Fire meets fire.

  My power rises to meet his heat, and where our skin connects, sparks dance. Literal sparks—tiny pinpricks of light that flare and fade with every caress. My breath catches. His does too.

  “What—”

  “Fire-Bringer.” His voice is barely recognizable—deeper, rougher, edged with dragon. “Your power recognizes mine. Calls to it.”

  “Is that dangerous?”

  “Everything about this is dangerous.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. The glow in his is brighter—not frightening, but beautiful. Otherworldly. “We can still stop. I can still⁠—”

  I grab the front of his shirt and yank. Buttons scatter across the floor.

  “Does that answer your question?”

  His eyes flare brighter. His hands tighten on my hips. “Selene⁠—”

  “No more talking.” I run my hands over his bare chest, feeling the muscles jump beneath my palms, the furnace heat of his skin. “No more stopping. I want you, Drayke. All of you. Right now.”

  He shudders. Actually shudders under my touch. Four hundred years of control, of restraint, of holding himself apart—and I’m the one making him shake.

  The power is intoxicating.

  I push his ruined shirt off his shoulders. Lean in and drag my tongue along his collarbone. He tastes like salt and smoke, and the sound he makes—low and broken—goes straight to my core.

  “If you stop now,” I murmur against his skin, “I’ll set your clothes on fire.”

  A sound escapes him. Half laugh, half groan. “You probably could.”

  “Don’t test me, Guardian King.” I roll my hips against his, gratified by the sharp intake of breath, the way his fingers dig into my thighs, the unmistakable hardness pressing against me. “Take me to bed. Or I swear to every god you’ve ever worshipped, I’ll take you right here against this wall.”

  His eyes go molten. His grip shifts, hitching me higher, and his mouth finds my ear. “You want to give orders, Fire-Bringer?” The words are a rumble that vibrates through my whole body. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  He carries me to the bedroom like I weigh nothing.

  The bedroom is dark except for the moonlight streaming through the window.

  He sets me on the edge of the bed and steps back, chest heaving, eyes glowing. I can see him fighting for control. Trying to slow down. Be careful.

  I don’t want careful.

  I grab his belt and yank him toward me. His hands catch himself on either side of my head as he stumbles forward, and I use the distraction to work the buckle free.

  “Impatient.” His voice is gravel and smoke.

  “You have no idea.” The belt comes loose. I shove his pants down, and he kicks them away while I yank my shirt over my head. No bra—I hadn’t bothered. His sharp intake of breath makes my nipples tighten.

  “Fuck, Selene.” His voice cracks. His hands hover near my breasts, not quite touching. Still holding back.

  I grab his wrists and press his palms against my chest.

  “Stop being noble and touch me.”

  He cups my breasts, rough and possessive, thumbs dragging over my nipples until I gasp. The dragon heat of his palms is almost too much—burning in a way that makes me arch into his hands rather than pull away.

  “More,” I demand. “I need more.”

  He pushes me back onto the mattress and follows me down. His mouth replaces his hands—tongue circling one nipple, teeth grazing, sucking hard enough to make me cry out. I fist my hands in his hair and hold him there while his fingers work the other breast.

  “Pants,” I manage between gasps. “Off. Now.”

  He strips me with rough efficiency—hooking his fingers in the waistband and dragging the fabric down my legs. His boxers follow. Then we’re both naked and he’s kneeling between my thighs, looking at me spread open beneath him with eyes that burn.

  “You’re sure.” Not a question. A last chance.

  I reach down and wrap my hand around his cock. He’s thick and hard and as hot as a brand, and the groan that tears from him—raw and desperate—sends a rush of wetness between my thighs.

  “Does that feel like I’m not sure?”

  “Fuck.” His hips jerk into my grip. I stroke him once, twice, feeling him pulse in my hand, watching his face go slack with pleasure. Then he catches my wrist and pins it above my head. “Keep that up and I’ll come before I’m inside you.”

  “Then get inside me.”

  He reaches between us, fingers sliding through my wetness, and the sound he makes is pure male satisfaction. “So fucking ready for me.”

  “I’ve been ready since the moment I saw you.” I hook my leg around his hip, pull him closer. “Now stop teasing and fuck me, Drayke.”

  He notches himself at my entrance. Pauses. Meets my eyes.

  “Mine.” The word comes out rough. Possessive. A claim.

  “Yours.”

  He drives into me with one hard thrust.

  I shatter. Not an orgasm—not yet—but the feeling of being filled, stretched, claimed. My back arches off the bed. My nails score down his back. His name tears from my throat, broken and desperate.

  “Selene.” He’s trembling, buried to the hilt, giving me a moment to adjust. “Fuck, you feel⁠—”

  “Move.” I clench around him, gratified by his sharp inhale. “Now.”

  He moves.

  Not gentle. Not careful. He fucks me like he’s been starving for this—hard, deep strokes that hit something electric inside me with every thrust. The bed slams against the wall. The sparks between us build and flare, lighting up the room in bursts of gold and white.

  I match his rhythm, rising to meet him, nails raking his back, teeth finding his shoulder. He groans into my neck, one hand fisting in my hair, the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave marks I’ll wear proudly tomorrow.

  “Harder,” I gasp. “Please⁠—”

  He hitches my leg higher, changes the angle, and I scream. The pleasure is blinding—white-hot and relentless, building with every snap of his hips. His forehead presses to mine, his breath ragged, his eyes locked on mine.

  No hiding. No walls. Just this.

  “Selene.” My name like a prayer. “I⁠—”

  “I know.” I pull him down and kiss him, messy and desperate, tasting my own moans on his tongue. “I know.”

  He drives into me harder, faster, chasing the peak with me. The pleasure coils tighter with every thrust, every drag of his cock inside me. His palm presses flat over my heart, heat radiating from it, and somewhere in the haze, I register that he’s holding back—some essential part of himself still leashed.

  But I’m too far gone to care. Too lost in the sensation of him filling me, the obscene slap of skin on skin, the way he groans my name like it’s being ripped from his chest.

  “Come for me,” he growls against my ear. “Let me feel you.”

  I shatter.

  The orgasm tears through me, whiting out my vision, clenching around him in waves. His name rips from my throat as my fire flares bright enough to illuminate the room. He follows a moment later with a broken roar, pulsing inside me, his whole body shuddering as he comes.

  For a long moment, we just breathe. Tangled together, hearts pounding, the sparks fading slowly from our sweat-slicked skin. His weight presses me into the mattress, and I don’t want him to move. Don’t want this moment to end.

  But even as the pleasure recedes, even as my breathing starts to even out, I feel his tension returning. The walls rebuilding, brick by brick.

  He rolls to the side, taking me with him, and I curl against his chest. His heartbeat is thunder beneath my ear. His skin is still furnace-hot, slicked with sweat. One arm wraps around me, holding me close, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my spine.

  For a moment, everything is perfect. The afterglow. The quiet. The feeling of being held by someone who sees all of me—the fire and the stubbornness and the fear—and wants me anyway.

  The sex was incredible. Earth-shattering. The kind of experience that ruins you for anyone else.

  But there’s an ache beneath the satisfaction. A hollow space where more should be.

  I press my palm over my heart. The skin is warm from where his hand rested, but there’s no mark. No lasting heat.

  “That wasn’t everything.” I don’t phrase it as a question.

  He tenses beneath me.

  “It’s all I can give you.”

  I push myself up on one elbow, looking down at him. His face is carefully blank—that stoic mask I’m learning to hate.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Selene—”

  “Don’t.” I press my finger to his lips. “Don’t lie to me. Not after this. You held back. I felt it. Your hand on my heart—you were going to do it, weren’t you? The claiming. And you stopped yourself.”

  His jaw works. His eyes won’t meet mine.

  “The claiming fire could kill you.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

  “Maybe it should be my risk to take.” I sit up fully, the sheet pooling around my waist. “You just lit me up, Drayke. Set fire to every nerve ending in my body. And then you held back the one thing that would actually mean something permanent.”

  “What we just did meant something.”

  “Did it? Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like you gave me your body but kept everything else locked away.” The words are harsher than I intend, but I don’t take them back. “You lit me up and left me burning. Don’t pretend that was nothing—but don’t pretend it was everything either.”

  He flinches. Actually flinches, like I’ve struck him.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “None of this is fair.” I keep my voice steady even though my heart is cracking. “Rogues hunting me isn’t fair. Prophecies aren’t fair. Falling for a man who’s too afraid to love me back isn’t fair. But here we are.”

  He sits up. Swings his legs over the side of the bed. I watch his back—the tense line of his shoulders, the way his hands grip the edge of the mattress.

  “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  “And I’m trying to actually live.” I reach for him. He pulls away before I can touch him. “Drayke⁠—”

  “I can’t.” He stands. Starts gathering his clothes. His movements are jerky. Wrong. “I can’t give you that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  “So that’s it? We share this—” I gesture at the rumpled bed, at our discarded clothes, at the air still thick with the scent of sex and smoke. “—and you just walk away?”

  “I’m not walking away.” He pulls on his shirt. Buttons it with fingers that aren’t quite steady. “I’m protecting you. From me. From what I could do if I stopped fighting this.”

  “I’m not made of glass, Drayke.”

  “No.” He turns to face me, and the pain in his eyes nearly breaks me. “You’re made of fire. And so am I. And when fire meets fire, it doesn’t always create warmth. Sometimes it creates destruction.”

  He’s out the door before I can respond.

  I stare at the empty doorway for a long moment.

  My body is still humming with aftershocks. My skin still tingles where he touched me. The sheets smell like him—woodsmoke and pine and that indefinable essence that’s purely Drayke.

  I should be angry. Should be furious that he walked out after what we just shared. But the only thing I can muster is a bone-deep exhaustion and a stubborn determination that surprises even me.

  I wrap the sheet around myself and move to the window. The moon is full tonight, washing the forest in pale light. Somewhere out there, he’s running. Fighting his own demons. Convincing himself that leaving me alone and unsatisfied is somehow noble.

  Idiot. The thought is almost fond. Beautiful, infuriating, self-sacrificing idiot.

  The fire in my blood is quieter now—satisfied, at least partially. But that hollow ache remains. That sense of incompleteness that no amount of physical pleasure can fill.

  He held back the claiming. Pressed his palm to my heart and stopped himself at the last moment, choosing fear over faith.

  I understand why. Centuries of guilt have convinced him that his touch is lethal, that loving him means burning. He carries that death with him everywhere—a wound that never healed.

  But I’m not her.

  I’m not fragile. I’m not unprepared. I’m a woman who’s survived poison and prophecy and the slow, agonizing fall into loving someone who refuses to be loved.

  I touch the spot over my heart. The skin still hums with residual heat from his hand. Still waiting for the fire he refused to give.

  He believes distance keeps me safe. But safety is an illusion—the rogues have proven that. The prophecy has proven that. Nothing about this situation is safe.

  All we have is this. These moments between battles. These stolen hours of touch and want and hope.

  And he’s wasting them on fear.

  I stand. Pull on my discarded clothes. Move to the hearth, where the fire has burned low.

  With a thought, I bring the flames back to life. They dance higher, brighter, responding to my mood with eager intensity.

  My power grows every day, responds to threats and emotions with increasing strength. Maybe he’s right to be afraid.

  Maybe the claiming would consume me the way it consumed the one before.

  Or maybe—just maybe—I’m the one who can finally survive his fire.

  I curl up on the couch, watching the flames dance. In the morning, we’ll train. We’ll pretend tonight didn’t change everything. He’ll try to put the walls back up and I’ll keep finding ways to tear them down.

  Because I’ve tasted him now. Felt his hands on my skin. Heard my name torn from his lips in the darkness. And no amount of noble self-sacrifice is going to make me forget.

  He thinks walking away protects me. Thinks that holding back the claiming keeps me safe.

  He’s wrong.

  Because here’s the thing about fire: it doesn’t stay contained. It spreads. It grows. It consumes everything in its path until nothing is left but ash and possibility.

  We’ve already started burning.

  There’s no putting this fire out now.

  ELEVEN

  SELENE

  The smell hits me before I hear it. A hard thump on the porch, rattling the door.

  Copper and decay, thick enough to coat the back of my throat. I’m halfway through my morning coffee when Drayke goes rigid beside me, nostrils flaring, eyes snapping to the front door.

  He returned when the sun came up. He should’ve just stayed gone. We’ve been dancing around each other all morning—careful touches, loaded glances, neither of us quite ready to address what happened last night. The tension between us is a living thing, humming with unfinished business.

  But the smell cuts through all of that.

  “Stay here.”

  “Like hell.” I’m already moving, following him onto the porch before he can stop me.

  The deer lies on the porch. Eviscerated. Entrails dangling in wet ropes, blood pooling on the weathered wood beneath it.

  But that’s not the worst part.

  Carved into the hide, burned black around the edges like someone used a blowtorch: MATE.

  Drayke’s whole body vibrates with barely contained fury. His eyes glow bright, pupils elongating, and when he speaks, his voice carries an inhuman resonance that makes my teeth ache.

  “They were here. On my territory. At my door.” Each word drops like a stone into still water.

  I study the carcass with clinical detachment. EMT training taught me to compartmentalize gore—you don’t pass those courses by falling apart at the sight of blood. “Well. That’s not ominous at all.”

  He rounds on me. “This isn’t funny.”

  “No, it’s not.” I meet his blazing gaze steadily. “It’s a threat. A very graphic, very obvious threat designed to scare us. And if I don’t joke about it, I’m going to—” I cut myself off.

  His jaw clenches. He heard what I didn’t say.

  “I’ll dispose of it.” He reaches for the rope.

  “I’ll clean up.”

  “You don’t have to⁠—”

  “I’m not running, Drayke.” I grab a bucket from the corner, fill it from the rain barrel. “Don’t even ask.”

  We work in grim silence. He gathers the carcass, carries it into the forest to burn. I scrub blood from the porch boards with steady hands and a stomach that refuses to turn. By the time the wood is clean, my arms ache and my knees are sore from kneeling.

  But the MATE carved into flesh stays burned into my memory.

  The deer is just the beginning.

  Mid-morning, Drayke finds burned symbols on the trees ringing the cabin. Crude runes I don’t recognize, scorched into bark at dragon-eye height. His face goes carefully blank when he sees them, which tells me everything I need to know about how bad they are.

  “What do they say?”

  “Threats. Warnings.” He won’t meet my eyes. “Descriptions of what they’ll do when they take you.”

  My stomach twists, but I keep my voice steady. “Charming. Do they offer a timeline, or is it more of a vague ‘coming soon’ situation?”

  “Selene.” His voice is rough. Strained.

  “What? You want me to panic? Fall apart?” I cross my arms, hiding the tremor in my hands. “That’s what they want. I won’t give it to them.”

  He stares at me for a long moment. Then something in his expression shifts—respect, maybe. Or resignation.

  “Stay close to the cabin today.”

  “Already planned on it, Ranger Rick.”

  By noon, the wind carries whispers. My name, hissed from directions I can’t pinpoint. Seeeelene. Fire-Bringerrr. Every time I turn toward the sound, there’s nothing but rustling leaves and shadows that move wrong.

  The shadows are the worst part. They slide between trees when I’m not looking directly at them, freezing in place when I turn my head. Like they’re playing a game. Testing my reactions.