2. Corin

2

Corin

Another day in hell.

“Mr. Blackburn?”

Corin gritted his teeth as his assistant knocked softly on his office door. It wasn’t that the woman was bad at her job. Quite the opposite. She came highly rated and had brought a level of dull efficiency to his work life that made him want to bunk off and smoke illicit cigarettes behind the bleachers—something that, as heir to the Blackburn dragon clan, he’d never been tempted to do even as a teenager.

But every time she knocked on his door, or patched a call through to his phone, or sat at her desk quietly portioning the rest of his life into seven-minute increments, he was reminded that it wasn’t Maya Flores doing those things. And it never would be again.

From his first day as CEO of Blackburn Inc., Maya had been at his side. He’d known at once they were two stars in orbit around one another. She was his fated mate. The one person in all the world whose soul could have been magically entwined with his.

If he had not rejected her.

At the time, he’d seen no other option. Maya was part of his human life; she had no idea that shifters existed.

Let alone shifters as dangerous as he was.

Duskfire flickered beneath his skin, the shadowy wings that were always ready to unfurl and unleash their terrible power. Not a destructive power, but one that relied on hurts already endured, re-breaking old injuries to new, bloody pain. His duskfire was the most powerful in several generations. A power that made him the only suitable candidate to rule his clan.

A power that flared uncontrollably whenever he imagined claiming Maya Flores as his own.

He could never make her his. Not when it meant making her vulnerable to his magic.

They had worked together for less than a year. Scarcely more time than they had now been apart. And he could no longer say which was worse: all those days of delicious torment, having her so close and knowing she could never be his. Or this daily torture of her being gone.

She knew about shifters now, of course. She’d known even when he thought he was keeping the magic of the world secret from her, and her safe from it.

But she still didn’t know about his magic. Or why he had treated her the way he had.

His dragon stirred, and guilt tracked angry claws down his chest.

He’d rejected her to protect her. He had made his decision, and burned and salted the ground so there was no going back.

And she’d still ended up hurt.

At least where she is now, she’s safe , he reminded himself. His dragon subsided, smoke pouring in surly coils from its nostrils.

“Sir?”

Corin’s eyes snapped to his PA. “Ms. Blanc.”

“Your mail.”

He didn’t need to look at the clock. Every day at a quarter to nine, Ms. Blanc brought him a careful selection of the daily post for his personal attention—at least, as much personal attention as he could give in the time allocated before his next meeting. Invitations. Thank-yous. Veiled threats from other business competitors or dragon clans, for him to glare at…

Inside him, his dragon’s eyes opened wide. Something had caught its attention.

“What is that?” he asked.

Ms. Blanc blinked slowly. “Several invitations to charity events. A report from—”

“Not those.” The envelopes she was arranging on his desk were of no interest. Whatever had caught his dragon’s senses was still outside—a hint of something delicious. Something tempting and forbidden.

He stalked from his desk to the foyer outside. There: beside Ms. Blanc’s desk. A trolley stacked high with documents, envelopes, and parcels.

All his senses snapped onto one parcel. A reinforced mailer—nothing out of the ordinary about it.

The tantalizing hint became stronger. A scent.

Ms. Blanc’s heels tapped on the hardwood behind him. “I apologize, sir, I should have cleared that all—”

A scent he knew.

His dragon wanted to snatch the parcel and fly with it to the heart of his clan’s hoard, but he moved as though through syrup, picking it up with the slow reverence it deserved. How many hands had it been through on its way here? And yet it still retained a hint of the woman who’d sent it.

Why the hell was Maya Flores sending him mail?

The address on the front of the mailer was in her hand. His eyebrow lifted. She must have been angry when she wrote it; he recognized the firmness of those up-strokes, the decisive slash of the crossed T’s.

No need to wonder why Maya would be angry at him. He’d made sure of that. But what—

His nostrils flared. Gold. This parcel held gold.

Deep inside him, his dragon raised its shadowy head.

Dragons hoarded all precious treasures. His personal hoard could have purchased half the city; his clan’s hoard was priceless, a collection gathered over centuries, treasures as valuable for their histories as for the sheer volume of gold and jewels. All dragons knew of the Blackburn hoard and coveted it, but no one had ever managed to break into their vaults.

Theft was, of course, the primary way dragons sourced treasures for their hoards. Either stealing them from other hoards, or following tales of lost treasure to dig it up from the ground.

There was only one reason anyone would give a dragon gold.

To strengthen the bonds of family. To enact a claim upon the recipient.

Heat surged within him, a hungry flame. Maya had sent him gold. Had she guessed what he’d kept hidden from her all this time? She lived among shifters now—she would have learned about magic, because nothing would stop his Maya from learning everything there was to know about any subject that dared be unknown to her. She would know about fated mates.

About everything he had denied her.

And she had sent him gold .

The flame was ravenous within him. He tore into the parcel, slicing it open with a fingernail sharpened to a claw. A handful of shredded packaging puffed out. Strange, it looked as though she’d packed the mailer with the remnants of another, discarded package.

A slim jewelry case slid into his hand, weighty with promise. And somehow familiar.

He narrowed his eyes and opened the delicate clasp.

As the lid fell back, the treasure nestled inside caught the light and threw it back in a thousand prismed rainbows.

Ice flooded his veins.

He knew this necklace.

He knew where it should have been. Not anywhere that Maya Flores would have access to it.

And then a note slid from the mailer, Maya’s handwriting emblazoned across it in angry black strokes:

DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE GIFTS.

Shadows poured over his skin. The magic he kept hidden inside himself boiled out, seeking destruction. He reined it—barely.

Someone had stolen a priceless treasure from his clan’s hoard.

And had sent it to his mate.