“Morgan, why is there a ship in the back?”
“Ah, that's the Unbending. The crew abandoned it because they were terrified of me, and it's full of things I wanted. I decided that I could just haul it up in here. There's a hidden bay in the back that I can come through, and Cai helped me...”
“So all those stories about dragons and gold are real.”
Morgan smiled a little.
“This is mine,” he said, and there was something almost formal about his voice. “This is mine, and everything that is mine is also yours.”
She turned away from the gold glimmering in the soft light to look at Morgan himself. When she looked at him, her heart twisted with love and care and grief for the lines at the corner of his eyes, for the sadness and rage she had seen in him.
“Everything in this place is mine?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Absolutely everything?”
He nodded.
She crossed the space between them, taking his hands. She noticed absently that he was gentle with her right hand, holding it carefully, always aware that it might pain her.
“All right. Then that means you belong to me, and so does your story.”
“My story...”
“Yes. Morgan. I've held back before this, and maybe I shouldn't have. Please. Tell me what happened.”
For a moment, she thought that he would refuse. She didn't know what she might do then, because she didn't know how to live with someone who wouldn't give her the courtesy of the truth, but then he drew her back to sit on one of the chests, sitting down beside her.
“It was back in '23,” he said. “I was back from Europe, ready to be home for a while. Cai was leaving just as I was arriving, and he told me to keep an eye on things, to watch out for a rogue that had been harrying the coast.”
“Rogue?”
“A clanless dragon. A dragon without a clan to protect. Sometimes their clan has been destroyed, and it has driven them mad, or they went mad and destroyed their own clan.”
Harper shuddered, and Morgan nodded, his face grim.
“They are rare, but they do happen. When there was a report that he was sighted close to our territory, I was – I don't even remember. Isn't that strange? Something was going to happen that changed the course of my life, and I don't remember what came before it.”
Harper closed her hands over his. She could almost feel the pain coursing through him, wished she could take it into herself.
“Tell me what you do remember.”
Morgan let out a long breath.
“I remember it was close to dawn. I remember meeting him over a rise to the west. He was about my equal in size, but older. I remember how scarred he was. I remember he saw me and how he roared. He didn't care about me. By that point, he was just...he was just a walking wall of anger. He came for me, and it wasn't just victory he wanted.”
Harper shivered. She could too easily imagine what that might have looked like. She had seen Morgan ascending into the air for battle. She could understand the necessity perhaps, but it made her stomach turn over.
“We fought. We were, I think, well-matched. I just don't remember much of it. When I think back, it's like there's a haze over everything. Some things, the light on his scales, the tops of the trees, are as sharp as anything. Others…it's lost.”
He shook his head.
“We fought. I drove him off, but not before I got the full weight of his body slamming me into a cliff face.”
“On your right. By your shoulder and your wing.”
For a moment, Morgan almost looked angry, but then he nodded. The acceptance there was worse, and she pressed closer to, him, trying to show him that she didn't care, would never care about it.
“Yes. He had already turned to flee, which was good, because I was falling through the sky. I hit the ground as a human, and I lay there for almost a day and a night before anyone found me. And then, a few years later when I transformed again…Well, you saw.”
“I saw you doing your utmost to protect me,” she said fiercely.
“And now I am going to protect my family the way I should have done years ago,” Morgan responded grimly. “Tomorrow, I'm going to go to Cai and tell him we need to find someone else to hold my – the sunstone. If I can't do my job any longer, then someone else needs to step up.”
His voice was granite, but she could hear the sleepless nights that had led up to him making this decision, to giving up the fierce joy and power she had seen when he was in his dragon form.
“Harper.”
“What?”
“I understand if…if this isn't what you signed on for…and I will understand if -”
She put her hand over his mouth.
“If you finish that sentence, I will be very angry with you,” she said pleasantly.
Over her hand, Morgan raised his eyebrows in query.
“If you begin to imply that I'm less interested in you because you think you are broken in some way, if you think that I care about that, I will not be held responsible for my actions.”
Harper pulled her hand away, and Morgan nodded. They were silent for a long moment, and then Morgan took her hand gently in his.
“Don't say thank you,” she warned him. “I'm here because I want to be, not for pity, not for kindness. I -”
Now it was her turn to hesitate, and Morgan's eyes had a hot molten gleam to them.
“Say it,” he said, and there was a dragon's growl in his voice, sending a shiver of pleasure through her body.
“I'm your true mate,” she said. “Whatever comes.”
Morgan nodded, never taking his eyes off of hers. She felt as if they were the
