Her smile is fierce, proud, and entirely too attractive for a war council. “I’ll be ready.”

  “You’d better be.” I pull her against me, press a kiss to her temple. “Because if you get yourself killed, I meant what I said about bringing you back to yell at you.”

  “Still romantic.”

  “I try.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  SELENE

  Three days of flying.

  I’ve gotten better at riding Drayke’s dragon form—learned to anticipate his movements, to lean into turns and brace for dives. But three days is a long time to spend clinging to bronze scales while wind tears at your hair and cold seeps into your bones.

  We stop twice to rest, landing in isolated clearings where the dragons can hunt and the five of us can plan. Twelve of our younger dragons fly with us—not the whole Brotherhood, but enough. Trained fighters who’ve proven themselves in smaller skirmishes, eager to face a real battle.

  On the second night, Drayke finds me sitting apart from the others, staring at the fire I’ve conjured to keep warm.

  “You’re worried?”

  I quietly nod.

  His arm wraps around me, pulling me against his side. “You’re not the woman who set my training field on fire because she couldn’t control her emotions. You’ve learned. Grown. Become something extraordinary.”

  “Flattery.” But I lean into him, letting his warmth chase away the cold that has nothing to do with the mountain air. “Will it be enough? Tomorrow, when we face him for real?”

  “You burned a Relic into dormancy while bleeding out on a stone floor.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “Veylor doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know.” His mouth curves against my skin. “I love you too. Even when you scare the hell out of me.”

  “Especially when I scare the hell out of you.”

  “That too.”

  By the third night, the abandoned fortress rises from the mountains—a black scar against the moonlit peaks.

  “He’s inside.” Zyphon’s shadows stretch toward the structure, tasting the darkness within. “Along with his rogues. They know we’re coming.”

  “Let them.” Drayke’s voice is gravel and fire. His dragon prowls just beneath the surface, eager for blood. “Formation alpha. Rurik takes the east wall with six. Auren takes west with six. Zyphon, you’re with me and Selene. We go through the front.”

  “Subtle,” Rurik drawls.

  “Veylor knows we’re here. Subtlety is pointless.” Drayke’s gaze finds mine, burning with protective fury and reluctant pride. “Stay close. Channel your fire. And if anything goes wrong⁠—”

  “Burn my way out. I remember.” I kiss him hard and fast. “Let’s end this.”

  The attack begins.

  TWENTY-THREE

  DRAYKE

  The fortress gates explode inward under combined dragon fire.

  I shift mid-charge, bones cracking, scales erupting, wings tearing free as I launch through the burning debris. Rogues scatter before me—smaller, weaker, terrified. These aren’t warriors. They’re survivors, desperate enough to follow a wounded general into a doomed last stand.

  I tear through them without mercy.

  The fortress courtyard becomes a slaughterhouse. Our twelve young dragons fan out beside me, cutting off escape routes, herding the rogues toward the center where they can be dealt with efficiently. They fight well—better than I expected. Weeks of training paying off in blood and fire.

  Behind me, Zyphon moves through shadows—appearing, killing, vanishing before his targets can scream. His curse makes him deadly in darkness, and this fortress has plenty of it. Rogues fall in pools of their own blood, throats opened by claws they never saw coming.

  From the east wall, I hear Rurik’s battle roar—wild, joyous, the sound of a dragon in his element. From the west, Auren’s coordinated strikes cut through the rogue defenses with surgical precision.

  And Selene—my Fire-Bringer, my mate, my warrior queen—burns through everything that dares approach her.

  Fire erupts from her palms in concentrated bolts, each one striking with lethal precision. She’s not the woman who stumbled into my territory a month ago, scared and stubborn and utterly unprepared. She’s something else now. Something magnificent.

  A rogue launches at her from the shadows. She spins, flames coiling around her like living armor, and the rogue dies screaming.

  Another comes from behind—larger, faster, claws extended for her throat. I roar a warning, already moving, but she doesn’t need me. Fire explodes outward in a defensive ring, incinerating the attacker before he can touch her.

  She catches my eye across the burning courtyard and grins.

  Pride roars through my chest. Possessive, fierce, overwhelming.

  MATE FIGHTS WELL. The dragon’s approval rumbles through my mind. MATE BURNS BRIGHT.

  Yes. She does.

  “Drayke!” Zyphon’s voice cuts through the chaos. “The great hall! Veylor’s making his stand!”

  I shift back to human form, grab Selene’s hand, and we run.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SELENE

  The great hall is a tomb.

  Centuries of dust coat every surface. Broken furniture lies scattered across the stone floor. Moonlight streams through shattered windows, casting pale beams across the destruction. And at the far end, standing before a crumbling throne, Veylor waits.

  He looks worse than I remember. The wing I’d watched Zyphon’s shadows tear is still missing, the wound scarred over but clearly not healed. Burns cover half his face—marks from our battle at his fortress—and his eyes have the wild, desperate gleam of a cornered animal.

  “Guardian King.” His voice is a rasp, broken and bitter. “Come to finish what you started?”

  “You started this.” Drayke’s hand releases mine, and he steps forward, dragon fire crackling beneath his skin. “When you attacked my territory. When you tried to take my mate. When you spilled her blood for your relic.”

  “Your mate.” Veylor’s laugh is ugly, broken. “The Fire-Bringer who should have been my weapon. Do you know how long I searched for her bloodline? How many years I spent tracking the Ward family, waiting for the power to manifest?”

  Cold slides down my spine. “You knew about me. Before I even knew what I was.”

  “I knew about your grandmother. Watched her die, actually.” His smile is poison. “She was too old to be useful, but I made sure she knew—before the end—that her granddaughter would serve my purposes eventually.”

  Fire explodes from my hands before I can think, before I can breathe. Grief and rage and power pour out of me in a torrent of flame that turns the air to glass.

  Veylor barely dodges, shifting into his damaged dragon form. Even wounded, he’s fast. Even dying, he’s dangerous.

  But not dangerous enough.

  Drayke shifts, bronze scales erupting, and the two dragons clash in a storm of fire and fury. Claws rake across scales. Teeth snap at throats. They crash through pillars and walls, destruction raining down around them.

  I don’t stand idle. Every time Veylor tries to break away, I’m there with fire—cutting off escape routes, forcing him back toward Drayke. We fight as a unit now, mate and Fire-Bringer, our movements synchronized without words.

  Veylor screams in frustration, lashing out with poisoned claws that scrape across Drayke’s shoulder. Blood steams in the air, and my heart lurches—but Drayke doesn’t slow. Doesn’t falter. Just roars with renewed fury and drives Veylor back.

  “You can’t win!” Veylor’s voice is half-roar, half-shriek. “Kill me and another will take my place! The Relics will wake! The Fire-Bringers will burn! Everything you love will⁠—”

  My fire takes him in the side, cutting off his rant. Not enough to kill—but enough to make him stumble.

  “You talk too much,” I say.

  Veylor is desperate—fighting with the savage intensity of a creature that knows it’s going to die. But Drayke is stronger. Faster. Fueled by centuries of discipline and weeks of rage that’s been building since the moment Veylor touched me.

  Zyphon’s shadows snake across the floor, binding Veylor’s remaining wing. The one-winged dragon screams, thrashing against the darkness, and Drayke strikes.

  His jaws close around Veylor’s throat.

  One savage twist.

  The crack of bones echoes through the great hall.

  Veylor’s body goes limp. Drayke releases him, lets the corpse crumple to the stone floor, and shifts back to human form. Blood covers his chest—Veylor’s, not his own—and his eyes still burn with dragon fire.

  For a long moment, no one moves. The only sound is our breathing and the distant crackle of flames.

  “It’s done.” His voice is rough, raw. “He’s dead.”

  I cross the distance between us and throw my arms around him, not caring about the blood or the destruction or the corpse cooling behind us. He’s alive. We’re alive. The bastard who tried to use me as a weapon is finally, irrevocably dead.

  “It’s over,” I whisper against his chest.

  His arms tighten around me. “This battle is over. The war is just beginning.”

  “I know.” I pull back enough to look at him—my dragon, my mate, my partner in everything. “But we’ll face it. Like we face everything.”

  “Together.”

  “Damn right.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  DRAYKE

  “Guardian King.”

  Rurik’s voice comes from the doorway, and something in his tone makes me release Selene, turn to face him.

  His usual humor is gone. His face is pale, jaw tight, eyes dark with an emotion I can’t name.

  “You need to see this.”

  Selene and I follow him through the ruined fortress, past the bodies of rogues and the still-burning debris of our assault. Down a corridor. Down a flight of stairs. Into the darkness beneath the great hall.

  The dungeons.

  The smell hits me first—blood and fear and something darker. The kind of despair that seeps into stone walls and never comes out. Cells line both sides of a narrow passage, most of them empty but showing signs of recent occupation. Shackles. Stains. Evidence of horrors I don’t want to imagine.

  But at the end, where the darkness is thickest, torchlight flickers against iron bars.

  “We found her when we cleared the lower levels,” Rurik says quietly. His voice is strange—rough, uncertain, nothing like his usual cocky drawl. “She’s alive. Barely.”

  Her.

  Selene pushes past me, fire blooming in her palm to light the cell. And then she goes still.

  A woman lies on the stone floor—young, maybe mid-twenties, with wild red hair matted with blood and dirt. Even unconscious, even battered, there’s something striking about her. Sharp features. Pale skin marred with fresh cuts that seep crimson. Her wrists are bound with the same magic-suppressing manacles Veylor used on Selene, the metal leaving angry red welts where it meets skin.

  Fire-Bringer blood.

  They’d been harvesting her. Draining her the way they’d tried to drain Selene.

  “She’s a Fire-Bringer.” Selene’s voice is barely a whisper. “Like me.”

  I tear the cell door off its hinges. Kneel beside the woman, check for pulse—weak, but present. She’s alive. Damaged, traumatized, but alive.

  Behind me, Rurik makes a sound—low, pained, almost inhuman. When I glance back, he’s staring at the woman with an expression I’ve never seen on his face. Raw. Open. Shattered.

  Her eyes flutter open. Green, bright as spring leaves, clouded with pain and confusion. She looks at me—at Selene—at the fire dancing in my mate’s palm. And then her gaze drifts past us, landing on Rurik.

  She freezes.

  He freezes.

  And I scent it—the sudden spike of something in the air. Something primal. Something ancient. The same thing I scented the first time I saw Selene.

  Mate.

  “Who...” Her voice cracks. “Who are you?”

  “Friends.” Selene kneels beside me, her fire dimming to a gentle glow. “We’re going to get you out of here. Get you somewhere safe.”

  “Safe.” The woman laughs—a broken, hollow sound that makes Rurik flinch. “There’s no safe. Not anymore. They told me... they told me more were coming. That I was just the first.”

  Ice slides down my spine. “The first of what?”

  “Fire-Bringers.” Her eyes drift closed, exhaustion pulling her under. “They’re hunting us. All of us. To wake... to wake the Relics...”

  She goes limp. Unconscious, not dead—I can hear her heartbeat, feel the warmth of life still clinging to her battered body.

  But her words echo through the dungeon, through my mind, through every plan we’ve made.

  Veylor wasn’t the commander. He was a tool. A servant.

  And the real enemy is still out there.

  TWENTY-SIX

  SELENE

  We carry her out of the fortress—the nameless Fire-Bringer with red hair and green eyes and a story we don’t yet know. Rurik volunteers to fly her back himself, cradling her unconscious form against his chest with a gentleness I’ve never seen from him.

  “Get her to Auren,” Drayke orders. “Have our healers ready. She’ll need blood replenishment, wound care, someone to watch her through the night.”

  “I’ll stay with her.” The words are out of Rurik’s mouth before anyone can suggest otherwise. His jaw is set, eyes blazing with an intensity I don’t understand. “She shouldn’t wake up alone. Not after what she’s been through.”

  I watch him stare at the woman in his arms—watch his thumb trace her cheekbone with impossible tenderness—and understanding crashes over me.

  “Rurik.” Drayke’s voice is quiet. “Is she...”

  “I don’t know.” Rurik doesn’t look up. Can’t seem to tear his eyes away from her face. “Maybe. I need to find out.”

  Zyphon’s shadows ripple. Drayke exchanges a look with his brother—something passing between them that speaks of centuries of brotherhood, of understanding that goes beyond words.

  “Go,” Drayke says finally. “We’ll follow after we’ve secured the fortress.”

  Rurik shifts, the unconscious woman held carefully in his dragon’s massive claws, and launches into the night sky. I watch him go—a streak of red-gold against the stars, flying faster than I’ve ever seen him fly—and the realization settles into my bones.

  The reckless, joking, impossible Rurik might have just found his mate.

  “Drayke.” I turn to my mate, my dragon, the man who just killed the monster that haunted both our nightmares. “What was that?”

  “The beginning of something.” His arm wraps around my waist, pulling me against his side. “Or maybe just the first chapter.”

  He presses a kiss to my hair. “Rurik will figure it out. He always does. Just... not always in the way anyone expects.”

  Above us, the stars wheel in their ancient patterns. Somewhere out there, enemies are gathering. Fire-Bringers are being hunted. Relics are waiting to be woken.

  But right now, in this moment, Veylor is dead. Our people are safe. And a woman with fire in her blood is flying toward the Brotherhood, toward a future none of us can predict—toward a dragon who might have just found his other half.

  I lean into Drayke’s warmth and let the relief wash over me.

  We won this battle.

  The war is just beginning.

  But whatever comes next—whatever enemies rise, whatever Relics threaten, whatever Fire-Bringers need saving—we’ll face it the way we’ve faced everything else.

  With fire. With fury. With a love that burns brighter than any ancient artifact.

  And maybe—just maybe—with another mate bond waiting to ignite.

  Bring it on.

  TO BE CONTINUED

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

  Hi! I’m Milly Taiden. I love to write sexy stories featuring fun, sassy heroines with curves and growly alpha males with fur. My books are a great way to satisfy your craving for paranormal romance with action, humor, suspense and happily ever afters.

  I live in Florida with my hubby, our son, and our fur babies: Stormy and Teddy. I have a serious addiction to chocolate and cake.

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