He walked away from the ceremony bells.
Not from Idris. From the formal hall. From sixty people in good clothes and an arrangement that was no longer what he was willing to give. Caelan made that choice in a corridor, in the gold of late afternoon, with his hand around Idris's and his dragon finally, completely certain.
The consequences don't wait for morning.
Book Two of The Ember Throne Saga picks up in the hours after the announcement that wasn't — and the one that was. The bond is set. The child is confirmed. The war council is angry, the Ashborn are moving, and someone named Varek has been watching the citadel for six months with a very clear idea of what the prophecy means and who he needs to remove from the board.
Idris understands the situation. He has understood it since the archive, since the healer, since the moment he read a two-hundred-year-old text and saw himself in it. He is carrying fire that isn't his own and a child that is, and the cost of standing where he's standing is going to keep arriving in new shapes.
He stands there anyway.
Thessaly Vorn, who should be an enemy, turns out to be something else. Raeth is always three steps ahead. Mira keeps notes. Pell watches the ceilings. And Caelan — Caelan is learning, for the first time in his life, what it feels like to build something instead of just defend it.
Scales and Smoke is the second book in The Ember Throne Saga: an established relationship fantasy romance with a siege, a found family that nobody planned, a pregnancy that changes everything it touches, and an ending that is warm and complete while the larger war stays exactly as unfinished as it should be.
Contains: MM romance, omegaverse, dragon shifters, mpreg, established relationship, political intrigue, external threat, found family, pregnancy. HEA-adjacent ending with series continuation.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Not from Idris. From the formal hall. From sixty people in good clothes and an arrangement that was no longer what he was willing to give. Caelan made that choice in a corridor, in the gold of late afternoon, with his hand around Idris's and his dragon finally, completely certain.
The consequences don't wait for morning.
Book Two of The Ember Throne Saga picks up in the hours after the announcement that wasn't — and the one that was. The bond is set. The child is confirmed. The war council is angry, the Ashborn are moving, and someone named Varek has been watching the citadel for six months with a very clear idea of what the prophecy means and who he needs to remove from the board.
Idris understands the situation. He has understood it since the archive, since the healer, since the moment he read a two-hundred-year-old text and saw himself in it. He is carrying fire that isn't his own and a child that is, and the cost of standing where he's standing is going to keep arriving in new shapes.
He stands there anyway.
Thessaly Vorn, who should be an enemy, turns out to be something else. Raeth is always three steps ahead. Mira keeps notes. Pell watches the ceilings. And Caelan — Caelan is learning, for the first time in his life, what it feels like to build something instead of just defend it.
Scales and Smoke is the second book in The Ember Throne Saga: an established relationship fantasy romance with a siege, a found family that nobody planned, a pregnancy that changes everything it touches, and an ending that is warm and complete while the larger war stays exactly as unfinished as it should be.
Contains: MM romance, omegaverse, dragon shifters, mpreg, established relationship, political intrigue, external threat, found family, pregnancy. HEA-adjacent ending with series continuation.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Used availability for Wolf Specter's Scales and Smoke