He could feel the silence of the forest that surrounded his home and the faint trickle of the river. He was sure he could feel his mate watching, too.
He placed her knife on a table in front of the forge. It glinted there, the only thing on the table and the only thing reflecting the firelight, and Hadrian hoped it provided a distraction. It was a lure and he hoped she went for it.
Then he pulled up a chair that he loved and sank into it with a sigh. The Arts & Crafts armchair was made of oak, with broad armrests and leather upholstery on the seat and back. He liked the patina on the wood and how smooth it felt beneath his hands. There was a second one in his lair that was a rocking chair.
Hadrian leaned back and closed his eyes so that they were just slits. He was facing the table with the knife and felt the forge’s heat wash over him. He slowed his pulse and his breathing, almost entering a meditative state, but still remaining alert and watchful. He’d been taught by Alasdair’s father, Boreus, to do this. It was a means of conserving energy while guarding a prize. Boreus had called it ‘banking the fire’ and Hadrian had always been good at it. The idea was to become as still as possible but always be ready to strike.
The challenge when he was so tired was to keep from dozing off. Hadrian hoped his mate was decisive and arrived soon.
They were all asleep.
Rania listened and when she was certain that the Pyr were out cold, she manifested inside Hadrian’s studio.
In the blink of an eye, she surveyed the entire space, verifying her assumptions. Hadrian was alone and asleep in a chair, facing the forge, his feet up on a table. His breathing was deep and regular, and there was no tension in his body at all. Rania was good at assessing such things and most creatures did a poor job of hiding or controlling their bodies’ rhythms.
Convinced that Hadrian wasn’t going to trick her this time, Rania relaxed slightly.
She guessed that he hadn’t slept in a while to have crashed so hard. He hadn’t even noticed that the white light of the firestorm burned brighter with her proximity. She glanced over his workshop, intending to choose a weapon from among his tools just for irony, and spotted her knife.
The bichuwa was on the table beside his feet. She stared at it, immediately distrusting that it was so readily available.
But Hadrian was a blacksmith. It would make sense for him to have an interest in weapons. Maybe he had been studying it before he dozed off. There was a pair of gloves on the anvil near the forge, and something shone beneath them. There must have been a blade there, but Rania reached for her own bichuwa.
She couldn’t deny the temptation of following her original plan.
It was only after she took a step toward the dagger that she realized her mistake. She’d turned her back on Hadrian. In the instant that she could have corrected her pose, the shimmer of blue light warned her that he was shifting shape.
He’d never been asleep at all.
She snatched for the bichuwa, but a dragon claw roared past her and closed over it first. She spun to find Hadrian filling the studio in his glorious dragon form. His scales shone emerald and silver, and the firelight made him look like a mythical creature. He was watching her, tossing the blade from one claw to the other, like a magician tempting her to grab for it. The daring light in his eyes gave her a desperate urge to surprise him.
“Go on, disappear and try to get me later,” he taunted, revealing his expectation.
“I’d rather finish this now,” Rania replied. She seized the leather gloves, hoping to grab the blade that shone beneath them. Instead she discovered that there were four blades attached to the fingers. She had no chance to tug on the gloves, though, because Hadrian tackled her for them.
“No those!” he said.
They tussled over them, falling to the floor, until he was on top of her, his eyes flashing and tail lashing. She hooked her ankle beneath a chair and jerked it toward them so its weight fell on his back.
It wasn’t enough to hurt him, but it surprised him so that she could shift shape and slither from his grasp.
Hadrian won the gloves, though.
He roared as she retreated, back in her human form, and his eyes flashed fire. He swung his tail, sliding it across the floor so that Rania had to jump to avoid being knocked off her feet. She tumbled in a cartwheel, shifted shape in mid-air and took flight. He tossed her blade in the air, taunting her again, and this time she took his dare.
She dove toward her knife and snatched at it in mid-air with her beak. Hadrian moved faster though, his dragon claw descending to grab the dagger before her very eyes. At the same time, his wing swept along behind her. He created a current that flung her toward the far end of the studio, the end where he stored raw steel. Rania resented her smaller size then, because she hated being defeated by brute force. The smell of the steel made her shudder, but it also built her resolve. She was flung through a cluster of cobwebs before regaining control of her flight, then pivoted and charged back toward him.
This time, she’d finish him.
There was a telltale shimmer of blue, and Hadrian stood before the forge in his human form. His arms were folded across his chest, and there was both a smile on his lips and a challenging glint in his green eyes.
There was no sign of her bichuwa.
Rania flew straight at him, but he didn’t even flinch. He held her gaze, clearly expecting that she’d shift in the last instant. She did and landed before him on the balls of her feet, hating that she felt predictable.
He grinned. “Nice,” he said with admiration.
Hadrian was officially irritating, interesting, and the sexiest male she’d ever met. He might also have been the best opponent she’d ever battled and the most wily target.
“Where is it?” she demanded as the firestorm blazed white between them. The last thing Rania needed to feel in this moment was desire, but lust burned through her veins to her toes anyway, making her yearn to caress him instead of kill him.
Maybe she could kiss him one last time.
She knew he’d make it worth her while.
“That was really smooth,” Hadrian said, ducking the question.
“I don’t care about your compliments,” Rania replied, feeling cross as well as flattered—and aroused, too. He surveyed her with such obvious appreciation that her instinct was to preen.
“Why not those gloves?”
He smiled. “They’re a tool against the Fae. I’m trying to replicate them, and need the originals as a model.”
Rania was confused by a scheme that made no strategic sense to her. “But they only fit in your human form. Don’t you fight better as a dragon?”
He laughed with that confidence. “We can take them through the shift, and augment our talons with steel blades.”
That was amazing, but she averted her gaze so he couldn’t see how impressed she was. “Where’s the bichuwa?” she asked again.
“Safe,” he said with a maddening smile, then turned to the forge. He turned his back on her with ridiculous and unjustified confidence, moving with a leisure that the situation didn’t deserve. He stoked up the fire as she watched, and the light of the firestorm brightened as well. Rania could barely think straight with her impressions of Hadrian crowding her mind, and the need to touch him was almost overwhelming—never mind the wish that he would touch her again. It was impossible to keep from noting the flex of his muscles as he worked, or the audacity he had in turning his back upon her.