Page 95 of Feralheart

My knees wanted to buckle. I locked them in place.

“I’m nobody,” I said. “I’m a commons woman who steals herbs from the forest and can’t save her own little brother.”

Warmth cut through my spiral. I know what you are. I chose anyway.

I took a step forward. Another. Moving until I was close enough to touch her.

My hand lifted.

She didn’t back away.

“This is my choice too,” I said.

I wasn’t just being claimed. I was claiming back. This dragon. This impossible thing. This choice that would probably kill me.

Yes.

The pull snapped taut, a line drawn between us that I could almost see.

Then it hit.

The world inverted. My stomach dropped like I’d stepped off a cliff, but I wasn’t falling. My ribs cracked open to let something massive inside. Heat flooded every vein at once, so intense I couldn’t tell if I was burning or freezing or both.

Feelings, sharp and overwhelming, slammed into me with enough force my knees gave way and I dropped to the rocky ground.

You. The human who knelt in mud with gentle hands. Who freed metal jaws. Who pushed warmth into torn flesh and hummed a song that said safety when everything else screamed run.

You freed me.

You healed me.

YOU are MINE.

Hunger came next, days of it, gnawing away at her soul. She hadn’t hunted properly since the trap. Flying hurt. Landing hurt. Everything hurt, and the predators sensed her weakness.

Then loneliness, so vast my lungs couldn’t expand past it. Wild dragons were solitary by necessity. The elite hunted them. The world feared them. And being alone was how you survived.

Until a human with soft hands and a voice like home had knelt in a clearing and chosen kindness over fear.

The claim wrapped around everything else, a declaration that vibrated through my bones.

MINE. I choose this. I choose YOU.

I pushed back as Tolross’s face, pale against his pillow, flashed through my mind. The sound of his breathing when it caught. The poem he’d given me like he was handing me a piece of himself to carry.

“This is why,” I said. “This is who I’m fighting for.”

Understanding washed back through the bond.

She had her own reasons for choosing. Now she knew mine.

My palms erupted in heat. The red lines glowed bright enough to see through my closed eyelids. The scale in my hand blazed, no longer separate from me but a part of me, a piece of her I’d been carrying since she’d decided. My eyes snapped open to see it shrinking… Shrinking… Until it was the size of a coin and magically strung on a thin chain. I secured it around my neck with trembling fingers.

Wear. OURS.

I could feel her heartbeat, bigger than mine. Slower. Steadier.

My vision blurred. I blinked and wetness spilled over, tracking down my cheeks in lines that wouldn’t stop. I drew in a sharp breath. Another. And I cupped my face. The scream I tried to swallow lodged in my throat.