Ryker: So. Quick debrief. You paid seven hundred and fifty million for a virgin you tracked for an entire night. You threw an urn full of wolf across a throne room. And now we're walking through a forest territory with the princess who once told YOU to hide.
Maddox: Your point?
Ryker: I have no point. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page about how absolutely unhinged this evening was.
Sterling: Seconded. The auction of a literal princess was the cherry on top.
Maddox looked at her again. She was staring ahead, jaw set, breathing measured. Her white hair caught the moonlight in a way that made it look like it was glowing, and he had to force himself to look away.
Ryker: Tell her now. Soft. She's wound tight enough to snap a tendon.
Maddox: I know how to talk to her, Ryker.
Sterling: Do you, though. Genuinely asking. You have known her for less than a day.
Maddox: Shut up.
"We'll be flying from here."
She blinked. The question she was clearly running through her head had nothing to do with the flying and everything to do with the logistics. He watched the exact moment it landed.
She recovered fast. "In wolf culture, riding on a shift is... unconventional."
Diplomatic. Delivered like a woman selecting the politest possible word for 'absolutely insane.' He almost smiled.
"For dragons, it's an honor. The rider is the protected. The dragon beneath them is the shield."
Ryker shifted into a red dragon that filled the clearing. Guinevere's eyes went wide for exactly half a second before she locked it down.
Sterling: Cute. She is pretending she has seen a dragon before and this is completely normal.
Maddox: What do you expect? Her to scream and throw a tantrum?
She looked at the dragon. Then at Maddox. Then back at the dragon. He could practically see the calculations running behind her eyes. How to get up there. Where to sit. What was polite. What was offensive. Whether there was a protocol.
He didn't give her time to solve it.
He moved, arm hooking around her waist, and jumped. One motion. The kind of vertical that wolves couldn't replicate, because dragon shifters carried more of their shift's strength in human form in comparison. He felt her inhale sharply against him as the ground dropped away beneath them and they landed on Ryker's back.
He settled behind her, pulling her against his chest. His arms locked around her. Ryker vaulted airborne immediately, wings catching the updraft in one massive stroke.
Ryker: She didn't scream.
Sterling: Interesting.
Ryker: She fits nicely against you, doesn't she?
Maddox: Shut up. Both of you.
He had been expecting fear. Every dragon rider remembered their first flight. Even women born into dragon lineage panic the first time the ground disappears. Gravity was a hard negotiation, and the first flight always won the argument.
Guinevere didn't flinch. She took it like an actual dragon shifter would.
She looked down at the forest. Through the matebond he felt something shift. Relief.
His dragon then purred deep in his chest at the way she fit against him.
Maddox's mental voice was smug to his dragon. You're not even trying to hide it anymore.
Ryker: Your heart rate, Maddox.
Maddox: Don't.
Ryker: I can feel it through my back. The princess is going to think we're being attacked again.
Maddox: I will roast you alive, Ryker.
She leaned back into him by half an inch. Not a surrender. A test. The kind of small adjustment a woman makes when she is checking whether a man's body will move with hers or against it.
His did not move. He held her exactly where she had put herself, and after a long second, she let her head settle against his shoulder.
Maddox stopped breathing.
Then he felt her shaking. His brows knit together. She was more relaxed now compared to when they were in the forest.
He glanced down at her.
Below freezing. Wind at altitude. A thin white dress designed to make her look beautiful at an auction, offering absolutely zero protection against a night sky at three thousand feet.
He pulled his cloak around her, covering them both. He could have taken it off and draped it over her. He would have been fine. Dragon blood ran hot enough that the cold was an inconvenience, never a threat.
But she'd be warmer with him under it with her. Body heat and dragon fire and the fact that he ran twenty degrees hotter than any wolf she'd ever stood beside.
At least that's what he told himself. Not because he had a reckless, irrational, entirely unjustifiable urge to hold a woman he hadn't had a real conversation with. His dragon purred at the contact like a furnace given permission to ignite, and he told it to calm down with the same authority he used on foreign diplomats. It did not listen.
Her head turned slightly and her eyes lifted to his, surprised. The mask slipped for a full second this time, and underneath it was a girl who had been sold, traded, chained, gagged, frozen, backhanded, and auctioned, and the first warm thing she had been offered since a cave was a cloak she didn't ask for.
"It's below freezing." If he said what he was actually thinking, he would scare her. And she had been scared enough.
She held his gaze for another moment. Then looked forward.
He almost kissed her ear, but caught himself.
He pulled his mouth back by an inch. Held it there. She had no idea how close he had just come. Or maybe she did, and that was why her breathing changed.
Then her eyes closed. She fell asleep so fast it was an actual shock.
He had watched seasoned dragon riders white-knuckle their first overnight flight. Warriors who had seen battle grip the scales until their hands cramped. This girl, on her first flight, in open air, at altitude, closed her eyes and dropped into unconsciousness like her body had decided the safest place it had been in three days was pressed against the chest of a dragon king she barely knew.
Her head lolled forward.
He shifted her carefully, one arm under her knees, the other around her back, pulling her fully against him. She didn't stir. He tucked her head beneath his chin, inside the cloak, where the wind couldn't reach her face.
Ryker: Permission to speak freely.
Maddox: Denied.
Maddox adjusted her higher, her ass sliding firmly against his hardening cock. He bit back a groan. Eight hours of her body pressed against him like this was going to test every ounce of his control. His dragon didn't want control. It wanted her naked and writhing beneath him.
Ryker: She's asleep.
Maddox: I know.
Ryker: Riding on me. In the air. First flight. Asleep.
Maddox: I know, Ryker.
Ryker: I'm just saying. That's either the most trusting thing I've ever seen, or the most exhausted.
Sterling's voice cut through, quieter than usual.
Sterling: It's both.
Ryker stayed silent for a long stretch of sky. The kind of quiet Ryker only managed when something serious was happening inside his head.
Ryker: Whatever was done to her in that pack. I want their name.
Sterling: Get in line, Ryker. I claimed the brother during the bidding war.
Ryker: Fine. I'll take the father.
Maddox: No one is taking anyone. Yet.
Maddox adjusted the cloak around her and watched the sky ahead. Velkaris was a full night's flight. She would sleep through most of it if he kept her warm. He intended to keep her warm.
She chose me. She feels safe with me.
His dragon settled in his chest for the first time in hours.
Below them, the continent of Nyros disappeared into the dark.
✦✦✦
She didn't wake when they landed.
Ryker touched down in the eastern courtyard of Drakencrest Keep.
The landing was smooth, the kind of arrival designed to keep a sleeping passenger sleeping. Maddox appreciated it, though he would never say so. Ryker's ego required no additional fuel.
Guinevere hadn't stirred once during the flight. Eight hours. Through turbulence over the Ashborne Strait, through a crosswind that had forced Ryker to bank hard twice, through a descent steep enough to make Sterling grip the scales on the dragon flying beside them. She slept through all of it.
Maddox adjusted her against his chest, shifting her weight as he dismounted. One arm under her knees. The other around her back. She weighed almost nothing, which concerned him in a way he wasn't ready to examine.
Ryker shifted back to human form, rolling his shoulders.
Ryker: She's still asleep.
Maddox: I'm aware.
Ryker: Eight hours, Maddox. Through a bank turn that almost threw Sterling. She didn't flinch.
Sterling: I was secured. And she's clearly exhausted.
Ryker: Sure. Or she's dead and we just flew a corpse across a continent. Have we checked?
Maddox: She's breathing, Ryker.
Ryker: Just being thorough.
Sterling: Do wolves get sick? Genuinely asking. Wolf physiology isn't my area, and she was submerged in freezing water based on what we observed.
Ryker: They heal fast. Faster than humans. Slower than us.
Sterling: That's helpful and vague. Thank you.
Maddox frowned. Through the matebond, her emotions had gone quiet during the flight when she fell asleep. But this was different because it was physical. The hum was there, but underneath there was wrongness. Like a note held slightly flat in an otherwise clean chord.
He adjusted her again, shifting her higher against his chest. Her forehead settled into the crook of his neck.
Two things hit him at once.
The first was the sparks. Identical to the moment she had taken his hand in the private chamber. A current that ran from her skin into his.
The second was the heat. Her temperature ran high enough that even he noticed, and he ran twenty degrees above any wolf.
For her to feel hot against his skin meant her fever was severe.
That was wrong. Wolves didn't fever.