Eden was thrust from her sleep, gasping for air as she came to. Her hands instinctively went to her throat, checking for other hands that had never actually been there. Moments before, Eden she felt someone holding her underneath the surface of the water as she meditated.

What a nightmare. She aggressively rubbed her face, trying to bring herself to reality and shake off the dream. As she did so, she groaned, feeling a painful knot in her neck. She had fallen asleep on her chaise lounge again, causing her to sleep with her head in an awkward position.

Eden hadn’t been sleeping much at all these days, kept awake by her worries and anxieties over the upcoming ceremony. Her father was already in talks of where it should be held, the attendance list, and so on. It was as though the entire thing was a storm cloud hanging over her head, and an inescapable one at that. Eden had tried to soothe her mind by delving even further into her studies, staying up all night reading her grandmother’s journals when she couldn’t sleep. Her grandmother had been the first healer and had taught Eden all that she could before she was murdered however many centuries ago by the vial witches. It brought her some comfort to read her journals, feeling even closer to the woman she had loved so dearly.

If Eden didn’t come to terms with the marriage to Darian soon, she was certain that she would lose her mind. It wasn’t as simple as she thought it would be. After all, the inevitable things in life should be the easiest to come to terms with, right? Because you were aware that nothing you could possibly do would stop it from happening. She coached herself in thinking that being married to Darian wouldn’t change much of anything. She could still live her life, continue her studies… All that would change was her last name. It was a thing of status, not a necessity.

Those thoughts didn’t bring her much comfort, knowing that it was all just wishful thinking. The two of them would have to hold up appearances, look like a loving couple. That was the point of it, after all, right? To unify their front and appear stronger than ever. Just having a ceremony wouldn’t do anything but raise questions. Eden would have to move out of the family estate and into her own place with Darian, wouldn’t she? The thought of living with that man made her want to scream.

The entire predicament left Eden feeling like property. She was a good being exchanged from man to man in order to make them both look better in the eyes of the public. Her opinion on the matter meant nothing—all it had done was prolong the inevitable for a couple of centuries.

Her thoughts went round and round in the vicious circles nonstop. It had rendered her unable to meditate, causing her to become on edge and snappy, though she supposed sleep deprivation wasn’t helping, either. As she stood from the lounge, Eden finally decided that she would take the time to truly sort through her thoughts and make the best of the situation, like Darian had suggested, rather than staying resistant and agitated by it all.

Dressing in a pair of shorts and a breezy white blouse, Eden walked outside and toward the forest. She would walk around and not allow herself to come back until she had made her peace with the future. As she stepped into the great outdoors, Eden looked overhead to see the clouds streaked with pink and purple. She must have stayed up all night and morning, only dozing off for a couple of hours in the afternoon. The realization made her feel that much firmer in her need to accept her fate.

Eden had forgotten how much she loved the forest, since most of her focus had been on the water as of late. She breathed in the scent of the fauna and the earth, already feeling more at ease than she had in the past forty-eight hours. Her fingertips brushed across the trunks of trees as she passed them, plucking leaves here and there as she did so. Once she took in the forest, she finally began to battle out her thoughts one by one, no matter how exhausting they were at that point.

Hours ticked by, and Eden was becoming more frustrated than she had wanted. Every time she told herself that she had to accept her fate, even more resistance would spark in her chest. Why did she have to accept it? None of her brothers were being forced to marry someone they didn’t want to “for the good of the Kingdom.” She knew it was because she was the lone daughter of the King, and it felt completely medieval to her. Couldn’t there be better solutions than forcing her into a loveless marriage? Would the people of the Kingdom really honor a bond that much? How would it stop rebellions from occurring?

Because they would think the might of the Crown is too grand to go against, Eden realized.

Darian was a warrior, but he was also one of the people. Nearly everyone looked up to him, seeing him as a fierce and unwavering symbol of the Kingdom’s inhabitants. Marrying him would actually be a significant event in the Kingdom. Those who questioned the Crown but looked up to Darian, as well as those like him, would fall into line out of respect—and also fear.

Eden wasn’t naïve to the reputation Darian had when it came to fighting. He was ruthless in battle, almost bordering on cruel. All he cared about was winning, and he was willing to put his body on the line in order to achieve that. It was an attribute that dragonbornes held higher than anything else.

Logically, Eden knew that it was a smart political move. Emotionally, she couldn’t care less about finding her soulmate. So why on Earth was she fighting it so intensely? Was it just because her hand was being forced into it? Would she have potentially said yes if her father had given her a say in the proposal? While that bothered her, it didn’t entirely explain her full-bodied resistance. There was something strange about Darian that Eden couldn’t shake. Something… fake about him. He felt dangerous, even though he would know better than to ever harm a hair on her head, or else he would feel the wrath of Carlyle.

The sky was pitch black as Eden continued to saunter through the trees, at war with herself. She was starting to realize that perhaps she wouldn’t make peace with this decision, and she would begrudgingly be forced down the aisle and into a life that she did not want. Would there be a rhyme or reason to her resistance? Would it one day be clear that there was a purpose behind her inability to find peace? She hoped so. She hoped that the answer to the entire mystery was to come, and that all of her supposed pouting and brewing would have a purpose. The answer at that point, however, was totally in the dark.

The sound of snapping twigs came from nearby. No, snapping branches. Eden looked all around, wondering what on Earth had caused it. Perhaps it would have been wiser for her to run back to the estate and gather others to check out the sound in the woods, but she could hold her own. Without a second thought, Eden ran in the direction of the sound, soon hearing a massive thump.

As she came through a clearing, Eden slowed her pace, knowing she needed to be cautious and not just run into the middle of something without knowing just how dangerous it was.

Peering from behind a tree, she saw a dragon lying on the forest floor. It was one of the largest dragons she had ever seen, rivaling her father and her brother Sebastian in size, if not bigger. Its scales were an alluring dark green, reminding Eden of sleek mossy rocks after a storm. It was lying on its side and appeared to be passed out.

Eden inched closer, trying to get a better look. Had it flown for too long and fallen from exhaustion? As she neared, she soon realized that wasn’t the case. Covering the width of the dragon’s chest was a nasty burn, already crusting black and bleeding rather heavily.

“Oh, no, oh, no,” Eden murmured, rushing to its side. She inspected the trauma, noticing many lacerations and wounds from the fall. Her eyes then went to the sky, hoping to spot whoever had done this to the poor dragon. She saw nothing.

Springing into action, Eden shifted into her dragon state, silvery lavender scales covering her body. While most females, as dragons, were only marginally different from the males, Eden was on the slender side. Still, she had just as much strength and speed as any of the others. Nuzzling the dragon to get it to move with her, Eden managed to lift it onto her back. She mentally cursed Darian and her father, knowing that because of them, she wasn’t at her best in terms of healing. Regardless, she was going to do everything she could to nurse the dragon back to health and hopefully get to the bottom of what had happened to it.

Soaring into the sky, Eden hugged the tops of the trees so she would stay out of sight, knowing that whoever had attacked the dragon could still be lingering nearby. Flying to the estate took only minutes, no more than fifteen, despite her walking about for hours. Going to her balcony, Eden awkwardly but carefully sat the dragon down and morphed back into her human state. Leaving it on the balcony, she rushed into her room and pulled on a new set of clothes before returning for the beast. As gingerly as Eden possibly could, she dragged it into the room. The dragon dominated the center of the room, especially since it was sprawled out.

Eden didn’t miss a beat, closing the balcony door and drawing the curtains before going to the dragon and positioning her hands in the air above its chest. Closing her eyes, she did her best to empty her head of the rushing thoughts that invaded it. It took several minutes, but she eventually found enough of her center to finally feel her hands cool.

It’s working! Eden thought ecstatically. She tried not to get distracted over the excitement of it and keep her focus on healing the poor beast. She had never had to heal anything as large as the burn in front of her. Since the war with the witches had fallen cold centuries ago, the most real-life practice Eden had had were small scrapes and burns from her brother Theo sparring with his friends.

Eventually, Eden opened her eyes to check the progress she was making. Several layers of skin had healed, but there were still a few to go. An immense sense of pride consumed her. Many had told her in modern times, without war, that there wasn’t a need for her to study healing in the way that she did. This was proof that Eden was doing the right thing by sticking with it.

Crap! she cursed to herself. She had lost her focus, allowing herself to drift into smug thoughts. That was all right—the bulk of the damage had been erased already. Eden fluttered about her bedroom to gather materials to finish patching the dragon up. Even if she wasn’t consciously aware of it, she was selfishly relieved that she had come across the wounded dragon. It had served as a much-needed distraction to get her out of her own head, which she had been imprisoned in for days on end.

When Eden turned around to go back to her patient, she witnessed the body beginning to transition back into its human state—into his human state. A bright blush broke out over Eden’s face, and she exited the room briefly, crossing into Asher’s room, since he wasn’t home. Then she snatched a few articles of his clothing before returning to the shifter. He was still passed out on her rug, causing her to let out a sigh of relief. She set upon the task of dressing the unconscious man before heaving him into her bed so that he could rest comfortably.

If Father knew about this… Oh, to hell with her father. She was doing a noble deed.

For the next couple of hours, Eden cleaned each of the wounds on the shifter, down to the tiny scratches on his hands. She noticed some of the scars he had weren’t fresh, causing her brow to furrow. Who was this man? She didn’t recognize him as one of her father’s warriors, though, admittedly, the warriors those days were more like the reserves than an active service.

As Eden patted a cut on the man’s brow with a cotton ball, she noticed just how handsome he was. Dark brown hair that was straight but disheveled, olive skin, chiseled bone structure. He wasn’t one of the dragons from the western region of Europe, that was for sure. Roman, perhaps? Eden didn’t know many dragons from that region. She continued to clean him up as she stayed lost in thought, lost in the act of caring for someone else.