Page 19 of Rook (Dragon Brides #11)

He could sense a mood shift around him, a wavering in the slavers' confidence.

They were criminals and outcasts, but they were still Vemion dragons.

The instinctive response to authority was bred into their bones just as surely as their fire.

Several of them shifted uncomfortably, their flames flickering lower.

It was clear the scarred slaver had the upper hand with his hostage, but Rook was very convincing. The other slavers began to glance between their leader and the dragon lord, uncertainty creeping into their postures.

The scarred slaver felt it too, that erosion of his control. His grip on Sasha tightened, and he moved his fire closer to her face. She tried to jerk her head back, but he had much too tight a hold on her. The flames reflected in her eyes, turning them molten gold.

The slaver threw his head back and laughed, the sound harsh and grating in the smoky air. "Oh, you think you still have power here? You think your bloodline means anything when I'm the one holding the cards?"

"If one of you is going to light me on fire, I'd rather him burn us both!" Sasha spat at the slaver, her voice rough but defiant.

His mate was a vicious thing.

His mate.

The word echoed in his mind with sudden, perfect clarity. She wasn't just some human he was trying to protect. She was his fated partner, the other half of his soul, the one person in all the universe who could touch his fire and remain unharmed.

Oh.

Understanding flooded through him like sunrise after the longest night.

Rook summoned his flame and blasted it straight at the slaver and Sasha.

The fire erupted from his hands in a river of molten heat that engulfed both figures.

The scarred slaver's eyes went wide with shock, then pain, as the flames found every gap in his armor and poured through.

His own fire sputtered and died as he lost concentration, his scream echoing across the camp.

But Sasha stood untouched in the heart of the inferno. The flames parted around her like water around a stone, caressing her skin without leaving so much as a mark. Her hair whipped in the supernatural wind of the fire, but she remained unharmed, protected by forces older than civilization.

The slaver's grip loosened as the flames consumed him, and Sasha pulled free, stumbling away from his collapsing form. He hit the ground hard, his body already beginning to crumble to ash.

Before the rest of the slavers could figure out what was going on, Rook turned on them and let his flame loose.

Confusion rippled through their ranks like a physical thing.

They'd just seen their leader burn while his hostage walked away unscathed.

It violated everything they thought they knew about fire, about dragons, about the natural order.

Some of them took half-hearted steps backward, others raised their hands to summon their own flames, but none of them moved fast enough.

Rook's fire swept through them like a scythe through wheat.

It was chaos for a moment, but only just. The gathered slavers weren't expecting the attack and didn't have time to defend against it.

They'd been focused on their leader's confrontation, watching the drama unfold, when death came calling in a wave of superheated air.

One by one, they fell. Some tried to run, others attempted to fight back with desperate bursts of flame, but Rook's fire was too strong, too precise.

He'd been trained by the best masters in the galaxy, had studied the art of combat since he could walk.

These street thugs and pirates were no match for a dragon lord in full fury.

In just a minute or two, they were all dead.

The camp fell silent except for the crackle of dying flames and the distant hoot of an owl. Smoke drifted between the tents like fog, carrying the acrid smell of melted metal and worse things. Rook stood in the center of it all, his chest heaving, fire still dancing along his fingertips.

Rook turned his back on the slavers' ashes, but Sasha was gone.

Fear struck true for a moment, sharp and cold in his chest. Had he somehow burnt his mate after all? Had the scarred slaver gotten in one lucky shot before the end? The possibility made his blood turn to ice, his dragon roaring in anguish at the thought of losing her.

Then he heard shrill human voices coming from the edge of the camp and followed the sound to where Sasha was speaking with an older woman in the same patient, calming tone one would use with a panicked animal.

"He's a monster!" the older woman yelled, pointing a shaking finger in Rook's direction. "Did you see what he did? Fire! From his hands! That's not natural!"

"He's my boyfriend, Janice, it's cool," his mate was saying, her voice steady and reassuring even as she shot Rook a look that was part exasperation, part something that might have been fondness.

Boyfriend? Humans had such strange ways of saying things. The term seemed inadequate to describe what they were to each other, but he supposed it was better than trying to explain the concept of fated mates to a group of traumatized humans.

Sasha gave him a look that was almost bashful, one shoulder lifting in a small shrug. "This is your mess to clean up, honey bear."

Honey bear? That was even stranger than boyfriend. He made a mental note to ask her about human endearments later, when they weren't surrounded by witnesses and the smoking ruins of a slaver camp.

But cleaning up was simpler than the fight.

Rook had plenty of Earth money stashed on his ship, just in case he needed bribes or cash on hand for his mission.

The humans who had been captured were happy to agree to silence in exchange for his reserves, especially when they saw the thick stacks of bills.

Money, it seemed, was a universal language.

"Did you really give each of them fifty grand in small bills?" Sasha demanded after they'd repurposed the box truck to pick up the money and then drop the humans back near their home with a story about gas leaks and hallucinations that might hold up to casual scrutiny.

"Is that not enough?" The conversions between Vemion gold and Earth dollars wasn't exact, and he'd never been good with the local currency anyway. "It's all I had."

Sasha snorted, a sound that was half laughter, half disbelief. "It's more than any of them make in a year."

He'd have to remember that for future reference. Apparently, his casual spending money was a fortune by human standards. No wonder they'd agreed to keep quiet so readily.

But there was still work to do. The slaver camp needed to be completely destroyed, every trace of alien technology melted down or vaporized.

Their ship would have to be buried or teleported into deep space.

Any evidence that might lead investigators to ask uncomfortable questions had to be eliminated.

It took hours, but finally, the canyon looked like nothing more than a natural clearing. The ship was gone, transported to the heart of a star. The tents and equipment had been reduced to unrecognizable slag. Even the scorch marks from the battle had been carefully obscured.

When it was finished, they sat alone in the box truck in a roadside parking area, watching the sun rise through the windshield.

Sasha leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, and Rook put an arm around her, breathing in the scent of her hair.

She smelled like smoke and pine needles and something uniquely her that made his dragon purr with contentment.

"You gave away all your cash," she said quietly. "So you're leaving?"

The question hung in the air between them, heavy with unspoken implications. She wasn't asking about his mission or his duties as a dragon lord. She was asking about them, about what came next, about whether this was goodbye.

"My job on Earth is done."

He'd come to that planet as a hunter, tracking fugitives who'd escaped Vemion justice. He'd expected to capture or kill them and return home with another successful mission added to his record. He'd never imagined he'd find something far more valuable than justice or duty.

He'd found the other half of his soul, the woman who could walk through his fire and emerge unscathed, the mate he'd never dared to hope for.

But what did that mean for her? She had a life here, a job, friends, a whole world that was familiar and safe. What right did he have to ask her to leave it all behind?

He was her mate.

He had every right.

"Come home with me. To Vemion."