Rune swallowed and shook his head. Then shook it again. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sign her death warrant.
Hadyn’s heart slowed, each pause between beats longer and each thump softer. Her heart was giving out.
“Pl…please,” she whispered. “It hurts.”
Throat closing with a grief so stark it threatened to consume him, a terrible trembling taking root deep in his bones, Rune did as she asked. He couldn’t deny her this last request.
After getting the others out, not much fire had regenerated inside him, but he managed to ignite the fire in his belly. His dragon lay down inside him, quiet, watchful, and…heavily resigned.
“Open your mouth love,” he whispered.
Hadyn swallowed as a tear slipped down the side of her face, but the smile she managed was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. Incandescent. “I love you,” she whispered.
Oh gods. Rune leaned forward, sealing his lips to hers, and blew fire into his brave little human. The mating kiss of a dragon shifter.
Something inside his soul shifted, seemed to pour out of him and into her, like sands in an hourglass as he poured flame into her body. He blew until that single draw was gone. Then lifted his head. “I love you, too,” he said.
He watched as the light died in her eyes. The green turning ash gray before her lashes fluttered closed and a last breath escaped her lips in the softest of sighs, ripping his heart apart like dragon talons and flame.
Shattered, Rune dropped his head to her chest, wrapping his arms tight around her, inhaling her minty scent. The light in his life dying with her.
“Fuck you,” he said through clenched teeth, harsh and low.
Not at her, but at the fates. The raw words seemed to unlock all his bitterness and rage, a tidal wave spewing from him faster and faster.
“Fuck you all. You sadist motherfuckers.” His words were muffled by her skin against his cheek, and all he could do was grip her tighter as he spewed more anger at the gods and fates. “Playing with our lives from wherever you are. Why did you even make her only to rip her away like this? Why did you put her in my path? Fuck you. Fuck you.”
A tiny thump kicked against his ear still pressed against her breast.
Rune frowned, then stilled and listened.
Another tiny thump.
Death rattles? She had such a strong heart, he shouldn’t be surprised.
Hadyn jerked in his arms, eyes going wide as she almost bowed off the bed, her mouth open in a silent gasp, his black flames lighting her up from the inside.
“Hadyn?” he asked, trying not to panic.
“It’s—” she gasped, her gaze snapping to his. “It’s working.”
It couldn’t be—
Her hands scrambled over his back. “Finish it. You have to finish it before—”
Holy shit. Was she right? If she was turning, they didn’t have long. Mating was more than just that kiss of fire.
In a frenzy of motion he stripped them both. Her gorgeous pale skin was gaining color, but if he didn’t act fast, that fire would consume her.
Hadyn must’ve realized, because when he went to join her on the bed, she practically tackled him rolling him to his back, straddling him, her strength returning with every passing second.
She wrapped her hand around his already straining cock but paused with him at her entrance. “Are you sure—”
He grabbed her by the hips and thrust up impaling her. “I’m so damned fucking sure, love.”
Lust and fire hit him so hard, his body came close to spontaneously combusting and Hadyn’s head dropped back on a long, broken moan of pure pleasure.
Watching her face, he thrust harder, faster, needing his fire inside her, changing her forever, more than he needed to live.
Holding her by the waist he pounded into her body, her eyes tight shut and face a study of need and desperate wanting.
She fluttered around his cock, her chest glowing red from the inside through the skin with his fire, and all that heat inside him gathered in his balls, tingling perfection and pure fire.
Her breathing hitched. “Now,” she demanded. “Oh gods, now.”
On a roar of claiming, he poured his seed and fire into her body, joining the other fire already lit inside her.
Hadyn’s head went back as she screamed and screamed.
Rune rolled them, still thrusting through every wave, every crest and trough shuddering through them both. He gathered every ounce of what he had left inside and kissed her again, pouring the flames into her, praying every second that she was right. That, somehow, the magic turning her into a dragon shifter was working.
On a long, hard groan, he drained the last of himself into the woman who’d burst into his life and claimed his heart and his soul.
Ending the kiss, he dropped his head to her shoulder, slowing his thrusts as their bodies rode out the last of their orgasms, until his heart slowed, and so did hers.
A heart that was still beating.
Rune jerked to his elbows, staring into her face, but her eyes were still tight shut. “Hadyn?”
She took a deep breath. Was she okay? Or was he about to watch her die all over again, turned to ash in front of his eyes.
“Hadyn, love. Talk to me.”
Her hand suddenly flew to the back of her neck. At the same time, the burn on the back of his own neck struck as though someone branded his skin. A lance of pain split through his head, sharp and cold. Then, with a pop that reverberated through his body, the pain was gone.
The bond.
That had been miraculously fast. His dragon hummed in smug satisfaction and heat pulsed through his chest, centering around his heart, healing the wound of watching her die in his arms, and knitting the shared parts of his soul and hers together for all time. With a rush of a sudden drop, like gravity taking hold, he could suddenly feel Hadyn—with him and yet inside him, part of him.
My mate.
Another deep breath, then her lips, no longer blue, stretched in a smile that stole his heart all over again. She opened her eyes slowly, and she stilled, then smiled again. “I’m…yours.”
Rune and his dragon roared in triumph, the sound pounding out of him, uncontainable joy. It flooded his soul, burning away that bitterness and anger he’d been vomiting at the gods and fates only minutes ago.
Her eyes were black. Black eyes. Not ashy gray. Solid onyx like his, but with glittering peridot green around the edge of both her pupils and the irises. A black dragon now, but apparently retaining a little of the green dragon she was originally meant to be.
True fated mates.