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As the smoke vanished, she tipped her head back and gazed into his eyes. The flames showed the sapphire blue that she’d seen the day he held her down on the table in the hall, but for a brief second, at the base was a lighter blue, something softer she couldn’t decipher.

“The same God. Little lure, you are not a weight...a burden. You. Are. My. Mate.” He leaned down in increments as he spoke, placing his face right before hers.

He was so close, she could see the flexing of his pupils, the curls of smoke in his nose as he breathed, the perfect symmetry of his face, and the stone-carved tightness of his strong jawline speckled with an ever-present shadow of dark hair.

The urge to stroke her fingers over his wide jaw until she got to the perfect shape of his mouth.

His top lip was thinner than his lower, and his bottom wasn’t as full as her own but enough that she could take a bite.

The thought jarred her. She would have stepped back if Liekki hadn’t held her hand against him. Instead of running, her mind returned to his words. You are my mate, he’d said. So confident.

“How can you be sure, Liekki? There are so many beautiful and strong Drahkelle among your people. You’d be better choosing any one of—”

His other hand gripped her waist as if he knew she considered fleeing from his words, as he said, “I choose a pair of boots, I choose what I will eat at meals, I choose whether or not to fly north and help with the patrol or to cover the south. But you, my little lure, the beautiful woman who drew my beast out of the sky with a single sighting. You who have started the roaring flame in my core, filled my lungs with smoke, and set my heart beat after beat...are no choice but a part of me.”

“No—” she shook her head and started to deny it, but the word got stuck in the tightness of her throat.

The adamant speech of the big Drahk caused so many emotions to swell inside of her.

She wanted to believe him. Yearned to believe him because she had been fighting her feelings and desire for him since she opened her eyes and watched how he cared for her.

Even with all his gruff manners, he’d still treated her as if she were precious.

I’m his.

“Yes,” he declared as if he’d heard her. “But we can’t remain here.”

Avalore glanced around the empty clearing. However, she knew that just because she couldn’t see the entities or their beasts didn’t mean the shifters weren’t around. “Is it unsafe?”

“Have no fear.” He cupped her face and guided her gaze to his. “It’s safe, but when I have you, I’d prefer it to be in my space...unless you—”

“Your place. Your place is fine.” Not that her body cared where Liekki took her, now that she’d set herself to the realization it would happen.

This shifter’s scent and touch made her body yearn for him, as her walls clenched around the emptiness inside of her and drenched her folds.

A response not foreign to her since she’d spent many nights in his bed dreaming of him taking her.

With that decided, he gave a firm nod before taking her hand in his and walking out of the stoned area of the meeting ground.

Her heartbeat raced as she moved her feet to keep up with his long steps. However, she expected him to lead her back to the path in the forest they had taken. She frowned when he stopped in the clearing away from the stone structure.

“Why are we stopping? We need to get back.”

Liekki chuckled as he let go of her hand. “No worries, lovely. I’m as ready as you smell to lay my body against your lush curves.”

Avalore’s face went flaming hot. She parted her lips to deny her urgency to have sex with him but shut it. It would be a lie. She set her hands on her hips. “I referred to your delay. We are just standing here. Do we need to perform some ritual or something?”

“No ritual. But I don’t have the patience to wait to have you for us to walk the forest,” he growled.

Her brow furrowed deeper. “I could run, but I don’t think I could make it non-stop, especially not to keep up with your long strides.”

“No. We’ll fly. My dragon will carry you.” He took another step back from her.

She was pretty sure he was creating distance so that he could shift to his great beast.

“Wait.” She shuffled forward, closing the gap again. “I don’t know if I’m ready to meet him. What if he eats me or burns me to a crisp?”

“My dragon would gnaw off his own limb before he singed a single hair off your beautiful head.”

“Okay.” She licked her lips, her stomach was trembling. She wanted to believe his words. “How can you be sure? Kai told me it took a long time before Aodh was convinced his dragon accepted her, a human mate. That the Mckenna didn’t want to risk her life.”

“The difference, little lure, is that my beast declared you as mate from the first moment.” Liekki buried his hands in her hair and drew her against him. “The wily fucker has already even begun your claiming.”

“What?” The feel of Liekki’s strong fingers in her hair, stroking along her scalp, caused a frisson of heat to slide down her spine and into her core. It took all her strength to remember his words. “How?”

“The dragon kiss.” His grip tightened, and she was against him, close.

The heat of his breath whispered over her lips, a sizzling heat that pulsed down through her thighs. “I think I’d remember kissing a dragon, Liekki.”

He growled, and the air around her rumbled, causing that pulsing in her thighs to zip upward and zone in on one area, the needy nub, the commander of her sex.

Her clit throbbed.

Liekki’s lips curved in a wicked smile, and he inhaled deeply as if he knew what he was doing to her.

“Do you need a reminder? Should I back you up to one of the stone tables and kiss you again, let you have another taste of my fire, little lure?”

The table. The kiss. She recalled the hot, honeyed sweetness of his kiss, so deliciously intoxicating she’d felt as if she drank in fire that inebriated her. Had that been his dragon in that kiss?

Even as her mind played back the image in the Great Hall, Liekki persisted. He tipped his head to the side, his lips brushing her as he spoke, “I promise if I kiss you, I won’t stop there, and I’ll have you here until the sun rises again.”

Her breath stuttered in her chest. She ached from the top of her head where he still gripped her to the pads of her feet. She wanted to scream for him to take her, for him to spread her out across the stones and bury himself so deep they’d be merged for hours and days.

But sense won out. She was sure that lying on hard stone all night would become more than uncomfortable at some point. “No. Not here.”

After a few beats, Liekki released her and stepped back. “Then I need to shift so my dragon can carry you.”

When he continued to back up, she knew she only had seconds before Liekki felt he had enough distance to shift so that his dragon wouldn’t be on top of her when it appeared. She called out, “Wait.”

She didn’t move closer this time as she halted his shifting.

He arched a brow. “Is this more concern? I told you it will not—”

“No.” She waved a hand before her. “I believe you.”

“Then what?” He folded his big arms over his chest.

“I don’t want to be carried.”

He tipped his head to the side, and his long strands glided over his shoulder. “I won’t fly away while you walk alone, Avalore.”

“I know.”

He held his arms out and frowned. “Then how else do you propose we do this?”

She stepped forward as she lifted her chin high and met his gaze. “I’ll ride.”

Liekki was silent. Too silent.

Everything around them seemed quiet, like it was waiting to see what he’d do next.

“Our dragons don’t take riders. We are not fucking horses,” he growled. His voice was heavy and low, but clear enough that she picked up his words across the distance.

Determined, she continued. “And I’m not some delicate flower you carry home. I won’t do it.”

His hands fisted at his side. “Avalore, your request is ridiculous.”

She arched her brow this time. “Is it? If I were Drahk, I’d fly beside you as your mate. I can’t do that, but I will still have honor and respect.”

“Be reasonable, little lure.” His voice took on a seductive lilt.

The sound made the walls of her sex clench and produce more wetness to make her folds slicker, but she resisted the urge to melt for him and stood her ground. “I suggest you figure this out, big man,” she gave him the same sexiness in kind, then declared, “Or start walking.”

To make her point, she turned and stomped off toward the forest. She prayed she was going in the right direction. All the trees looked the same around the clearing, and with the meeting ground being a circle of columns, she could no longer tell which side they’d entered from.

Liekki roared behind her and spit out words in Drahk that she had no clue of understanding. Birds scattered and small animals scurried through the forest.

She’d only taken five steps before his words stopped her.

“Fine! But you’ll have to figure out how to get your lush, sweet ass up between my horns.”

She rolled her eyes at his words as a satisfying smile spread across her lips. Then she readied herself to say something innovative and sassy about him having sense enough to give in when she turned and was confronted with a massive, royal-Egyptian-blue dragon before her.

The beast was so humongous that it filled her vision. Its mass took up so much of the clearing that she couldn’t see anything behind it.

Her grin dropped, and so did her pulse. She felt light-headed as the large beast lowered its head to her level. It had to turn its smokey snout to the side so that it peered at her with one of its sizeable eyes—golden iris and a black, vertical slit for a pupil.

Oh, shit.

Now she knew what Liekki had meant by his horns because it had two long horns at the temple area, and she could see the tops of about ten more behind those on its huge head running along the spine. They were short with lethal spikes.