Chapter 39 Seraphine
Dante cut in gently but firmly.
“Onyx isn’t her real name.”
I blinked. “…What?”
“Her legal name is Renee Marlowe. She changed it when she pledged herself to Kael.”
Renee.
My mind snapped back to the photos.
The case files.
The last-known images of missing women — the woman beside them. The wigs. The dresses.
The same face.
“Renee?” I whispered. “That Renee? The one tied to over ten missing women?”
Lucian nodded grimly. “She’s been scouting for years.”
My blood went cold.
“Scouting for what?”
“For dragonborn,” Dante said. “Testing them. Delivering them to Kael. Eliminating them if necessary.”
My throat tightened painfully.
“Eliminating,” I echoed.
Lucian’s voice dropped. “Shadow Kingdom has no mercy.”
I gripped the table, knuckles white.
“…why would she target me?”
Dante took a step closer — slow, deliberate.
“Because Kael wants powerful consorts. And Renee felt something in you. A dormant spark.”
I swallowed hard.
“But she didn’t take me.”
“No,” Dante murmured. “Because you didn’t react to her.”
He stepped closer.
Heat rolled off him in waves, curling around my spine, sinking under my skin.
“You reacted to me.”
I froze.
Lucian looked away as if politely pretending not to notice the air thickening between us.
Dante continued, voice low and devastating:
“The moment your spark answered mine, Kael felt it. He always senses when a dragonborn aligns with another dragon’s flame.”
My heart hammered.
Aligned.
With Dante?
“And when he realized he wasn’t the one awakening your dragon…” Dante’s expression darkened.
“He grew enraged.”
I stared at him — horrified.
And something else.
“But… why would anything in me respond to you?”
His eyes softened.
And heated.
“Because your dragon knows mine.”
My breath caught.
Lucian cleared his throat. “To summarize: Kael wants to use you. Renee tried to test you. And now Kael is pissed because you responded to Dante instead.”
Amara lifted a hand. “Okay, back up. Are you saying Kael is mad because Seraphine didn’t imprint on his goth concubine and instead imprinted on Dante?”
Lucian blinked. “That’s… surprisingly accurate.”
Amara grinned. “I’m a genius.”
But I barely heard them.
My pulse thundered in my ears.
“So I’m a target,” I whispered. “Because of what I am. Because Kael wants to collect me. Because Renee found me. And because—because…”
I swallowed hard.
“…because of you?”
Dante stepped right in front of me.
Close.
Too close.
“No,” he said softly. “You’re not a target.”
I looked up at him.
He held my gaze — steady, fierce, unmovable.
“You,” he murmured, “are the reason a war could start.”
My stomach flipped.
“But you,” Dante added, heat humming beneath every word,
“will never be a casualty.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Terrifying. Electric. Binding.
I inhaled shakily.
“Why?” I whispered.
His voice dropped to something dark and certain:
“Because I won’t let you be.”
I didn’t even have time to breathe.
One moment Dante was staring at me with that molten, unblinking intensity — the next, his hand was on my jaw, strong and sure, and he pulled me into him.
His mouth crashed against mine.
Not gently.
Not cautiously.
But like he’d finally stopped pretending he wasn’t burning alive.
And god—
I burned with him.
Heat slammed into me the moment his lips touched mine, a wave so sudden and fierce I almost gasped. It washed through me in a rush — relief, recognition, hunger — like my body had been waiting for this, aching for this, long before I ever understood why.
His kiss was not a question.
It was a claim.
A vow.
A warning to anything that dared take me from him.
My fingers curled into his shirt without permission, gripping tight as his tongue slid against mine — slow at first, then deeper, demanding. My knees went weak. My pulse thundered. Every word he had just told me — about dragons, Kael, danger, fate — all of it dissolved beneath the raw, overwhelming flood of heat that poured from him into me.
And god, it felt right.
Like something inside me had been locked away for years and was finally — finally — stretching awake.
But then—
“SHIT!”
Someone’s voice cut through the haze, but I barely registered it.
Because the air around us ignited.
Literally.
Heat exploded outward in a rippling burst, washing over my skin like sunlight made solid. The temperature in the room spiked, the marble floors beneath my boots warming, then scorching. The table beside us cracked loudly, the centerpiece vase bursting from the sudden heat.
Flames curled up the table legs like eager vines.
The floor trembled with it.
The room trembled with it.
And Dante…
He didn’t stop kissing me.
His fingers tightened in my hair, his other arm crushing me against him as if daring the world to interrupt. His lips devoured mine, and the fire answered his hunger — my hunger — swirling around us like a living thing.
Another shout, panicked this time:
“Dante, WHAT THE FUCK—!? Amara, move!”
Lucian.
He grabbed Amara by the wrist and yanked her backward, dragging her out of the room as flames coated the far wall in a shimmering wave.
Amara shrieked, “WHY IS EVERYTHING ON FIRE?!”
Lucian’s voice faded as he hauled her out:
“Because Dante can’t control his fucking emotions!”
But I barely heard them.
Because Dante finally tore his mouth from mine, breathing hard, eyes blazing with fire so bright it didn’t look human.
And my body—
My whole body trembled.
Not from fear.
From relief. From want. From the indescribable certainty that this… whatever this was… had been building since the moment I first saw him.
He cupped my face, thumb brushing my cheek, his voice low and ruined:
“…Seraphine.”
My name sounded like a vow.
A warning.
A promise he had no intention of letting me run from.
My heart thrashed against my ribs.
“Yes…?”
His eyes burned brighter, molten and unrestrained.
“That fire…”
He glanced around us without moving his head.
“…isn’t mine.”
The air punched out of my lungs.
“What?” My voice cracked. “Dante, what do you mean it’s not—”
“It isn’t me,” he repeated, stepping closer, until I could feel his heat again — but the flames didn’t respond to him. Not directly. They flickered, sparked… toward me.
My skin prickled. My fingertips tingled. The world tilted.
I stared at the flames, then at him.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. “You said you’re the fire king. You’re the dragon. You—”
“You’re dragonborn,” he cut in softly. “A dormant fireborn.”
“No.”
My head shook violently.
“No, Dante, I didn’t do this. I—I can’t do this.”
But the flames answered me.
The moment panic tightened in my chest, the fire swelled higher — a column of heat rising behind me like a breath drawn too fast.
I staggered back.
Dante caught me instantly, hands steady on my waist.
“Seraphine,” he murmured, “look at me.”
But I couldn’t.
My eyes were on the fire.
The fire I made.
Oh god!