The Dragon's Mate

by Emilia Hartley

  She sat up and looked back at the man lying next to her. His arms spread wide while his eyes were closed. She didn’t know the sounds of a sleeping man. She’d never stayed overnight with one before. There was never anything to talk about in the morning and she wanted to avoid the awkward morning retreat for either of them.

  “Don’t stare,” he said.

  She jumped and a bubble of laughter escaped her. But, the real world slowly invaded her thoughts. She’d lost track of time while she’d lost herself in him. Dakota fumbled off the bed, yanking his shirt over her head before searching desperately for her phone.

  Her heart sank when she found the time. She had missed her interview with the art history professor to discuss her intentions while abroad. She let her weak knees drop her to the floor. The rug beneath her knees wasn’t enough to absorb the impact.

  “What is it?” Wes asked from behind her.

  “I have to go back to school soon. Can you take me without… you know, being seen?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. His peaceful face was exchanged with one of loss. His lips were set in a thin line and the tension that had filled his jaw that morning had returned. It hurt her to have to see that kind of sadness on his face, but she had to get back to school. He had to know that this was just a one night thing.

  Right?

  She couldn’t date a dragon. It was out of the question. Her mother would absolutely flip her lid. She laughed at the idea of her mother’s reaction. Tiny Bea would be a mess of anxiety and worry for her only daughter.

  “I have a life that I need to get back to,” she told him, softly. “I can’t stay here forever.”

  “Why not?” he whispered in return.

  She paused. Looking around, she could have easily forgotten the world outside his tower bedroom. She could crawl back onto the bed and curl up beneath his arm. Yet, she hadn’t worked as hard as she had through her childhood to throw it away for a man, a dragon man. Those years filled with work had to mean something, right?

  Finally, Dakota shook her head. “I have to go back.”

  He ran his hands over his face. Once his hands fell away, the man she’d seen earlier returned. He gave her a lopsided smile and rolled off the bed to find where his pants had fallen. Wes tugged his pants on and Dakota was a little sad to see his round ass disappear. Her eyes roved up his body until she met his eyes.

  The sound of her stomach broke the silence between them. Dakota laughed and held a hand to her stomach. Her stomach growled again and she found that their lovemaking had left her voraciously hungry. She was grateful that she took her birth control regularly despite normally being sexually inactive. There was no threat of finding herself carrying a dragon baby. Then another thought struck her. Her face warmed.

  “What is it?” Wes asked, closing the space between them and gently resting his hands on her arms. He rubbed his palms up and down her skin.

  She didn’t know quite how to ask the question that burned through her mind. She damned her vivid imagination for its intrusion. Eventually, she turned her head up to him. “Do dragons give birth to…” The idea seemed absurd now that she began speaking. What was she thinking? “Do dragons give birth to eggs?”

  Wes let out another laugh like the one that had cause the whole pub to stop and stare at him the night before. It came from deep within his belly and rumbled through her arms. It settled within her and made her smile despite the shame she felt for her odd question.

  He shook his head, wiping away a small tear of laughter. “No. Our mates give birth to children. They might not look completely human, but they are children all the same. That I can promise you.”

  “What do you mean they don’t look completely human?” Dakota asked, her curiosity overpowering her good sense to shut up. “Do they… do you look like a lizard when you’re born?”

  Wes smiled again. He sat on the edge of the mattress. “Maybe just a little. It isn’t so much that we are born with tails or anything odd as that. Some of us are born with our beasts in our eyes. Others bear marks of scales, red birthmarks on the skin in the shape of the scales of our beasts. But, they are always in the shape of healthy little human children, with cute little toes and chubby arms.”

  She smiled at his description of children. Wes was a surprise to her. She’d never imagined meeting a dragon in her life, but she’d imagined them plenty. He was nothing like the brooding and imposing men that she’d dreamed up. He wasn’t a brute.

  Instead, the man she stood before had a boyish smile on his face that warmed in her presence. He looked inviting and like laughter was always waiting on the edge of his lips. Living with a man like Wes in your life would mean to know laughter and love on a daily basis, she thought. He would be the kind of guy to nuzzle your neck while you worked, maybe even write silly notes back and forth. She wanted to close the space between them and enclose herself in his arms for the day.

  But, Dakota had responsibilities. She had a future that she had worked hard for so far. She’d sacrificed so much of her younger years for work so that she wouldn’t end up like her parents, barely making ends meet in jobs that meant nothing to them. Not even a dragon man was going to screw that up for her.

  “Would you mind if I took you out to lunch before I brought you back to campus? It is the least that I can do for you. We can go somewhere no one will recognize me, if that makes you happy.”

  She shouldn’t, she told herself. She really shouldn’t. But, her lips parted and the words that came out did not agree with logic. “I would like that, I think.”

  He shot up from his seat, his grin taking over his face. A dimple sat neatly on each side of his smile. It made Dakota swallow hard.

  “But, I need something a little more covering than a men’s tee shirt.”

  His eyes raked over her naked legs and she felt warm. How could he look at her and make her feel such things? How could he look at her like she was the only thing he ever wanted in life? She fidgeted under his gaze, making him propel into motion.

  “I might have something a bit smaller left around here. Female dragons are rare, but I have a female cousin and she comes here from time to time to escape her own family. They’re over protective of her and it drives her a bit crazy.”

  Wes returned with a pair of plain, black leggings and a long t-shirt that promoted a soccer – no, football team that she didn’t recognize. She wasn’t about to argue. She moved to pull on the leggings when she realized that she no longer had underwear. She glanced at the scrap of fabric on the floor that had been her thong and frowned.

  He followed her gaze and laughed. He appeared before her, his finger gently placed under her chin so that she had to look up at him. “I like it this way. It makes it easier for me to smell you.” His lips fell upon hers.

  Her lips parted to let him in. His tongue delved inside of her mouth and she nibbled at it, flicking it with her own tongue. He pulled back, a laugh on his lips. Her head was light as she looked up at him. She clung to his thick arms to keep from falling over.

  “I would prefer you wear that little number from last night without underwear, but I think you would attract too much attention in that. You aren’t looking to be the center of attention today, as far as I understand.”

  She most certainly was not. And, she most certainly was not going to wear that red dress again. She thought back to the night before and the mistake she made that nearly hurt her. She had been lucky that this man was there, that he had the presence of mind to save her from a dangerous situation.

  That’s what she felt. It had to be. She was grateful to him for all he did the night before. That was why she couldn’t stop looking at his dimples or sneaking peeks at his ass. It was what made her feel so safe in his arms.

  Right?

  She shook her head and shoved a foot into the leggings. She would go to lunch with Wesley and then she would walk back to campus. She felt bad about the clothing that she was wearing, but she had no intention of ever seeing him again. Sh
e couldn’t afford it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Wes grabbed the keys to his truck, his mind running at approximately a million thoughts per second. The most pressing thought flashed like a neon sign every time he turned to look at Dakota. Her dark hair fell like a curtain over her face as she knelt to put on her shoes. With a practiced toss of her head, the length of it fell over her shoulder to reveal a solemn gaze flecked with sparkling green.

  It threw him for a loop every time. It made the neon sign in his mind flash, the image of his beast pointing to it with his tail beneath it.

  Tell her. Tell this woman that she is your one and only mate. You may never have this chance again.

  But, it wasn’t right. She had her own life. He couldn’t force his life, his love on her. She had to make that choice on her own. The best that he could do at the moment was continue to take up her time. He would take her out to lunch, his beast insistent that she be fed before he left her presence. Over lunch, he hoped that they could talk. He wanted to know more about her. He hoped that she would love what she saw in him.

  The ride out of the territory was quiet. She was pressed against the far side of the truck cab as though they hadn’t made love only an hour ago. He could see it in the way that she walked, the way that her knees still wobbled slightly. But, she has forgotten it and pushed herself as far from him as she could get. It hurt.

  “What are you studying here in the city?” He broke the silence.

  “Art history,” was all she said in response.

  “What do you plan on doing with a degree like that?” Wes had no idea what people did with degrees. He learned to use his hands long ago to craft things when men with degrees sat behind heavy wooden desks that he’d made. The world had changed without him on the outside of the territory. Degrees had become a lot more important than they once were.

  Dakota didn’t say anything for a long moment. Wes wondered if she would speak to him at all for the rest of the ride, or through lunch even. When she finally did speak, it surprised him.

  “I want to run an art museum,” she said. “I love the stories behind why things were made. I want to help preserve those stories and myths. I want to surround myself with them every day of my life. And, maybe, I want to travel the world. I got lucky with the study abroad program. Wales is full of art and architecture. Its stories are crazy.”

  He nodded. “I cannot argue with you on that. I know of a good many of the stories myself. When I was a child and my grandfather could still stand my presence, because older dragons do not care for the presence of other dragons in their territory if they are not just bairns, he told me the tales of our kind.

  “He told me of the two dragons that shook Wales. They fought, one red and the other white. No one knows why they tore at each other day and night, but a Welsh king sought to put an end to it. He built a grand castle over the two warring dragons. For a while, it contained them. After a long time, the king and his descendants forgot that there even were dragons under his keep.

  “Then, their war became so great that it shook all of the stones of the castle loose. The king’s men rebuilt it, but the same thing happened over night. Again, they put the stones back in their places and went about their business.

  “Finally, when it happened every night and the king could no longer stand it, he asked a wise man for advice. There was a rumor that the sacrifice of a young man would finally end the dragon’s battle. So, he went about finding one such young man. Oh boy, what a young man did they find. Turns out that the boy they dragged to the cursed keep turned out to be a young Merlin. You can probably guess that Merlin set those fools right.

  “’Let those idiots out of your castle and they’ll stop breaking it’ Merlin told the king. At first, the king thought that the kid was trying to get out of being a sacrifice. I would, too, if they tried to sacrifice me. But, turns out that Merlin was right. They let the castle fall over night and the next night the dragons emerged from the rubble. The king stood on the sideline while he watched them fight. After a long night, the red dragon finally struck down the white dragon.

  “That was when the king of Wales decided to adopt the red dragon as his symbol.”

  Dakota didn’t say anything, but a glance out of the corner of his eye said that he had captured her attention. He smiled, feeling joy swirl inside of him for the first time since he was a child, and continued.

  “Me thinks that the fight was generations of dragons such as myself at war with one another. They were probably both men in the king’s service and when they crossed one another, their fight would end in the castle’s wreck. It makes you wonder what clued Merlin in on it.”

  “That’s…” he watched Dakota search for the right words for a moment. “That’s insane. Is that the story of Dinas Emrys?”

  Wes nodded. “That very same castle is somewhere in the Snowdonia territory. Well, the ruin of it is anyway.” The memory of the old story his grandfather had once told him made him wonder, for the first time, if his own tower was part of the castle in the tale.

  “I read that story on the internet, but I think I like the way that you tell it a lot better.” She sat back in her seat, more relaxed than she had been in the past half hour. “What other stories do you know?”

  He mulled over the tales in his head, but settled on something more recent. “I have an uncle. He’s a great uncle, I do believe. It’s hard to tell with dragons. He is a bit of an eccentric old man at this point. When his… well, let’s just say that over time he developed an odd quirk.

  “Have you ever heard of the dragon hoard myth?”

  Dakota nodded, one brow raised in question. He smiled at the sight of that thin brow and how inquisitive it made her look. He pushed back the urge to kiss her forehead and returned to his story.

  “It’s true. We are hoarders by nature. Not that you’d ever see it on one of those trashy television shows. At least, I hope no one ever does. You see, Uncle Elgar has taken it upon himself to collect every chalice he has ever laid eyes on. I took it upon myself to craft him a few and leave them around my dad’s house just to drive him mad. He would never steal from the Clan’s leader and knowing that there are chalices just out of his reach makes his eye twitch every so often.”

  Wesley saw the moment that his status dawned on her face. Her eyes grew wide and her spine straightened with surprise. He was no prince by any means. He would only take his father’s position if the rest of the clan saw him as honorable. It was a long-winded thing to explain to a woman that might run from his life in the very next breath so he kept it to himself for the time being.

  Dakota finally regained her composure after releasing a small breath. “That’s downright evil of you.”

  “Oh, Uncle Elgar deserves it. He’s a cantankerous old bastard with no regard for others. As long as it does not tarnish his Honor, Elgar does as he wishes. Imagine the old man that pops your ball just because it landed in his yard is a dragon. That’s Elgar.

  “He seems to think that if he can collect every chalice in existence that he’ll come across the Holy Grail itself at some point. You should see the room in his house. It’s straight out of a children’s story book. As a child, I seriously thought that I would accidentally hit the wrong shelf and drown under a wave of the metal chalices.”

  “Why does he want the Holy Grail? Don’t dragons live a long time as it is?”

  Wes’s lips pressed together. He nodded. He could lie to Dakota, but he didn’t want to start their relationship that way. “His mate passed away a long time ago. Losing her broke his heart. Finding the Holy Grail gives him something to go on for. He thinks that if he can ever find it then he can have his mate back.”

  “That’s… sad.” Dakota’s gaze moved out the window to the passing scenery. “He didn’t try to find another mate?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Wes said, his voice feeling breathy. His heart beat a little unsteadily inside of his chest as he himself faced the truth of what he was about to say
. “We are given one soul mate in this life. That’s it.”

  A long moment of silence permeated the truck. Only the sound of the rumbling engine kept Wes’s thoughts company. He was going to become like Uncle Elgar someday, he worried. Dakota was going to go on with her human life and he was going to be left alone. He wondered what he would collect in her stead. Maybe old artefacts, ancient art that would make her come hunting for them.

  “I take it that you haven’t found your mate yet. How do the younger dragons even do that if they’re restricted to the territory after the Occurrence?”

  He didn’t answer her first statement. It was better left alone. “We are allowed one night a month to go into the towns around the territory. In human form, of course. The government has rather begrudgingly agreed upon it as long as we bind ourselves to the human form. It’s a show of good faith, rather than a way to contain us. A simple band of silver helps push the beast inside of us back while we spend a night lying with human women.”

  “Last night was that night?”

  He shook his head. “No. I shouldn’t have been out of the territory last night.”

  She finally pulled her gaze from the scenery to look at him. Her serious eyes studied his face. He tried to keep it under control. She didn’t need to see the fire that he felt for her. The fear that gripped him when he thought about a life without her.

  “You illegally left your territory? What made you risk something like that?”

  “A man’s foolish hormones,” he said in response. What else could he tell her? Under her gaze, he wondered if maybe she could see a bit of the truth. “I don’t normally partake in the excursions. I always thought that it would be difficult to find a mate in a single night and I didn’t want to torture myself with the hopes that it would magically happen.”

  “When I imagine my future, I see myself as the stereotypical woman with a bunch of cats. I don’t ever see a man in my future.”