Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Mmmm.
Her wings faltered.
Her breath hitched.
No. No.
She tried to remind herself that she was looking at two predators hunting her across the sky. Two ancient beasts who would want to keep her caged.
She should feel terror.
Rage.
Disgust.
Not this molten ache that pulsed harder every time Korin's golden wings beat closer. Not this treacherous shiver that raced down her spine when Pyrran's silver eyes found hers across the distance.
What is wrong with me?
Her dragon body wanted them—desperately, hungrily, with an instinct older than thought.
Mates.
The word unlocked something feral in her core. She felt herself clench—felt the slick readiness blooming between her haunches, her dragon body preparing itself for claiming. For breeding. For being filled by not one but two ancient kings who would fight each other for the right to mount her first.
The image flashed unbidden: Korin's golden form covering her from behind while Pyrran watched with those hungry silver eyes, waiting his turn. Or both of them at once, somehow, their fire and ice meeting inside her— She shivered.
NO!
Sol wrenched her gaze forward and flew harder. She didn't understand this body. Didn't understand the heat brutally throbbing between her haunches, didn't understand why the sight of them made her feel like prey and predator all at once.
She only knew she had to get away—from them, from this feeling, from whatever her dragon heart was trying to make her want.
Sol—despite everything, despite the power singing through her veins, despite the wings carrying her through the sky—was still afraid.
She didn't want to go back. Didn't want to be caged in that treasure hoard, surrounded by gold, bones, and the hungry gazes of two ancient beasts who claimed she belonged to them.
She wanted to fly.
She wanted to be free.
So she raced away.
Her wings beat harder—stronger—and she felt the air bend around her as she picked up speed. The wind screamed past her horns. The clouds tore apart in her wake.
She was faster than she had expected, faster than she had any right to be, her new body cut through the sky like a blade through silk.
But they were faster too.
She glanced back and saw them gaining. Korin's roar echoed across the heavens—not angry, but pleading. Pyrran's silver eyes gleamed with something she couldn't name.
No. I won't go back. I won't—
A mountain loomed ahead.
Sol's eyes widened. It was one of the carved peaks from the dragon kingdom below—a hollowed-out spire of black volcanic rock with a gaping hole at its summit. She was heading straight for it.
Turn! Turn!
But she didn't know how. Her wings wouldn't respond the way she wanted. Her body was too new, too unfamiliar. She tried to bank left.
Too late.
She plummeted through the hole.
AHHHH!!
The darkness swallowed her whole. She was falling again—tumbling down through the hollow mountain, wings scraping against stone, claws scrabbling for purchase on nothing.
And then the terror took hold.
Sol opened her jaws and screamed.
But what emerged again was not a scream.
It was ice.
Torrents of it.
Glaciers of it.
A blizzard exploded from her throat with a force that shook the very mountain. Frost erupted in every direction—coating the walls, filling the air, transforming the hollow space into a frozen cathedral of crystal and snow.
She heard Korin's roar from above—alarmed, warning—and saw his golden form veer sharply away from the entrance, narrowly avoiding the ice storm that burst from the opening.
Pyrran's silver shape wheeled in the opposite direction, and his voice boomed with shock and respect.
But Sol couldn't stop.
The ice kept coming, pouring out of her in endless waves, her new body unleashing decades of suppressed power in a single, cataclysmic release.
She crashed against the floor of the empty cavern—hard—her massive form skidding across stone that cracked beneath her weight.
Pain lanced through her.
Everywhere.
All at once.
She ended up on her back—a ridiculous position for a dragon, she thought dimly—staring up at the empty space above her.
The cavern stretched high and wide, walls bare and waiting.
And even through the pain, even through the exhaustion, even through the shock of everything that had just happened. . .
One thought crystallized in her mind.
Clear.
Certain.
Undeniable.
This space is empty.
Exhaustion spilled over her.
This space needs treasure. Gold should fill it. Gems. Crowns. And it’ll be all mine!
The thought was not human. It was dragon—pure and ancient and utterly possessive. And it felt more right than anything she had ever thought in her entire life.
Mine. My hoard. My. . .
And somewhere in the fading edges of her consciousness, another primal thought surfaced.
My mates.
They would come for her. She knew this with the same certainty she knew her scales were blue and her fire was ice.
They would enter this cavern. They would lovingly inhale her wet arousal. And then they would claim her.
The thought should have terrified her.
Instead, her dragon body purred.
Darkness washed over as Sol's eyes fluttered closed.
And the newly born dragon slept.
Chapter forty-four
The Ripening
Sol
For Sol's first sleep as a dragon, she dreamed in colors that had no names.