When Zayd plunged inside Niva, his mind spun.

Her body surrounded him, her warm wetness like the tide pulling him deeper into a sea of peaceful serenity. The anger that had latched onto his heart like a parasite receded, and his mind cleared. For the first time in years, he felt like himself.

In that moment of pure connection, he sensed exactly what Neva felt too. Like she was on his back and they were soaring high through the cloud-laced skies. He knew her. The thrill of him inside her, the completeness of their joining, pulsed straight from her heart to his.

It had never been like this before.

Her skin was soft and supple under his touch, and he couldn’t stop stroking her hip, her side, her back as he watched his cock slide in and out of her, wet with her desire, her ass up in the air for him, her pussy taking every powerful stroke he gave her. The moment extended into infinity, and the sight of her beautiful dark skin quivering with need became more than he could resist.

He pulled back, relishing her warmth that tightened around his cock, trying to suck him back in. Plunging back into her, he growled as desire zinged through his body. With each pulse inside her, she came further undone beneath him.

He felt how close she was even before she begged, “Zayd. Please. More.”

He growled and dove deeper, thrusting his hips up at an angle that made her cry out, her voice strangled. His hand, fisted in her hair, kept her in place against him. He wanted to own her, mark her as his, and fill her so that every Draqon within miles would be able to scent him on her flesh.

The need was so strong that it clenched his throat. She had to be his. There was no other way. But to tumble over the edge terrified him. To let go, unrestrained, and bare himself to her sounded like the best thing in all the worlds and the worst.

“Zayd,” she moaned beneath him, turning to look back at him over her shoulder. Her light-colored eyes flashed in the darkness, her lips swollen from their kissing. His grip in her hair tightened, and he craned her neck back to reveal more of her neck.

He was right at that edge, ready to throw himself over. Then she shifted beneath him, closing her legs and making her pussy impossibly tight around his cock as he rammed back inside her.

The sensation was like shifting. Like exploding from his skin and becoming something more, something better. Her cry matched his, and he pulled back and rocked into her tight body again and again.

There was no notion of holding back now. There was only the fall from the edge inside him.

He was useless to stop it.

It drove him harder and faster until he jackhammered into her with abandon. He let himself release his iron hold on his control and gave over completely to the needs of his body. His skin hummed and everyplace they touched vibrated.

When his hips slammed into her again, a strangled cry broke from his lips. He’d never felt anything like this, the absolute freedom of giving himself over to another person, unrestrained. As his body began to pulse and his balls tightened with his impending orgasm, he reached around Niva’s small body, dragging his fingers to her wet slit to seek out the bundle of nerves that would bring her to the ultimate high.

When he found her clit, she bucked against him, arching her back, and cried out his name. It echoed through the mountain pass and in his heart, swelling pride deep within him.

They flew together in every way, bodies in perfect sync, and as Zayd pounded into her pussy, he reached a point where all rational thought evaporated. All that existed in the universe was Niva’s body. He pushed her harder to the ground and slammed his hips down at a new angle.

She screamed, her body convulsing beneath him. The clench of her inner walls around his cock pushed him over, and he roared in answer.

Pleasure exploded in his body, sending out an avalanche of passion and emotions that washed over him, leaving him exhausted and shaking. As Zayd’s orgasm overtook him, he wrapped his arms around her and slammed his body into her one last time, quivering with uncontrollable thrusts.

Niva collapsed beneath him, and he lowered his weight, not wanting to pull out of her quite yet. He wrapped around her back, shifting her tight against him so there was no room between their skin. Running his hands down her sides, over her arms, through her hair, he stroked every inch of her, wanting no part of her perfect body to be untouched.

She hummed as his hand stroked her belly, and he lowered his lips to the sensitive flesh behind her ear and whispered, “So fucking beautiful.”

“Zayd,” she said, her voice rasping. “That was…”

“I know.”

In his post-sex haze, he wanted to tell her that being inside her was the closest thing to peace he’d ever felt. That the freedom her body had offered up would be cherished. He wanted to keep her with him forever.

He chewed on her shoulder, lazily thrusting his cock in and out of her just to feel the last few moments of connection.

She let out a low moan as he pulled out and rolled onto his back. Instantly, without her warmth around him, he felt an emptiness he knew wouldn’t be filled until he was inside her again.

Like she felt it too, Niva gasped, arms and legs quivering.

Zayd blinked, trying to clear his vision from the lust-filled haze he had been lost in while Niva wiped something off her cheek and then turned her hand to show him.

Blood.

He could only see a bit of darkness on her fingers, but the smell cut through him like a knife in the gut. “You’re bleeding.”

“I scraped my cheek on the rocks,” she said, offering him a shy smile. But a tear of blood welled atop her delicate cheekbone, ready to fall down her glowing skin.

In that moment, her face disappeared. Her blood wasn’t her own, but someone else’s.

The mountain ridge fell away from them, and all he saw was a battle-filled sky.

He heard the screams of Draqons, the gusts of their wings, the whiz of arrows.

He saw Sotu, her neck coated in blood.

He saw her falling from him, through the fire. Her terrified eyes locked on his as she screamed for him to save her. He saw himself diving down through his own flames, burning himself nearly alive to reach her.

He saw himself failing.

Zayd scrambled up and stumbled away, scrubbing at his eyes to rid them of the memory.

“Zayd?” Niva asked, sitting up. “Are you okay? What’s happening?”

He shook his head. Her voice morphed and became Sotu’s. Became his mate’s.

His dead mate.

The mate he couldn’t even follow into death.

Because they hadn’t been true mates.

Because his true mate was this human before him, who stared up at him with green eyes, shivering without his body to warm her.

Niva was his true rider.

Sotu had died for nothing. And because he was the worst sort of man, he would probably get Niva killed as well.

“Talk to me,” Niva said from the ground. She covered her breasts with her arm, using her other hand to keep her long black hair from blowing across her face. A drop of blood spilled down her cheek.

She was beautiful and perfect and everything he didn’t deserve.

He shouldn’t get a second chance.

Sotu hadn’t.

“I… I’m sorry…” He took two steps away and then broke into a run, leaving his leathers and the small naked woman he didn’t think he could ever apologize to enough on the ground behind him.