuts off in his throat as I remove my hands from him, but he lets me do what I want.
Even with his instincts riding him this close, he lets me.
And that is more empowering than he imagines—
But also something I’m going to change.
I drop my hands to my sash—his sash—and untie it.
Zan holds very, very still.
Shoes next, then underwear.
Zan inhales deeply, his fists clenched at his sides, like my scent is even stronger now.
I pull my dress over my head, and I am naked before him.
I haven’t had a chance to get fancy underwear to make my point.
But bare before him, on purpose, knowing what he wants, what I want—I think it’s enough.
“Mate me,” I tell him with a sharp smile, my power washing over me in an aura of magenta. “I fucking dare you.”
Zan’s pupils contract and then vanish entirely.
But he doesn’t move.
My heartbeat picks up.
I thought he would rush me, but I should have known better.
Zan is patient.
Zan is a dragon—a hunter.
Zan is my mate, and he won’t be goaded that easily.
But he takes a step toward me, and it’s like every hair on my body stands at attention.
The force of his attention alone is enough to make warmth begin to pool at my core, naked before him.
A beat later, I realize that all of me is feeling warm, and not from the inside, but the outside—
Then Zan’s clothes literally combust, burning off of him.
Without missing a beat, he continues advancing on me.
This time it’s me who’s struck speechless at the sight of him, because he is so beautiful, and glorious reveling in his power and my core clenches again before Zan reaches me.
He plants his hands on my butt and without a word of communication I wrap my legs around him as he lifts me to him, and our lips meet again at last.
Every kiss between us has been different, and I wonder if that will always be true for us.
This one is full of heat.
This one is full of intent.
Because we’re doing this.
I lower myself down from where I’m holding onto his shoulders just enough to feel the length of his cock against me, letting out a shuddering breath as I tease myself against his flesh.
Zan’s grip around me tightens, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t stop me, hold me back—just moves.
Moves us, walking somewhere—probably to a bed, Yora—
Only when he sets me down, it’s on a hard surface.
I finally blink my eyes open.
Zan reaches around me, and water starts flowing, and it’s only then that I realize that we’re in the bathroom, not the bedroom. He’s set me on the ledge at the edge of the giant bathtub.
“When dragons mate,” Zan tells me, “we fly in the air, and finish crashing into the water.”
Oh.
He’s telling me what he needs.
He’s telling me how to mate him.