She put a cold-iron bolt through his shoulder. Now she owns his interrogation.
Ivy Sloane is the Vigil's best tracker, and she has hunted the Missoula anomaly for a year. She knows exactly what Nash Cole is: a monster wearing a firefighter's skin. The cold iron in his shoulder proves it. The cage proves it. Everything proves it, right up until the moment his restraints slip in the cell and he puts his own hands back in the cuffs instead of killing the guard.
Nash has been the Prime for all of a few months, and captivity is teaching him fast. Chained in a desert black site, stripped of his fire, he does the one thing Ivy's file says his kind never does: he shows mercy. Then he shows her the Vigil's own records, a kill order for a dragon child with a school photo, and the certainty she built her whole life on starts coming apart in her hands.
When the Culling Protocol arms and the people she trusted turn their weapons on everything she loves, Ivy has one choice left. Burn the badge. Turn the gun. Walk out with the dragons.
And then comes the claiming no human has ever survived: a Prime's bite is supposed to kill a human woman. His fire has to choose her, consciously, or it burns her hollow.
It chooses.
Cold Iron is Book 3 of the Emberbound series, a dragon-shifter romantasy with explicit adult consensual content. Claiming, biting, and bonds sealed in fire.
