The loud crash coming from the entrance to the gallery made Gregory freeze. At the same moment, a bitter, fierce emotion washed over him. Even as he abandoned the startled Jeff in his office to race towards where he had left Naomi, Gregory felt his own power rushing through his veins.

Dragon.

That was what he had sensed, a sudden eruption of elemental dragon power right here in the gallery. Right here where he had left his mate.

If Gregory had doubted it before, all doubt was gone now.

He’d sensed it from the first moment he’d laid eyes on Naomi, breathless at the way her shoulder-length black hair framed the gorgeous face with flushed cheeks and warm, brown eyes. When he’d kissed her, he hadn’t wanted to let go. He’d wanted to claim her, to mate and feel their souls meld, as it should be.

But now, he knew only one single thought: his mate was in danger.

His entire body was thrumming with the awareness. There was no time for thought—mated or not, the heart of his dragon knew without doubt that she was his. As he raced towards where the sound of bursting glass had come from, his dragon’s anger filled his blood until he could hear nothing but the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears.

He came to a skidding stop when he reached the place where just moments ago, a glass wall had stood between the gallery’s rooms and the street outside.

Now, there was a large hole. One of the windows had burst completely, and all of Gregory’s muscles tensed at the awareness that came flooding him.

It wasn’t just a scent, it was a deeper awareness, a residue of the other shifter’s powers.

A dragon. The scent of smoke. Glowing embers suddenly fanned into angry fire.

There’d been no fire dragon on the council of elements in ages. Even Gareth, the chimera shifter who oversaw the council and knew more than the rest of them together, didn’t know why. They had considered them extinct.

Centuries ago, when knights had hunted dragons, the dangerous dragons breathing fire had been an obvious target. Gareth had once told Gregory that the fire element must never have recovered from that. If there had once been a plinth marked with the symbol of fire in the cavern of the council, all knowledge of it had been long since buried.

Gregory stepped out into the street. Wide-eyed passersby hastened past him, staring at the hole in the glass wall which must have appeared out of nowhere to their eyes.

This was a power shared by every mythical shifter: humans could not see them, once shifted. It helped to keep the secrecy. But even so, there were rules that forbid anything that would cause humans to take notice of their existence.

The fire dragon had blatantly ignored such rules as he broke into the gallery in broad daylight.

And he took Naomi. He took my mate.

Suddenly, the information about strange rumors the council had gathered began to make sense. There was a dragon on the loose. A fire dragon.

But why Naomi?

Anger rose in Gregory’s heart when he remembered the ad for the exhibition. The posters showed Naomi’s painting of the storm dragon. It had immediately drawn Gregory’s attention.

But it would have drawn the attention of the feral dragon as well, if he’d come across one of the posters by chance. Had the fire dragon taken Naomi to draw out the dragon she’d painted? Had she been kidnapped because of Gregory?

For the first time in his life, Gregory ignored the rules of the council. He allowed his anger and his fear for his mate to flood him with power, and then he spread his arms.

A heartbeat later, the body of his human form had shifted into the dragon.

All around him, passersby were still staring at the gallery in shock. One man, who’d been looking right at Gregory, now staggered backwards when to his eyes, Gregory vanished into thin air. A second later, the man dazedly shook his head as the dragon magic began to work on him, making him forget that he’d seen something out of the ordinary.

An angry roar escaped Gregory as his powerful wings lifted him into the air, invisible to all the humans gathering near the gallery. A few seconds later, Gregory was high enough to watch the grid of streets and blocks of houses spread below him—but he didn’t have to search for the road his enemy had taken.

He knew where the dragon was. Because Gregory knew where his mate was.

In Gregory’s chest, his heart was thudding with rage and fear for her. The pain of having her taken from him was terrible, as though someone had stabbed a red-hot knife into his chest. But even through the agony of having his mate kidnapped from his side, there was a different awareness thrumming through him.

It felt as if the pain that threatened to tear out his heart was connected to a line. It was invisible, but through it flooded the most powerful emotion Gregory had ever experienced.

On the other end of that invisible line, Naomi was waiting for him. He was drawn right towards her. He didn’t even have to think about it—with every powerful beating of his wings, his body was propelled forward at an impossible speed, faster than he had ever flown before, aiming straight at where his mate was being held.

The race across the sky took him out of the city. Every now and then, he had to dive through clouds. On any other day, the soft caress of the white mist would have soothed him, and he would’ve spread his wings to slide on the gentle currents of air, the motion as familiar as breathing to him.

Today, there was no thought in his heart but that of his mate, and the danger she was in.

He flew without slowing down, as fast as his wings could carry him, ignoring the pounding of his heart and the weariness of his wings as he drove himself past exhaustion. He could feel that he was slowly gaining on the other dragon—and then, abruptly, something changed.

A triumphant roar escaped his throat, scattering a fluffy, white cloud in front of him.

The other dragon had stopped moving.

Naomi was close now, Gregory could feel it. Rage at the other dragon who had dared to endanger his mate made the blood in his veins run hot.

All dragons were possessive, and Gregory had often felt the rush of jealousy when another dragon came too close to his hoard—or when another dared to bid on a painting he himself coveted at an auction.

But now, as he hurtled out of the sky, diving down towards where his heart could feel Naomi had come to rest, he knew that what he’d felt before was nothing against the emotions that now flooded through him.

Naomi was his mate. Naomi was the greatest treasure he’d ever find. And someone had dared to threaten her.

His dragon’s instincts had taken over. When he landed on a stony, lonely part of the shore where the shallow waves of the ocean lapped at gray rocks, there wasn’t much of human logic left in his mind. There was only the powerful, relentless instinct of the dragon to protect—and to fight anyone who came between him and his mate.

Naomi was bound to a spire of rock, close to the water.

As Gregory landed in a cloud of dust, he let out a loud roar of challenge. He could feel Naomi’s terror in his heart. But as much as he ached to free her and reassure her, the threat of the other dragon was too great. He couldn’t let down his guard even for a moment, or surely the other would take advantage.

Gregory bared his teeth at the sky. Spreading his wings once more, he was ready to lift off the moment he found a trace of his enemy—and then a stream of fire singed the rock to his right, just barely missing the tip of his wing.

Furious, Gregory catapulted himself into the air. The powerful instinct to protect his mate at all costs had fully taken over. He felt nothing but anger at the intruder.

The time for caution had passed.

Enraged, he barreled straight at the other dragon. The wind had been his element since the moment of his birth, but never before had he felt its power rise to such a degree.

When he opened his jaw to roar, a storm sprang up. Out of nowhere, storm clouds appeared, hail hitting the wings of the fire dragon before him.

Currents of wind propelled Gregory forward, faster and faster as the storm he’d called raged all around him. Great waves hit the rocky shore, the sea whipped up to a frothy rage.

The fire dragon was doing his best to hover in place, even as the storm hit him, awaiting Gregory with his wings spread and his jaw parted.

Gregory raced towards him. Any moment now it would be over. Any moment now and his mate would be safe...

Gregory opened his jaw, another roar escaping him, and with it, a mighty gust of air with the power of a tornado.

Never before had he unleashed such power. Once more he beat his wings, his teeth and claws bared for the moment when he would hit the fire dragon... And then, at the last moment, the other dragon folded his wings and dropped like a stone.

For the span of a heartbeat, he was beneath Gregory—and that was when he unleashed his fire against Gregory’s unguarded stomach and chest.

In agony, Gregory lost control over his powers. The wind that had so faithfully carried him a moment ago now buffeted him around. The fire had scorched him, his body burning with pain.

Frantically, Gregory beat his wings. Trying to catch himself before he hit the ground, his dragon’s soul was crying out for his mate, whose life depended on him—and then the ground came rushing up to him.

With his last strength, he thought of his mate, praying that even without a mate bond joining their souls, she would hear him somehow.

Run, he begged her. I can’t defeat him. Run!

Then everything went black.