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“Because she is mine!” he roared, his tail coiling around her tighter. She lifted her hands before he could clamp her arms to her sides with it, but she did grimace at how much he was squeezing her now. “I will claim her.”

Valerie paused with her pulse quickening.What does that mean?

“You are not Rurik, Geryon. You cannot have a Witch just because you say so.”

“Just try and stop me.” He let out a ferocious warning growl, snapping his jaws forward. Valerie could tell he lowered his body even more, as if readying himself to fight. “I have made my decision.”

His tail tensed, like he was prepared at any moment to pick her up with it.Is he planning to fight them for me?

That’s when Valerie understood everything.

She covered her mouth to hide the strangled noise that squeezed its way through her lungs.

He wants to claim me... as in make me his mate?Was that why he’d been chasing her so relentlessly? Was that why he wanted to be intimate with her, hoping she would open up to him?

Geryon has chosen me as his female? But why?Why did he want this from her, of all people?

And why did it make her heart pound like a storm in her chest?

Then, she realised she’d been asking someone who wanted to bond with her to take her life.No wonder he has been so against it.No wonder he was here now, trying to stop it.

“She is a Witch who has used dark magic. We cannot accept this bond,” Aneirin said, but he didn’t seem angered. No, he sounded rather disappointed for him, like he knew the law and the ways of their kinds wouldn’t allow it.

There was a ring of agreeance, every Elder confirming they also didn’t approve of them.

I knew they would not approve of Geryon keeping me as a plaything, let alone as his chosen female!

Heat surrounded them both, and even though she was tucked away and unable to see, she knew all four Elders had unleashed fire against them. Geryon’s wing protected her, but he flinched under the sudden heavy assault.

She covered her head. Valerie was torn with what she wanted. She wanted to sit here in Geryon’s protective embrace. Yet she wanted to lift his wing and force the dragonfire to take her so she could be cleansed.

If she hadn’t known the truth about his feelings, she would have escaped him into the fire. Instead, she sat there immobile and utterly speechless for the first time in her life.

“What is it you want?”a male voice, unknown to her, whispered in her small, shielded space of darkness.

It swirled around her, so loud and yet so unimaginably quiet at the same time – like a voice that spoke and the echo that followed.

She tried to figure out where it was coming from as she frantically looked around.

“Do you wish to be with this Dragon?”

“I-I do not know,” she answered truthfully. She didn’t care to ask who it was. Would the invisible force even tell her if she asked? “I care for him, but I do not wish to be without my magic. I fear I will turn if it is released.”

“Is that all that is holding you back, my child?”The voice was coming closer. Still, it was a gentle, gruff voice, and she wondered if anyone else was able to hear it over the crackle of the fire around them.

Now that she knew the truth? “Yes,” she whispered back to the voice.

“Then so be it.”

There was a swirl of energy that began to spiral around her, like it came from within her. She knew it made all within the room pause when the heat and fire dissipated. Then, the energy burst like wind as a great form began to take shape, taller than all the massive creatures standing in the room.

The wind forced Geryon’s wing to lift away from her, but it was hard to make out what she was sitting inside of... until all that strong power settled.

It was like she was sitting inside the belly of a Dragon made from ghostly, fiery essence. It didn’t burn her nor Geryon as it loomed over them.

With long, twirling horns pointing towards the rock ceiling, he was magnificent. A round ball with spikes, like a mace, tipped his tail as it slowly slid back and forth over the ground. One of his wings was torn to the point she imagined it would be difficult to fly, although not impossible.

The great Dragon was protecting both her and Geryon, and she could feel its magic twinkling around them with floating specks of glitter dust.