Page 9 of Davoren (Dragon Master Daddies #1)

Easy for her to say. She moved through this impossible Keep with the confidence of two decades' familiarity. I followed her. The mark pulsed with each step, counting down to something I couldn't name but my body already knew.

Water, my tutors had insisted, flowed downward. It sought the lowest point. It certainly didn't cascade upward in spirals that twisted through air before forming pools at different elevations, each one feeding into another through channels that seemed to run sideways and sometimes backward.

But here, in Davoren's domain, water obeyed different masters.

The bathing chamber itself had been carved from—or perhaps grown into—a natural cave formation.

Columns of flowstone rose from floor to invisible ceiling, their surfaces polished to mirror smoothness by centuries of mineral-rich moisture.

Between them, pools of varying sizes created a liquid staircase that my eyes couldn't quite follow.

Steam turned the air opaque, like trying to see through expensive silk, and with it came a scent that made my knees weak for entirely new reasons.

"Dragon's blood orchids," Scarlet supplied, noting my reaction.

She moved through the steam like she'd been born to it, never slipping on the wet stone, never hesitating at which pool to approach.

"Cultivated in the Keep's greenhouse specifically for their healing properties.

Master Davoren maintains the only surviving collection outside the Twilight Reaches. "

Of course he did. Why have normal bathing chambers when you could have impossible water features perfumed with flowers worth more than small kingdoms?

I sank into the lowest pool with a sound that might have been a whimper.

The water was exactly the temperature of fevered skin—hot enough to be therapeutic but not quite enough to hurt.

It accepted my damaged body like an embrace, and I felt my muscles begin to unknot for the first time since I'd fled the caravan.

No, that wasn't quite true. They'd been perfectly relaxed during my involuntary climax on dragonback, hadn't they?

Scarlet arranged bottles along the pool's edge with precision. Each one found its perfect place in a pattern I couldn't decode but recognized as deliberate. This was a woman who found comfort in order, in knowing that everything had its place and purpose. I understood that need intimately.

"How many others has he bonded to?" The question escaped before I could properly phrase it, driven by a need to understand my place in this impossible situation.

Her hands stilled on a bottle of golden oil. The pause stretched long enough that I wondered if I'd committed some grievous breach of protocol. When she finally spoke, her voice carried a weight that made the steam seem thicker.

"None." She turned to face me fully, those eyes holding mine with uncomfortable intensity. "Ever."

The word dropped into the pool like a stone, sending ripples through more than just water. "Ever?"

"Dragons bond once, Lady Lyris." She uncapped the golden oil, and immediately the scent of smoke filled the chamber. "They wait eternally if necessary. When the bond doesn't manifest..." A pause as she poured oil into the water, watching it spread in golden spirals. "They simply continue. Alone."

The word 'alone' echoed off stone and water, carrying more meaning than its single syllable should hold. I thought of the platform where I'd knelt, of the thousands of landings he must have made there. All of them solitary.

"How long?" I whispered.

"How long has he waited?" Scarlet's precision reasserted itself, as if exact numbers could somehow make the incomprehensible manageable. "It is impossible to say. Tens of millenia, at least."

She continued speaking, something about records going back to the fourth century, but her words faded into meaningless sound. Tens of thousands of years. I couldn't grasp it. My mind kept trying to make it smaller, to fit it into a scale I could understand.

My entire life was twenty-two years. My parents' marriage had lasted eighteen before my mother's death. The oldest person I'd ever known was my grandmother, and she'd died at seventy-three.

"He stopped counting after the fourth century," Scarlet was saying when my attention returned. "But I maintain the records. It seemed . . . important. To mark the time, even if he chose not to acknowledge it."

Four centuries of waiting, and then he'd simply stopped counting.

What did that do to a person—no, not a person.

A dragon. An immortal being who measured time in geological shifts rather than seasons.

Had the years blurred together until they became meaningless?

Had he given up hope? Accepted solitude as his permanent state?

And then I'd stumbled into that cave, bleeding and chained, running from one fate directly into another.

"The bond chose you," Scarlet said quietly, as if reading my thoughts. "That means something neither of us fully understands. Dragon magic is older than human civilization. It operates by rules we can observe but not truly comprehend."

The golden oil had turned the water silky, and I found myself running my hands through it just to feel the texture.

Thousands of years of empty beds—did dragons even need beds?

Thousands of years of watching other Dragon Masters find their matches while his mark remained dormant. Thousands of years of—

"I'm twenty-two," I said stupidly.

A sound escaped Scarlet that might have been a laugh if women like her laughed. "Yes. The bond doesn't concern itself with human lifespans or sensibilities. It recognizes what it recognizes."

What must I seem to him? A mayfly, here and gone in what, to him, would feel like moments. Even with the bond's protection, even with whatever extended life it granted, I would be a brief chapter in his existence. A fraction of a fraction of the time he'd already lived.

The mark on my shoulder pulsed, and through it came a sensation that wasn't quite emotion but carried the same weight. Denial. Refusal. A dragon's absolute rejection of the idea that I was temporary.

"I can't comprehend it," I admitted.

"No," Scarlet agreed. "You can't. But you don't need to. The bond operates outside human understanding. Accept that, and the rest becomes . . . simpler."

Simpler. As if anything about this could be simple.

I sank lower in the water until it covered my shoulders, feeling the heat work its way into damaged muscle and torn skin.

The dragon's blood orchids released more perfume into the steam, and I breathed it in, trying to find my balance in this new reality.

Tens of thousands of years.

And now, me.

He materialized through the steam like something conjured from the fevered dreams I'd been trying not to have since our flight.

One moment I was alone with my thoughts and Scarlet's precise movements, the next Davoren stood at the pool's edge, as real and overwhelming as when he'd first appeared in that cave.

His white hair was pulled back now, secured with what looked like a dragon scale carved into a clasp.

The style revealed the sharp architecture of his face—all angles and shadows that belonged on temple carvings, not living flesh.

Those ember eyes tracked my movement as I instinctively sank lower in the water, arms crossing over my breasts, thighs pressing together beneath the golden surface.

"Don't." The word carried that rumbling authority I'd felt on the platform, the one that bypassed thought and went straight to obedience. "Never hide from me, little one. We are bonded. I know your form as I know my own flames."

My arms dropped before I could form the thought to resist. Not magic, exactly—or maybe it was.

The mark pulsed with approval at my compliance, sending warmth cascading through already heated skin.

I wanted to be outraged at the manipulation, at the way he could override my will with a word.

Instead, I felt exposed in ways that had nothing to do with nudity.

His gaze traveled over me with an intensity that should have felt violating.

Instead, it felt like assessment—a general reviewing troops, a merchant cataloguing inventory.

But no, that wasn't quite right either. There was appreciation there, definitely, but tempered with something clinical.

He wasn't looking at my breasts or the curve of my hip beneath the water.

He was looking at the bruise forming on my shoulder, the scratches along my arms, the way I held myself to favor my damaged feet.

"You are mine to protect," he said, moving closer to the pool's edge. Steam curled around him, parting like a curtain. "Mine to tend. Mine to treasure."

The words should have sent me into full rebellion.

Property language, ownership, all the things I'd fled from.

But delivered in that voice, with the mark singing between us, they hit differently.

Not ownership like my father's contracts or Solmar's marriage negotiations.

Something older, deeper, more absolute than mere human possession.

He extended his hand. "Come."

I stared at that offered hand, knowing what would happen when I took it. The flight had taught me that much—skin contact with him was like touching the elements, like mainlining pure sensation. But the command in his voice allowed no refusal, and honestly, my traitorous body didn't want to refuse.

I placed my hand in his and let him draw me from the pool.

The contact hit even harder than expected.

Lightning and honey, fire and need, all crashed through me at once.

My knees buckled, but his grip remained steady, pulling me up onto the stone edge.

Water streamed down my body, and I watched his eyes follow the rivulets with an attention that made my insides liquify.

"Towels," he said without looking away from me.

I wondered if he felt lust like me.