Dragon’s mere presence addled Jade’s senses. She couldn’t deny any longer the destabilizing effect he had on her.

For four long days, she had kept vigil on the dragon, drawing comfort from the sleeping beast that seemed attuned to her moods. She talked to him, confided her deepest fears as she hugged the warm body, feeling safe. She even took small naps, hugging his feathery scales, relaxing for the first time in months.

But now, as she stood in front of Dragon, Jade trembled because deep inside she wanted him to break his word and take her in his arms.

“Tell me,” she said instead. “What happened that night?”

Dragon’s mouth curved in a small smile as he looked over his shoulder, at the pier that stretched behind him and ended at the destroyed gazebo. “Let’s take Gabriel’s gondola, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Jade couldn’t see the boat, but she knew it was moored behind the gazebo where the vampire had left it for her. She started walking and Dragon fell in step with her. The palest pink now colored the night sky and it lifted her spirit. She jumped inside the gondola and sat at the stern.

Carefully, Dragon lowered himself into the small vessel, then unmoored it and turned on the engine. Finally, he sat on the bench facing hers. She was both relieved and disappointed that even with his legs stretched, he didn’t come any closer to her.

A few minutes passed in complete silence as Jade took Dragon in. He kept his aquamarine eyes on her the entire time.

Only when they were far away from the manor did he speak. “Do you want to know how it all started between us?”

Jade nodded. Alone in the middle of the sea, just the two of them, she could feel her body thrumming from a deep longing for him, and she couldn’t trust herself not to betray her feelings by simply talking.

Dragon gently scooted at the end of his seat. “I wanted you the very first moment I saw you.”

“But I was trying to kill you,” she couldn’t help saying.

“And I thought you were a man. Still, I felt this insane pull toward you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Goddess decided for the both of us. After luring you into a cave, I pinned you to a wall… My intention was to disarm you but the moment I caught a whiff of your scent, I swear I lost my mind. After that, I simply couldn’t function. Nothing mattered but you. I brought you home and tied you to my bed—”

Jade couldn’t help but widen her eyes in horror, but then saw her emotion mirrored in his stare when he saw her reaction and remembered all the times when he could have overpowered her and taken what he wanted but never acted upon his desire.

“I tied you because you were dangerous. You were still trying to kill me any time you had the chance, but I would’ve never—” he started to say, but she stopped him.

“I believe you.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Please, continue.”

“I tried to protect you as best I could, but the Academy sent two different assassins, and I almost lost you. I had never felt so powerless in my life. But then you were alive, and something finally shifted between us. I couldn’t wait any longer to make you mine, and I brought you to the Cove,” Dragon said.

She could swear she felt a sensual energy wafting off from Dragon and engulfing her, making her feel warm and more confused than ever.

“We spent the night together,” he continued. “I took you in the lagoon water and worshipped you until we were too exhausted to continue screaming our pleasure.”

Jade’s hands clutched the edge of her seat. The image he painted left her breathless. What would it feel like to make love to this man who lived life at its fullest? Would it shatter her world? But she had her answer already. He had altered her universe irrevocably, and she must have lost her center, betraying her sacred vows as an assassin to be with him. Otherwise why seek an erasion?

“During that night, I gave you myself, my heart, my body, knowing that there was no coming back once we had been together.” His voice was soft but reached Jade as loud as if he had been shouting.

Her muddied memories merged, and although she still couldn’t remember the reason behind her actions, suddenly, jealousy cut through her heart, searing her as if it were a dagger. “You weren’t free,” she said the first thing that came to her mind, her head swimming as she tried to snap out from her reveries.

Dragon leaned forward. “I would’ve never betrayed you. I’m yours forever.” His hand reached across the space between them, then lowered before touching her knee. “I had to let you go because I was terrified of losing you forever, but it killed me inside.” His haunted look broke Jade’s heart. “You know what my biggest regret is?” he asked.

Jade slowly shook her head.

“I wish I’d told you I would never marry anyone but you, that I’d made it clear before you left me.” He slid from the seat and kneeled before her. “Please, accept me as your mate. Be my bride.”

Without realizing she was doing so, Jade had leaned forward, but at his words, she jerked back and away from him. “I can’t be your bride.”

“Why not?”

“Because assassins don’t marry,” she answered.

“We’re about to have a child. We will be a family. I want you and our child to have the protection of my name.”

“I am a Master Assassin. The marks on my skin are as powerful as any name you or anyone else can give me—” It didn’t matter that Master Eon had stripped her of the title. People would always look at her in fear. Her hand caressed her stomach. “We don’t need protection.”

He visibly flinched. “It’s true. It’s me who feels the need to protect you. It’s in my nature, and I can’t fight it. You are my soulmate and carry my child. Nothing else matters to me. I will fight for us until you realize that what we had, what we can have if you would only let yourself feel, is precious.”

She remained silent, absorbing his words, being lulled by his soft rumble that reverberated through her.

“I don’t know many people who were lucky enough to find true love, but when they did, they didn’t shy away from the flames. They let the fire consume them.” He stared into her eyes as he spoke, stilling her heart with the intensity of his gaze.

It would have been easier to finally let go of any inhibition left and abandon herself to him, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Jade couldn’t give herself to him, but she could be honest with him. He deserved that.

“I don’t know why I had an erasion, and I might never know,” she said. “But one thing I do know. I must have felt strongly about you because whatever we had, it’s still in here.” She pressed her hand against her heart. “And it doesn’t want to go away. These last two weeks, I tried, and I thought I had succeeded.” She shook her head slowly. “But when you were wounded, I felt your pain as if it were mine, and I have no explanation for it. Gabriel made me retire at night, but I’ve barely slept an hour in that basement, waiting for dawn to arrive so that I could slip out and spend the rest of the day by your dragon.”

“When I shift, I can barely sense the outside world, but I feel my dragon’s emotions, and he was content, even peaceful. Now I know why.” Dragon smiled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Jade said. “It was selfish of me. I couldn’t stay away from the dragon. I needed to touch him. He relaxes me, makes me feel safe.”

“It’s the soulmate pull.”

“I still can’t understand why it happened to us.” Jade shifted on her seat and hugged herself, shivering slightly.

“You are cold.” Dragon removed his shirt and handed it to her.

“I’m fine,” she said, automatically.

“My temperature runs high.” He pushed the balled-up shirt toward her. “I don’t need it.”

The muscles on his arms and chest flexed as he moved, mesmerizing her. Dragon made her feel small by comparison, but as with his large dragon, his size didn’t scare her. In fact, it was the opposite.

“Please.” He waved his shirt in front of her.

Jade relented and accepted his offering, putting on the large garment over her head. The warm fabric slid down her shoulders, blanketing her. His scent was everywhere, clouding her senses again.

Why am I affected by your smell alone? she thought but asked instead, “Why are you so protective of me?”

“You were shivering, and it’s written in my genes to take care of you.” He mischievously smiled. “And it’s the closest I can get to marking you and letting everyone else know you are mine.”

“Why do you need to mark me? If we are soulmates, as you say, why does it matter?” Raised in the Citadel, Jade didn’t know anything about courtship or relationships in general.

“How would you feel if someone else were to touch me or act around me in an intimate way? Would you like that?” Dragon asked.

At the image he painted, Jade’s heart drummed in her chest, and her hands again grabbed the edge of the bench to release her rapidly rising anger. She was ready to maim anyone who so much as looked at Dragon with the mere hint of interest.

“Not so pleasant, ah?” He chuckled softly.

“I’ve never before felt all those emotions…” She breathed in and out for a few counts. “It’s unsettling.”

“Talking of unsettling, imagine discovering that your soulmate is the woman hired to kill you,” he said.

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “That must’ve been a shocking surprise.”

“If there ever was one—” He let the sentence trail, regaling her with another of his penetrating stares that sent fresh shivers all over her body. “But I thank the Goddess every day because she gave me you.”

She couldn’t bear his gaze and brought the conversation back to her original question. “And you would feel better if people knew I was yours. That’s why you mark and collar your brides.” When she was preparing to kill Dragon, she read that information about her target. At the time, she had wondered why his race needed to show possession of their mates in such a blatant way.

“It’s a tradition as old as the dragon shifters. When we still lived on Earth, there were more she-dragons than men. That’s how the triad marriages started, but giving birth to shifters was difficult even then. To make things worse, rival clans often kidnapped the fertile women to propagate their lineages. It was a harsh existence, but we protected our mates fiercely—”

“But why the collars?”

“Dragon shifters bit on their mate’s shoulder,” his hand touched his naked skin and showed her the spot, “to inject a substance that slightly changes the genes of the woman and makes it impossible for her to conceive with another man.” He raised one hand when she bristled. “Let me finish. It worked the other way as well.” To her puzzled look, he explained, “The woman bit her man, too, to insure his semen would only take root in her womb.” He smiled. “Of course, nowadays, it’s just for show, given that we need engineered brides to conceive, and my bite wouldn’t change you, but like any other species, we can’t let go of our traditions. They remind us of our origins.”

Jade found herself enthralled in his tale, wanting to know more about him, about his way of life, and why he acted the way he did around her. “I still don’t understand the need for a collar, though,” she said, her hand rising to her throat.

Following her movement, Dragon’s azure pupils darkened. “The bite is given during mating, right when the couple is reaching climax, and it intensifies the pleasure to unbearable heights. It is the most intimate act for a dragon shifter, and the mark from the mating bite doesn’t fade, it remains on your skin forever, binding you to your soulmate.”

He paused and licked his lips, his large, naked chest expanding with each of his breaths. “At the beginning, the collars were necessary because women were attacked by shifters who thought their genes were stronger than the women’s mates. It was a futile attempt to change the women’s already altered physiology and resulted only in senseless deaths. To stop the marauders, our master craftsmen created an alloy that not even the strongest dragon shifter could destroy once the collar was sealed around the woman’s neck.”

Still kneeling in front of her, he leaned forward, coming close to brushing her lips but stopping a hairbreadth from her. “When we left our planet and lost our ability to conceive, we faced extinction and became attached to those traditions because we had nothing left.”

Dragon moved ever so slightly, almost touching her, and Jade gasped.

“So many things changed for us but the need to bite our mate is still strong.” His eyes caressed her skin, lingering on her throat where her hand still resided, growing warm under his gaze. “And I would never want anyone else to see my mark on your body.”

Jade swayed, his voice, his scent, his warmth, all conjuring images of the two of them locked into a sensual embrace, their bodies united, and their souls singing to each other. She had never been a romantic woman, never expected poetry to sweep her away, but she could see herself falling deep into the magic of his world. Then, as she caressed her smooth skin, a sudden realization hit her.

“You didn’t bite me,” she said. It was irrational, but the sting of rejection was hard to ignore.

For all the sweet tale Dragon had spun about his undying devotion for her, when he had the opportunity to make their union official, he hadn’t bitten her. Her unmarred shoulder said as much.

“I don’t know how I can still think and articulate words when my body is exploding at the seams for want of you,” he said, shocking her before softening his expression. “It took all my willpower not to mark you. As I was making love to you, I wanted to sink my teeth into your skin so badly it physically hurt. My dragon clamored inside my head so loud, I feared you would hear him.” He paused, looking at her as if he wanted to devour her. “Remembering that beautiful night is torture. I can’t recall a more perfect moment in my life, and I miss the intimacy we achieved in the Cove so much I can’t breathe.”

“And why didn’t you mark me?” she asked, feeling dizzy and fighting for breath herself.

Shifting on his knees, he answered, “Because it wouldn’t have been fair to you. You didn’t know about the ways of my race, and I wasn’t free at the moment. I had planned to explain all about my urges, the mating bite tradition, and about the collar as soon as things came back to normal and I could break my betrothal contract. But we went from one attack to the next, and I couldn’t risk your life. You were already under the Academy’s radar for sparing me. I wasn’t going to unleash the Front Pro Humanity on my soulmate by collaring you. As much as it kills me that I still can’t claim you as my genes demand, your safety comes first.”

A long silence followed his confession as Jade lost herself in thoughts of them, of what had been and what could be. Finally, she stood and said with a shaking voice, “I’m not ready.” Not because she didn’t want to fall into his spell, but because she was still too afraid to lose herself to him.

“I’ll wait,” Dragon said. “But in the meantime, I’ll be needing a long, cold shower to dampen the raging fire burning me from the inside out.”

She shivered at his words. His honesty cut through her reservations, demolishing the high wall she had built around her, brick by brick.

“I know you want to unbalance me,” she said. “I recognize the tactic. It’s basic warfare.”

“Is it working?” he asked, a dimple appearing on his cheek as his lip curved up.

“It is,” she admitted. “But I’m still not ready.”

“I hate that you refuse me again, but at least we talked. The last time we exchanged more than a few words was soon after that night at the Cove. So, even though my body has never been as hard and in need of release as it is now, I count this as a smashing success.” His smile became brighter. “In fact, we are finally moving along the same track, together.” Throwing a look over his shoulder, he pointed at the small crowd that in the meantime had gathered at the dock. “I have skirted my duties long enough.”

Dragon led the gondola back, and they were soon separated by the people who wanted to talk to him.

Jade spent the rest of the day thinking about what Dragon had said. His words kept her company during the sleepless night she spent at the opposite corner from where he slept in the basement.

The next day, she still was in a daze and tried her best to avoid him as much as possible lest he shock her more.