“Brant said I’d find you in here.”

I glanced up from the canvas. Lorian leaned against the entrance to my studio, eyes scanning the room, hands in his pockets.

“Here I am. What is it?”

I set the brush down, stood, and wiped the brown paint from my fingers. I could’ve tried to conceal the myriad of paintings, tried to conceal my desires. There was no point. Time Lorian knew the truth anyway.

“Brant says you’ve been spending a lot of time in your studio lately.”

“If you want to know something, ask me, not my valet.” I crossed my arms and waited.

He ambled into the room, picking up a canvas of my latest work. “Have you taken her to bed yet?”

“No.”

“It may be just lust.”

“It’s not.”

Lorian set the painting down and walked the room, taking in the proof of my passion. “Obsession, perhaps?”

“No.” My voice dropped to a growl.

Lorian caught my darkening gaze. “You don’t even know her, Lucius.”

“My dragon does. He recognizes her.”

The fire stirring in my gut reminded me on a daily basis who she was to me. There was no denying it anymore. Especially not after our run-in at the gallery. When I first saw her standing there, casually observing my heart in oil and canvas, I wanted to rip them from her view. I had no idea why I’d displayed them in the gallery in the first place. It was as if Fate guided my hand, my brush, my very soul. It was all out of my control, and the thought paralyzed me with fear. And the need to make her understand if she rejected me, then she wiped any possibility of a happy life from existence. Once the dragon decides on his mate, there will never be another to fill the gaping chasm she would leave behind if she refused me.

Lorian finally paused in his wandering, fixing his gaze on me with dawning realization and what I could only describe as shock. “You’re serious.”

Clenching my jaw, I inhaled and exhaled a deep breath, finally ready to admit to someone what was stirring my blood into an inferno. “Would I joke about something like this?”

“She’s human.”

“Apparently, the dragon doesn’t care. Nor do I. If she’ll have me, I’ll take her as mine.”

I didn’t need to say the words heartbonding or soulfire. Lorian understood exactly what I meant. He also realized I wasn’t asking permission of him or my father. When it came to heartbonding, there was no choice except to live without ever having a mate. He knew that wasn’t the path I wanted, not when I’d tasted her and all the promise inherent in her kiss, her beauty, her passion.

“You’re sure?” Lorian scratched his day-old scruff.

I gestured to the room with one hand. “Without a shadow of a doubt.”

He raised a dark brow. “So peculiar.”

“How so?” I heaved out a heavy breath, scowling. “Beyond the obvious.”

“It’s just…who she is.” He shook his head and tapped the edge of the worktable where I held my paints and supplies. “Fate has a nasty sense of humor.”

“Or a righteous sense of justice.”

He didn’t need to point out the obvious. That Jessen was the daughter of the man who had held my mother’s heart, even as she went into death. The man who made our lives a living hell because he’d been rejected by her, even though she’d still loved him. And my mate, the one who held my future happiness in her hands, was his daughter.

Lorian raised a dark brow. “When will you tell her, ask her?”

“As soon as possible. My beast is….” How did I express what I felt? I could easily show it in my art, but words were useless. The closest I could come to the emotion was, “Impatient.”

Lorian nodded. “We’ll be at her home for Cade’s alleged Unity Ball.”

“Yes.” The thought of seeing her again steeled my spine. My muscles tensed, my dragon stretching in preparation, anticipation.

“Will you ask her then?”

“I plan to.” He glanced at a painting of her on the wall behind me, the one I’d never hang in a gallery, the one for my eyes only—standing under moonlight, nude with one slender arm outstretched to me. Lorian’s eyes on the painting stirred my beast awake.

He must’ve sensed it, and smiled. Rare for Lorian. “I’ll always support you, brother. You know that. And she’s well worth taking”—he winked—“from the looks of her.”

I relaxed my shoulders a fraction, my wings retracting.

He turned to leave the room. “Great payback to the old bastard, Cade, too,” he said with a laugh. “Would love to see his face when he gets the news.”

I turned around, searching the eyes of the woman in the painting on my wall. Hoping.

Only if she accepts me.

Moving away from my work, I shoved open the double-doors to the balcony, restless and heated and out of my mind with need. Gripping the wrought iron rail that wrapped the balcony, I glanced down at my paint-stained hands, the caramel brown smudging the edge of my thumbnail and seeping into the grooves of my knuckles. The color of her eyes. At least, the color I’d tried to create to match those heavenly, dark depths. What I couldn’t quite master was the glittering passion and zest for life that shone there. A passion I wanted to capture, to make my own. To share with her.

Arching my neck, I stared up at the twilight sky, the wind ghosting through the buildings and washing over me. I wished the winds could sweep away my carnal thoughts, my heartfelt longings, my soul-stirring need to claim her. Fate had marked me with her cruel hand. And if Jessen refused me, I’d strangle from the torture of not having her. I’d fall into insanity with unrequited need fueling my every waking and dreaming thought.

Last night, I’d dreamed I was standing in a black room, completely engulfed in obsidian. Except for her. An ethereal angel inside a glass dome, smiling at no one as she sat on a swing and admired a wildflower dangling between her fingertips. I’d called her name, but she didn’t hear me. Then I’d called again. Louder. Still nothing. She didn’t even flinch. I rushed to the glass dome and flattened my burning palms to the cold surface. She made no move at all. As if I didn’t exist. Then she stood and gently lay her wildflower on the swing. I screamed her name. She simply walked away and disappeared into a swirling white cloud. All the while I screamed and beat my fists on the unyielding glass. Then my hands burst into flames, the fire traveling with frightening speed to engulf my entire body.

I’d woken with a jolt of panic. Safe and unburnt, but haunted. Soulfire flared and swirled in my breast, reminding me it wasn’t just a dream. It was a premonition of what life would be like if she refused me. I didn’t want to date her. Humans couldn’t understand the agony soulfire could produce in the bodies and hearts of Morgon men. I needed to claim her. Not just her body, but her heart, her soul…her love. Or else face a life of cold darkness, engulfed in flames of my own making. Of nightmares where my angel never heard me and left me behind without a care, without even a glance.

Running both hands through my hair, I stared out across the city at the Morgon buildings, towers of mountainous steel and stone. I looked beyond our territory to the square, symmetrical skyscrapers in the human part of the city. The wind gusted against me, tugging at my wings and pushing at my hair. Would she walk across those social barriers, her family’s border and into my arms?

Only one way to find out. I turned back through my studio and into the house with new determination. Time to prepare for the Unity Ball and face the woman who held my fate in her lovely hands. And convince her she belonged with me.