Chapter 1
BELLA
Some mornings, my life still feels completely ridiculous.
A few months ago, I was hunting dragons.
Now I wake up next to one.
Not just any dragon either.
The Dragon King.
The thought still manages to make me smile as Maya and I walk through the city with coffee in our hands, surrounded by people who have absolutely no idea that creatures they would consider myths are walking among them.
I like that.
The normality of it.
Cars passing beside us. Someone arguing on the phone. A mother trying to keep her toddler from running into a store. The smell of coffee and warm bread drifting from the café behind us.
Nobody looks at me and sees Blaze’s mate.
Nobody knows about the mark hidden beneath my clothes or the fact that I can now shift into something I was once trained to kill.
Here, I’m just Bella.
And I need that more than I expected.
Maya takes a sip from her cup as we cross the street, glancing at me over the rim.
“You’ve been suspiciously quiet for at least two minutes,” she says, amusement already creeping into her expression. “Which is honestly starting to concern me.”
I laugh softly. “Maybe I’m enjoying the silence.”
The sideways look she gives me makes it obvious she doesn’t believe that for a second.
“Bella, you live with a man who barely speaks to anyone unless he absolutely has to, and somehow you still manage to fill every quiet moment around him. Silence has never really been your thing.”
A laugh slips from me as we weave around a group of people blocking the pavement.
“He speaks plenty when he’s with me.”
Maya’s mouth curves around the edge of her cup. “Exactly. That was kind of my point.”
This is what I missed when everything changed.
Not Maya. She never went anywhere.
Just this version of us.
Coffee. Shopping. Pointless conversations. Walking through the city without every decision somehow becoming connected to dragons, mates, kingdoms or people trying to kill someone.
For a while, I thought choosing Blaze meant choosing his entire world over mine.
I know better now.
I chose him.
That doesn’t mean I stopped being human.
Maya and I don’t even have our old apartment anymore. We gave it up after everything changed. She lives at the castle with Darius now, and somehow that suits them better than either of them would ever admit.
I never fully moved into one place. Some nights I stay with Blaze at the castle. Other nights we disappear to his apartment in the city, where it’s quieter and nobody needs him to be King for a few hours. I like having both.
My fingers brush unconsciously over the spot where his mark rests beneath my shirt.
Warmth immediately spreads under my skin.
Familiar.
Comforting.
Maya notices, because Maya notices everything.
Her gaze drops briefly toward my hand before returning to my face, amusement already settling there.
“There you go again.”
I pull my hand away and glance at her. “What?”
She nods toward the place beneath my shirt.
“That. Every time your mind wanders to Blaze, your hand goes straight to the mark. You don’t even realize you’re doing it anymore.”
I look ahead, tightening my fingers around my coffee instead.
“You pay way too much attention to me.”
Maya only raises one eyebrow, looking far too pleased with herself.
Before I can defend myself, my phone vibrates inside my coat pocket.
Her eyes flick down toward it and then back to me, the smile spreading across her face before I have even checked the screen.
I give her a warning look while reaching into my pocket.
“Enjoy this silently.”
Her smile only gets worse.
I pull my phone out.
Blaze: Having fun, beautiful?
The smile comes before I can stop it.
Maya catches it immediately and shakes her head with exaggerated disappointment.
“Wow. One text. That’s all it takes now.”
I ignore her and start typing, which only makes her laugh beside me.
Bella: More fun than you are at the castle.
Blaze answers almost instantly.
Blaze: That’s not difficult.
I can practically hear the dry tone in his voice.
Another message appears.
Blaze: When are you coming back?
Warmth curls through my chest, and this time I know it isn’t only the mate bond.
Bella: Miss me already?
I expect some arrogant response.
Instead—
Blaze: Always.
I stop walking for half a second.
Such a simple word.
And somehow it hits harder coming from him.
Blaze can walk into a room full of powerful dragons and silence them without raising his voice. He can be terrifying without moving a muscle. With Darius and Kael, half his conversations consist of insults, orders, and the occasional threat when Darius pushes him too far.
But with me—
He gives me pieces nobody else gets.
Soft ones.
I tuck the phone away.
Maya catches up beside me and studies my face for a moment before making an exaggerated grimace.
“Look at you. Completely in love, ridiculously happy, smiling at your phone in the middle of the street. I barely recognize you.”
I laugh and bump my shoulder into hers hard enough to make her step sideways.
“Keep walking before I accidentally spill that coffee all over you.”
Her laugh follows me as we enter another shop.
For the next hour, life becomes beautifully ordinary.
Maya tries to convince me I don’t need another black dress.
I buy one anyway.
She claims I already own the exact same thing.
I explain that the neckline is different.
She informs me that nobody except me cares.
By the time we step outside again, both of us are carrying bags and Maya has somehow moved on from judging my clothes to complaining about Darius.
“He argues just to argue,” she says, pushing the door open with her shoulder. “I swear, half the time he doesn’t even care what we’re arguing about. He just keeps it going because he thinks irritating me is entertaining.”
I follow her into the cold air and take one look at the smile she is trying to hide.
A laugh slips out of me.
“You realize you’re smiling while you complain about him, right?”
Maya’s expression flattens immediately.
“I am not smiling. This is what rage looks like.”
That only makes me laugh harder.
“Of course it is.”
She points at me as we continue down the street. “Not another word.”
She mutters something under her breath about Darius being an idiot, and I let her keep talking while we move through the crowded street.
They’ve always been like this.
Darius is exactly the same.
The two of them could argue about the weather for forty minutes and both walk away convinced they’d won.
Blaze once told me he has no idea how Darius enjoys it.
I told him I have no idea how he puts up with Darius at all.
He didn’t answer.
Which was an answer.
We reach the corner of the street and stop near a crossing.
I watch the lights change while Maya digs through one of her shopping bags, still talking about something Darius said this morning.
For a moment, I barely listen.
Not because I don’t care.
Because I’m happy.
The realization comes quietly.
There was a time when happiness felt temporary to me. Like something I shouldn’t trust because eventually it would be taken away.
Now I have mornings like this.
Maya beside me.
Blaze waiting for me.
A life that still doesn’t make complete sense, but one I chose anyway.
I don’t miss hunting.
I don’t miss the anger.
I don’t miss believing every dragon deserved to die.
There are parts of myself I left behind when I chose Blaze.
I thought that would hurt more.
It doesn’t.
The light changes.
Maya steps forward—
then suddenly stops.
I nearly walk straight into her.
“What are you—”
I cut myself off.
Something in her face has changed.
Her eyes are fixed somewhere across the street.
“Maya?”
She doesn’t answer immediately.
That alone is enough to make unease creep up my spine.
I follow her gaze.
At first, all I see are strangers.
People moving between shops. A couple standing near the corner. Someone carrying groceries.
Then one face separates itself from all the others.
My breath catches.
Dark hair.
Familiar eyes.
A face that belongs to a life I haven’t thought about in a long time.
For one second, my brain refuses to accept it.
Then the man looks directly at me.
And freezes too.
Lucas.
Maya slowly moves closer beside me.
Neither of us says anything.
Across the street, recognition spreads over Lucas’s face.
And then he starts walking toward us.
