“For a man who doesn’t want me, you sure end up kissing me a lot,” I snapped, casting yet another glance at my feet before looking around the room. There was no fire to be seen, and only the faintest black smudge on the floor where the little pools of flames had been. “But I’m going to let your overbearing arrogance—”

“I am not arrogant.”

“—and self-centered egotism—”

“I am a wyvern! The welfare of my sept falls on my shoulders.”

“—go, because this fire thing just freaks the bejebus out of me. Wait a minute—dragon fire? That’s a thing? A real thing?”

“Dragons control their fire, yes,” he said, looking impatient.

“I object to that,” I said, pointing at his face. “You can’t give me that impatient, ‘How did you not know that dragons have fire, let alone control it’ look when that’s so out of the bounds of normalcy that it never even struck me as possible. Well, to be true, the same can be said about dragons, but still! You didn’t tell me that the whole fire-breathing dragon thing was real.”

“You are an odd woman,” he said thoughtfully.

“Odd good, or odd bad?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“I have not yet come to a decision. Dragon fire is different from mortal fires. It does not generate as much smoke, and dragons and their mates are not harmed by it. To us, it merely feels… warm.”

“That’s it exactly,” I said, thinking about how my feet felt when they were on fire. “Warm and tingly. Where did the rest of the fire go?”

He was still giving me a speculative look, but that ended when he shook his head and said softly to himself, “No. It is fine for Drake, but I swore never again would I bind myself to a woman. What? As soon as I realized your room was alight, I put out the flames, of course.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. You didn’t move,” I said, wanting to crawl back into bed and pretend the last twenty-four hours hadn’t occurred.

Except, my mind pointed out, that would mean Kostya never kissed me. Twice. And despite his protests that he didn’t want me, and my own common sense that told me to hook up with a man who had a dragon side was nothing short of folly, I very much enjoyed those kisses.

Once again, I sensed a need in him that called to me to give him succor. His was a soul in unrest, and as someone who’d lived through her own hellish nightmare, I felt a kinship that threatened to blossom into something warm and fuzzy.

And if that wasn’t the most ridiculous thought I’d ever had, I don’t know what was.

“I did not need to move. Why are you stalling?”

“It’s called trying to wrap my poor, beleaguered brain around something like dragons and fire, not stalling. Oh, all right. I admit that sound is annoying.” I opened the bedroom door and went into the hallway, where the nearest smoke detector was screeching away.

The hallway was filled with smoke.

“I thought you said—” That was all I got out before Kostya, swearing profanely, grabbed me by the waist and tossed me over his shoulder. He raced down the hall, the breath knocked out of me sufficiently to leave me speechless for about five seconds. When he ran across the living room, I stopped trying to squirm out of his grasp.

The house was on fire, seriously on fire, and I knew without him saying a word that this was no dragon fire that he’d lost control of—smoke, thick and choking, boiled around the room while the kitchen walls were fully engulfed. So was the door to the beach. Kostya spun around and bolted back down the hallway to my bedroom, not stopping even when I squawked to be let down. He simply shifted his weight, smashed one foot through my bedroom window, kicked out the glass shards, and flung me through the gaping hole.

I fully expected to hit the dry, scraggly grass outside my bedroom, but instead I hit something hard that fell backward under my weight. I screamed, thrashing my arms and legs in an attempt to gain purchase on whatever it was, my hair and burning eyes blinding me for a few seconds. Voices shouted nearby, and hard, grasping hands suddenly clawed at me, jerking me to the side.

I kicked out and had the satisfaction of hearing the grunt of pain in response. Just as Kostya leaped out of the window after me, I managed to roll to the side and get to my knees.

The man—and it was a man I’d been flung onto—grappled with Kostya in the very best action-movie manner. Kostya snarled and suddenly shifted into the shape a large, angry black dragon. I gawked when the other man did likewise—only his black was tinged with a dusky red color, with little yellow flecks that dotted his torso.

“Holy cheese on whiz!” I stumbled backward, my eyes huge as I watched the two dragons fight. Tails whipped through the air as bodies twined around each other, claws slashing and drawing crimson arcs of blood that splattered on the yellowish-brown grass.

“What the—Fires of Abaddon! Is that Kostya?”

Jim had come at a run, evidently having been taking a stroll down the beach, judging by the amount of seaweed clinging to his legs.

“The black one is. I don’t know who the other guy is. Nooo!” This last wail was directed to my home when with a roaring whoosh, the roof suddenly collapsed, blasting us with a bank of scalding air. I grabbed Jim and pulled him backward toward the beach, my gaze flitting between the house—now fully engulfed in flames—and the two dragons rolling on the ground locked in deathly combat.

“I dunno either, but he has friends,” Jim said, looking around me. “Wow, they’re dragons, too. Kinda cool-looking, huh?”

I spun around to see three more men come running around the burning house. They didn’t even pause, shifting in midstride to a similar dragon form as the one whose head Kostya was bashing on the ground. Kostya got to his feet, leaving the other dragon twitching and groaning.

“Behind you!” I yelled, pointing at the oncoming dragon horde.

He spun around, stared for a minute, then hurdled the downed dragon and raced straight for them. “Use it!” he yelled over his shoulder at me. “I will hold them as long as I can, but you must use it. They will come for you once they kill me. Use it now!”

“Use wha—Oh.” I looked down at my hand where the gold of the ring glinted gently in the sun.

“What’s he talking about?” Jim asked, watching with interest as Kostya, with a battle cry, flung himself on the three other dragons, sending them all tumbling in a mad whirl of legs and tails and claws.