Page 34 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Out of the corner of her eye, Taevas’s wings arched and flexed. It didn’t appear he meant to do it, and as soon as they began to move, they stopped. The appendages jerked back into position behind him, the elegant bones and gauzy, veined membrane twitching uncontrollably.

Taevas’s dark skin went ashen. A curse hissed from between clenched fangs. “What kind of dragon am I, that I can’t do even this?”

She had no idea what he meant and couldn’t ask. Whatever had upset him, he seemed to come to a compromise when he snatched a blanket from his lap and, in a series of sharp, urgent movements, wrapped it around her tight enough to make her squirm.

Tugging her into his arms, Taevas pressed her face into the juncture of his shoulder and neck. “If you must hide, my Shiya, I will be your shelter, even now, when my wings fail me.”

The long curtain of his raven hair blocked out the light. His skin was feverishly warm under her cheek. Had the fever reducers done so little?

Worry nagged, but his scent, something warm and rich and him, closed in around her as tightly as the blanket.

He wrapped her in his arms, two iron bands over her back.

She was strewn haphazardly across his lap, rendered entirely immobile, and it was the single most comforting embrace she’d had since the night her grandfather died.

Her heartbeat began to slow. Pressing her face into his skin, she felt the frantic thrum of his own pulse against her lips. Her eyes closed.

Adon.

Was this not what she’d imagined when loneliness clawed at her belly in the night? The scent of him. The warmth of his skin. The baritone of his voice as he whispered her name into her curls.

This is my Adon.

And it was Taevas, too.

A tentative calm crept over her the longer they stayed like that, so tightly intertwined that she could hardly perceive any distance between them.

The existence of Taevas didn’t mean the death of Adon, though that was, she realized, what her mind had instantly fixed on.

It was so very used to loss that it could imagine little else.

Or at least, it didn’t have to mean that. Maybe.

“You’re Taevas,” she whispered, mostly to herself.

“And you’re Alashiya.” His breath caressed the curve of her ear. One large hand skated up and down her spine. His throat bobbed with a hard swallow before he asked, “Why did you want to hide from me?”

“It’s what nymphs do when we’re threatened. It’s how we survive.”

A beat of tense silence passed. “Do I threaten you?”

“Yes,” she answered honestly, though she believed it wasn’t the answer he wished to hear. “This is terrifying, isn’t it?”

“I’ll be honest, I’d hoped for a happier reception. Or even a more neutral one. But I suppose nothing has gone according to plan so far, so why would it start now?” Taevas stroked her spine again, slow and careful, as if he were counting the beats of each pass in his mind.

“What did you imagine it’d be like?”

“I hoped our meeting would go a very different way. I thought that eventually you’d agree to see me, and I would take you to dinner in the city. You’d offer to show me your studio. And then—”

Her heart skipped a beat. And then…

There was so much in those two words, but no matter how long she waited, it didn’t appear that he intended to finish the sentence.

“And then?” she whispered.

Taevas cleared his throat. “I never let myself think past that part.”

“Why?”

A heavy sigh stirred her hair. “A question with too many and too few answers, metsalill. Maybe you could tell me what you expected.”

Alashiya would’ve happily pulled her teeth out instead.

She’d been married to her imagination for so long that it felt disloyal to even entertain the thought of— well, she didn’t know what she was doing with Taevas just yet, but it felt like something.

She grappled with the urge to refuse until it quieted down.

This is Adon, she reminded herself. Don’t you want to know him? To be known by him? Isn’t that all you’ve ever dreamed of?

“I never cared how we met. I just liked imagining you. Pretending Adon was— you were here,” she admitted, speaking into the dragon’s hot skin.

A tiny quake rippled through him, making her pause.

Was it the fever or could he possibly be reacting to the touch of her lips on his skin?

The possibilities were thrilling. A little scary, but thrilling nonetheless.

“I… I’ve been alone here for a long time.

All the men I might’ve married left years ago for better jobs in the cities, or just because Birchdale has been in its death throes for as long as I’ve been alive.

If I didn’t want to take Monty up on his offer or be a hunting season fling for a recreationist or become a ranger bunker, then companionship was up to my imagination. ”

“Ranger bunker?”

Alashiya shrugged as much as she was able under the circumstances.

“The rangers are mostly made up of shifters who know exactly how attractive they are. People are drawn to them and will hang around the barracks, waiting for a bunk to open up. The name for them in school was ranger bunkers. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s not for me. ”

That was how some of her tiny class of schoolmates had found their partners, so she supposed there was a chance she’d been missing out on something, but most of the stories she’d heard had made her shudder.

Contrary to popular belief, nymphs were, in general, a romantically monogamous group.

Some viewed sex as being part of that and others didn’t, but Alashiya had always associated romantic partnership with an exclusive sexual partner.

She had no desire to hop into a shifter’s bunk to lose her virginity in a wild night of passion, only to leave cold and sticky the next morning.

Or worse, have to sneak out not long after the act, as she’d heard a number of her classmates had to do.

She had even less desire to go from bunk to bunk, searching for the shifter who’d catch the mating fever for her.

Alashiya wanted to be wed, as her parents and grandparents had been. She wanted to grow strong roots with her husband, to have a dozen fat, squirming babies, and watch a new grove flourish in the sun. She might’ve been able to make that life, too, if only she wasn’t such a coward.

“My imagination filled the gap,” she continued.

“I loved getting Adon’s— your orders because each one told me a little bit more about you.

The things you liked. How you lived. It was hard for me to picture how we’d meet, but I could imagine a handsome gargoyle introducing me to his sept, or a harpy—”

“A sept?” Taevas gripped her upper arms and put enough space between them to give her the full force of his incredulous look. “You thought I was a gargoyle and I’d share you with my sept?”

Alashiya’s cheeks went hot again. “What’s wrong with that? Septs are great.”

Taevas made the oddest gurgling noise in the back of his throat. “Do you want multiple mates?”

Truthfully, it had always sounded like a lot to deal with. “Too much upkeep,” Debbie had once commented as she watched one of her soap operas behind the register. “One Mike is enough. Imagine a stable full of ’em!”

There was certainly appeal in being the center of a wheel of devoted mates, but Alashiya had never taken the idea too seriously for herself. A sept would’ve been something of an instant replacement for her grove, but she knew in her heart that she could truly only devote herself to one person.

No, in her imagination, he’d most often been one of the rare loners, as desperate for companionship as herself. Maybe someone who could understand what it was like to have so much, only to lose it all.

Feeling exposed, Alashiya stared over his shoulder when she answered, “That wasn’t… Having a sept wasn’t my ideal, no.”

If she expected him to relax, she would’ve been disappointed. Taevas sat rigidly beneath her. His voice was tight when he pressed, “A harpy, then. That’s what you wanted.”

“All I knew was that my Adon had wings. I pictured what fit that description.”

“And you never, not once, imagined he— I might be a dragon? That your Adon, your husband, might be a fine, strong, powerful dragon who could protect you from all things? Who’d give you the best nest, the softest life, the most— Really?”

Alashiya squinted at him. “Have I offended you?”

“You have!” he confirmed, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “I am Isand. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people go to sleep dreaming of becoming my— being mine. And yet the one woman who occupies every waking thought never even pictured a dragon.”

Taevas looked away sharply. The muscles of his jaw flexed as he ground his teeth. “A fucking sept. Honestly!” A deep, thunderous growl shook his cavernous chest in time with the rattling of his tail.

“As if any half-decent mate would share you. You’d get a sliver of the attention you deserve.

A fucking harpy is barely better. Good gods, what were you thinking?

They like to be fought for control in bed, and they practically sleep outside, rain or shine.

Don’t forget feathers everywhere! For fuck’s sake, Shiya, think of your skin. ”

There was much to process there — thousands, really? — but all Alashiya could focus on was a small, electrifying part right at the beginning of his tirade. In a tentative whisper, she asked, “I occupy every waking thought?”

“And the sleeping ones, too,” he snapped, pinning her with a glare.

“I wear your magic against my skin every day. Your scent is ingrained in my roost, Shiya. It’s in my nest. Do you have any idea what that does to a dragon?

I live for the essence of you. I have a fucking territory to run, a clan to wrangle, inter-territory politics to navigate, wars to thwart, trade negotiations to win.

But I still think of you, a faceless, perfect creature, with every beat of my insipid little heart. ”

“Oh, I—”

Taevas tangled his claws in her curls, pulled her in, and crashed his mouth down on hers.

Shock held her still as he pressed them together.

Taevas molded their lips together and breathed.

He sucked in soft, panting little breaths through the tiny gap between their mouths, as if he was trying to sip the air from her lungs.