Hoardsworn

Kestrel is a lock-and-ledger thief out of the mining town at the foot of Direfell, the kind of thief a fence sends up the mountain when losing her costs him nothing. One climb, one lift, one old relic out of the hoard of the Wyrm the whole realm swears burns its villages, and she will have a purse fat enough to jump the crooked walk forever. She gets in. She gets caught. And then she learns the first thing the realm has always lied about.

Vael, the Wyrm of Direfell, is grave and gold-eyed and older than the crown that hunts him. He warns her off. He tells her plainly what he is. And then he does the one thing a monster is not supposed to do: he cannot keep her, or take one coin of what she stole, or lay a single claim on her, unless she gives it, freely, and he will let it go the moment she takes the word back.

It turns out the oldest law of his kind is that a dragon holds only what is freely given, and that to take by force rots a dragon into exactly the mindless burning thing the songs are so afraid of. Which means the ragged burnings the realm lays at his door were never his at all. Kestrel has appraised enough forged seals to know a lie when the die sits wrong, and the true monster does not lair in the mountain. He wears a crown.

Hoardsworn is a standalone dark dragon romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. For adult readers.