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I pat him on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

He grunts and keeps his nose in the plans. I slip out of the office and ease the front door shut. I jog down the porch steps and around the side of the cabin to where the bedroom window faces the tree line.

A bag drops out of it and thumps onto the grass at my feet. I scoop it up. It’s stuffed full and smells like her. My dragon snarls and snaps my wings open. I push off the ground and rise through the night air toward my runaway mate.

She’s straddling the sill with her dress hiked up around her thighs and a foot still planted inside. Aya is concentrating on her escape and doesn’t catch my scent at all. The claiming must have her senses clouded.

She leans out and comes face-to-face with me hovering there. She yelps and jerks back.

I dangle her packed bag off my finger. “Going somewhere?”

She recovers faster than I’d like. “Yeah. Home.”

My teeth-print is still healing on her, and she’s sitting in my window calling somewhere else home. “Home?” I snarl. “What the fuck, Aya? You are home.” I jab my finger at the claim mark on her neck. “Or did you forget what that means?”

She huffs and turns toward the trees. “Yes, Ezra. My home is with you. I misspoke.”

I shake the bag at her. “What are you doing sneaking out of my window?”

“I heard you and Aaron. You have to go before Jacob and apologize.” She lifts her chin at me. She’s hanging out of a second-story window and still trying to win. “I’m going to talk to him first. Smooth things over so it goes well.”

“No, you’re not,” I tell her.

“But…” She swings her inside leg up onto the sill.

I lose my cool without any warning smoke from my nose and ears this time. My dragon rips control from me. Fire explodes out of my mouth and lights up the side of the cabin. The blast of heat slaps back into my face. I slam my jaws shut and choke the flames back, but scorch marks already streak the wooden siding inches from the window frame. I gag on the stink of burnt wood. Mother Fate, I almost burned my mate.

“Get your fucking ass back inside,” I bellow.

She shrieks and throws herself backward off the sill and onto the bedroom floor with a thud.

I toss the bag in after her. She’s scrambling around in there with the soft, wounded sounds that usually melt me, but my dragon isn’t having any of it tonight.

I hover in front of the window with my wings beating hard to keep me level. “You are sore and weak from the claiming process.”

She’s on the bed now with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her bottom lip trembles as tears well in her eyes. Her scent sours with hurt.

It takes all the fire out of me. I drop in the air before I catch myself.

I groan. “Give me a few minutes, Aya. I’ll get rid of Aaron and come upstairs and look after you.”

She lowers her gaze without a word and submits. The new bond twists in my gut. My dragon whines and backs down. I hate when she looks like that, and I hate worse that I’m the one who caused it.

I push the window down to a crack. Back on the ground, I take in the damage I did to the cabin wall. There’s no way Aaron missed that.

My dick still aches from being milked by Aya’s body like I’m a cow at the dairy. I’m tired and thirsty. My dragon is wide awake now and rumbling about a celebratory hunt to honor the claiming. All I want in this entire world is to crawl back into bed with her in my arms and sleep for a week.

I pull my wings into my back and head for the front door. It’s going to be a long while before I get any peace with my mate.

18

EZRA

Back inside, I close the front door. Aya’s scent drifts down the stairs from the bedroom, and my dragon pulls hard toward it. I make myself turn into the office instead. I find Aaron exactly where I left him, hunched over the planetarium floor plans. He doesn’t look up when I walk in.

He taps the arc of the glass panels. “The dome curvature is stunning,” he says. “Amari helped design this?”

“He had a huge hand in it. Levi never touched this one.” I lean against the doorframe. I can still smell the scorched siding from here. “The stars are mine. Every constellation visible from Wintermoon is going on that dome for my father.”