She collapsed.

He didn’t know who the girl was. Didn’t know much more than she had the most amazing eyes. The softest looking lips. The sweetest scent.

She was a stranger, and yet, he didn’t like it one bit when she fell.

Muscles bulged and strained, pushing against his straps. They held. He couldn’t escape to save her, so he turned an evil stare on the doctor still holding the guilty syringe.

“You killed her.” The words emerged low and growly.

Theodore Parker, the man who’d recently come into his life, courtesy of his guardian Anastasia, slapped Dr. Michaels on the back. He wore his habitual smirk. “Vernon didn’t kill the girl. I don’t want her dead. She is, after all, family. She’s merely sleeping. Deeply. But she won’t suffer any lasting effects because, you never know, she might be useful later.”

“You can’t use her.” He uttered the words with the utmost dark and deadly sincerity.

Parker arched a brow. “Really? Why not?”

Because she’s mine. He almost said the damning words out loud. “Do whatever you like to the girl. I don’t care.” Such a lie. He did give a damn. He just couldn’t do anything about it.

“So you mean to say you wouldn’t care if I hurt her?”

He didn’t say a word, but his nostrils flared. Parker noticed. The man watched and analyzed everything.

The sadistic bastard bent over and rose a moment later, his fist knotted in the girl’s hair, lifting her by it. A good thing she remained unconscious. It would hurt.

He daresss to hurt her.

He couldn’t restrain a roar and, once again, strained at his bonds. He snarled. Snapped. His body rippled again, something under his skin desperate to get out.

Ssset me free.

“Excellent,” Parker crooned with the most villainous of glee. “Keep going, boy. Keep changing.”

“I won’t.” He took deep breaths. Tried to calm his racing heart. Ignored the thing inside him that whispered, the sibilance of it frightening and cold.

Also very alluring.

“You will change. It’s past time you did. Why do you persist in fighting it?” Parker angled the girl’s head so he appeared to speak to her. “You never fought your lizard inside”—Parker turned his head once more—“I remember her mother bragging to my wife about how early she learned to shift. The girl has the most excellent genes. Not as good as yours, of course”—Parker shot him a sneer—“but excellent for so many purposes.”

“Leave her alone.”

“Or what? You can’t do anything as you are right now. You can’t stop me.”

Yesss, I can. The dark voice inside flowed through him, and for a moment, just a moment, their thoughts became one.

The incredible raw beauty—and the darkness of it—almost won.

No. He couldn’t let it take over. He had to stop. He shouldn’t do it. Shouldn’t give Parker what he wanted.

But the thing inside him, the thing dormant up until now, wanted out.

Ssset me free.

It shoved at his skin. Expanded it in ways that skin surely should not be stretched. He tamped it down.

“I guess I was mistaken. You don’t care about the girl.” Parker shook her. A sly expression entered Parker’s gaze. “Maybe I should see if someone else wants her.”

Once again, he couldn’t control himself. He arched against the straps, straining with all his might, but he didn’t have the muscle to break free.

Not in this form. But he was more than just this compact body.

Let me out, the voice whispered. It knocked at his mind’s walls. It begged to come in.

If he did, if he let whatever beast nestled inside him escape, he would give Parker what he wanted.

Embrace your true self.

If he did, if he allowed the chill consciousness to take over, would he still be him?

If you don’t accept, you’ll be a prisoner forever.

Truth or lie? Did it matter?

Things couldn’t get worse.

Parker yanked the girl higher, the strain on her hair surely excruciating. Good thing she slept, but he didn’t like it. You don’t hurt what’s mine.

“Release the girl.”

“Who, this girl? You don’t get to tell me what to do with her. I’m her uncle. I decide.” Parker pivoted and faced a mirror, a two-way glass that recorded everything. “Anyone watching want the girl since he doesn’t?”

How dare Parker offer the girl? “Is your honor so lacking you’d offer your niece to just anyone?”

“Honor doesn’t give you money and power.” Parker tossed a smile over his shoulder, the lupine in him showing with the gleam of teeth. “Some pieces, like my niece, are expendable. I can always borrow another. The Mercers tend to procreate like rabbits.”

I will chew his face.

Raw. The idea didn’t come from him, but the rumble of tummy was real.

“Come on, surely there is someone who wants her?”

It was Dr. Michaels, the bastard who liked to hurt him, who said, “I’ll take her.”

Over his dead body.

Crush him into a pulp.

He’d love to. But first, he’d need a little help.

Help me do this.

Just close your eyes and let me in.

It proved easy to do, like opening a mental door and inviting in a friend. A friend who swirled around him and squeezed like a close hug.

Soon, he couldn’t recall why he’d hesitated. Why had he not agreed to this before?

He felt so strong. And squished.

This body, this entire shape, was much too small and compact.

I should be light and airy. Fix it.

It took a big heave. A bit of straining. The skin initially resisted, but finally it turned, changed to scales he saw as he opened his eyes. Finely shaped and dull.

It also hurt.

He roared at the pain.

Roared? He shouldn’t have that kind of pitch and sound, and yet he did, and even as the pain washed through him again, his body crackling and moving, the tenor changed once more.

He bucked at the tight straps binding him. His body fought against them as it thickened. Metal popped as the buckle exploded from the pressure. Next to go, the gown, which shredded and fell from him.

He sprang from the bed, feeling bigger and stronger. But not yet complete.

This was not his final form. Something moved at his back.

Wings. Knobby things still trying to unfurl.

Massively unwieldy things, just like this body was wrong. All wrong.

He became bigger still, his skin pushing and pulling, the scales popping off and revealing a new layer of armor. His true skin.

With a final euphorically painful rush, he exploded into something massive, and yet so light.

And bright.

Blazing gold filled the room, and the wings at his back fluttered. He flexed his claws and reveled in his power. So much power.

Because I am dragon!

The creature before him studied him with awe and yet didn’t bow.

Silly puppy. I am better than you.

He glared down at the offending creature, and yet the man didn’t cower as he should. Instead, he held something in front of him. A smaller creature with strange, wheat-colored hair.

Food? He sniffed and noted the scent belonged to him.

Mine.

He reached out to grab but halted as the male holding her took on some wolfish traits. His face projected into a skin-covered muzzle, and his fingers grew wicked claws. Claws that rested across her throat.

“Don’t move.”

The words were understood. The man and beast had merged. They knew everything.

And this man before him, this Parker, he would regret his actions. Did this little wolf not understand who was truly the power here?

In that instant, he grasped something extremely important. Something he’d never realized before.

No wonder the doctors had kept him drugged. No wonder they wanted a piece of him. Who wouldn’t? After all, the universe revolved around him.

I am greater than you. Grander than everyone.

He laughed, and yet the sound emerged as a trill. He took a step forward, and the wolf called Parker drew a claw over the female’s throat. Beads of blood appeared. “Don’t move another muscle, or I’ll kill her. I have a feeling you don’t want that.”

No. He didn’t. For some reason, this girl, this fragile creature he’d just met, meant something to him.

Mine. My angel. He stood still.

Parker smirked. “Wise move. Now, listen up, boy, because this is what’s going to happen.”

He agreed to too many things that day. Things to save one girl. A stranger. Someone he might never see again but that Parker promised would not come to harm.

It seemed even captives could suffer from chivalry.

And whenever he wondered—usually in violent fashion—if he’d made the right choice, wondered if it were worth the many hours spent alone in the dark, Parker would bring her.

There would be no warning. One moment, he’d be tearing at his restraints, refusing to behave, and then she’d appear. Her face ashen the moment she beheld him.

His angel always cried, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she held out her hand.

Idiot that he was, he used to grab it back, holding on to her fingers a moment too long, feeling that same jolt every time. Knowing she felt it, too, which made her sob only harder. She would whisper over and over, “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Sorry for what? The fact that Parker was a brilliant lunatic who knew what to use against him?

Even a dragon of his stature had to respect the fact that Parker had found his weakness.

I wonder how much respect he’ll have for me when I tear his head from his shoulders and drink from him. That day would come.

Despite what Parker thought, the captivity didn’t weaken him. His hatred only grew. But through it all, one thing never changed.

He never stopped protecting her.