by Anya Nowlan
It wasn’t, perhaps, his favorite quality about his soon-to-be wife.
“Amore mio, it has been too long!” Rossella exclaimed, flying from Amira straight to Antonio.
Her arms crushed around his neck and they shared an embrace, before Rossella coyly pulled back, her bright blue eyes shining with appreciation. She was a beautiful woman by anyone’s standard. Long chestnut hair, high cheekbones that seemed as if carved from the very mountains themselves, a lithe but strong build, and her dragon had the most enchanting underlay of cobalt blue in the scales.
Only adding to her attractiveness, at least from a political standpoint, was the fact that her family was nearly ancient, powerful, rich and thoroughly purebred dragons. Something that was becoming increasingly rarer those days.
“We saw one another this morning,” Antonio offered in comment as Rossella settled in a seat at the dining table with the help of a servant.
She wore a gown that emphasized the blue in her eyes, a long, silken number adorned with jewels certainly taken from her personal hoard. By the way Amira was eyeing the young woman over, she had certainly impressed.
“It felt as if too long,” Rossella commented idly, motioning for the servants to pour her wine.
Perhaps it did, Antonio surmised, but he could not help but not feel it where he thought he should. Duty beyond heart, he reminded himself, returning his attention to the dinner that was being served for them now.
Once a week, they would meet for dinner, often with Rossella’s parents in tow and high-ranking officers from the Capirelli family of dragons in attendance as well. Today was one of the rare occasions where only four seats were set, and even more curiously, only three of them filled at a table that could easily seat twenty.
“Did you discuss what we talked about, amore mio?” Rossella asked, glancing from him to his mother and back again.
“If you mean the wish to move the date of your sacred union out a week, then yes, it has been discussed, my child,” Amira said, sounding more than a bit terse.
The matron of the family did not take well to having her will argued with. It was something Antonio had learned long ago. Yet what kind of a king would he be if he could not even keep his own mother in check when necessary?
“The arrangements will be made then,” Rossella nodded.
The look Amira gave him left Antonio with no doubt that his mother had expected more joy out of the woman at having her wish fulfilled. It was, after all, how he had served it – that Rossella wished for the wedding to be postponed, so she could have everything set up perfectly. It seemed like a reasonable white lie, considering that he could certainly not reveal the actual cause of his request.
The first course was served and conversation drifted in the usual boring patterns. Flower arrangements. Guest list. How to make sure no dragons broke out in a fight and tore the palace to shreds (it had been known to happen, even the largest and grandest of banquet halls couldn’t accommodate warring dragons). Once again, Antonio found himself barely paying attention, his eyes more focused on the slowly darkening skies outside than the chatter of two women around him.
“The fourth seat,” he finally said, cutting through what conversation was being had by Amira and Rossella. “Who is it set for and why have they stood us up?”
“It is for your brother,” Amira responded, sipping at her wine. “He sent word he would possibly make it home by tonight from his little… excursion.”
The sound of distaste was so palpable in her tone. She’d never thought much about the upstart nation of the United States of America, despite Giovanni, Antonio’s brother, having gotten his higher education there.
Antonio stilled immediately, his back going rigid.
“Giovanni? Are you certain? I had not heard a word of this.”
“He does not need to tell you of every little step he makes, Antonio,” Rossella laughed. “You are his older brother, not the keeper of his time.”
“On this, we can agree,” Amira nodded.
Could it be… but why did he not send word?
His gut roiled and it became markedly clear to him that he’d been feeling antsy and out of place for most of the day, being antagonistic at best, and outright impossible at worst. His fire had been close to the surface since dawn, and he had not stopped to wonder why, writing it off as simple irritation at having to deal with so much that hardly concerned him.
Now, however, he had to wonder if there was a more serious reason to it all underneath.
Could it be that she was getting closer?
He kicked the chair back and left his dinner untouched as he paced back onto the balcony, followed by the questioning gazes of his bride-to-be and queen mother. He breathed in deeply, listening intently to the familiar sounds of the night air.
“Antonio, you are being very rude,” Amira called.
He did not listen. All he could hear was the soft humming of helicopter blades growing nearer by the moment, and the way his gut tightened along with it. His body felt like it was being consumed by heat and the dragon roared within him, a low, guttural growl emanating from between clenched teeth.
He had not seen her yet, but the firedragon knew. She was here. Any moment now, his jewel would walk back into his life and turn it all upside down again.
And he couldn’t wait.
“What’s that?” Rossella asked, rising from her seat as well, as the sound of the helicopter was heard clearly now.
“It must be Giovanni,” Amira noted, clearly annoyed that the young dragons were breaking sacred dinner customs of sitting down and holding a pleasant conversation of small-talk regardless of what was going on around them.
As far as she was concerned, the villa could come down around them in blocks of granite and lumps of timber, and no one should pay any heed to it before dessert was finished.
Rossella sidled up to Antonio as his eyes stared transfixed at the sleek, black helicopter that was touching down on the landing pad in the west gardens. He felt like he had perhaps forgotten to breathe, watching the familiar shapes of his brother and two lesser Capirelli family members pile out of the chopper and waiting for what he hoped, and perhaps feared, would happen next.
His grip tightened around the marble banister, his knuckles white, the moment that Julie was helped out of the chopper. Even from this distance, he could spot a small child in her arms. The way his heart pounded and his tongue immediately flooded with the taste of the woman he had not seen for almost two years told him without question that what he had hoped and feared had come true.
She was here. And so was his child.
“Who is that with Giovanni?” Rossella asked curiously, tugging at his shirt and looking up at him.
He glanced at her but even in his muddled state, he could see the suspicion in her eyes. There was plenty of cause for it, but Rossella could have no clue just how much.
Perhaps there is still an explanation… Perhaps I am wrong… Perhaps my dragon is wrong.
There wasn’t, he wasn’t, and his dragon certainly wasn’t, but rationality could only get a man so far.
“Antonio?!” Rossella called as Antonio pulled away from her, breaking into a sprint within the first few steps.
He practically flew out of the dining room, having to exert far too much energy to keep his hissing and snarling dragon from breaking loose. His heart pounded in his chest as he took the stairs by threes, pounding down the steps and heading toward the door he knew they would enter through.
He was only steps away from it when the door was flung open and Julie came to a halt, surrounded by the faint light of the torches outside, casting a ghostly, ethereal glow about her. When their gazes met, Antonio’s world stood still.
His mate was back.
Three
Julie
There was a very real possibility that she was losing her mind.
Despite closing her eyes and wishing time after time to wake up in her own bed in Texas to another boring, safe, but utterly pr
edictable morning, every time she opened her eyes again she was still staring at the broad, tall and proud figure of Antonio Capirelli, looking at her like she was the answer to everything. That wasn’t how this morning was supposed to go at all.
With her words stuck in her throat, Julie stood there like a fish out of water as Antonio rushed to her and grabbed her in his warm embrace. Despite everything she’d told herself, and her efforts to nurture her growing assuredness that she would never see the father of her child again, she was in his arms now, and it felt more like home than anything ever had.
“Julie,” he whispered, and his scent and voice were so overwhelming she could have been knocked over by a feather.
Of course Antonio wouldn’t allow that. Because he was holding onto her, practically cradling her, pulling her to his chest and breathing into her hair like it was the most normal thing.
“La mia bellezza, could it be that you’re here?” he murmured, sending a hot jolt of desire running through her.
He’d called her that the one night they’d spent together. My beauty. Every time he looked at her, she felt like the most important, the most beautiful woman in the world. It had been nigh impossible going back to a world where there was no one to look at her like that. Only in her son’s gaze had she seen something akin to his father’s.
“Why am I here?” Julie muttered, disentangling her tongue when Antonio loosened his hold on her and Tony slightly, if only to get a better look at his son.
Antonio seemed to barely hear what she said, so entranced was he by staring at his dragonkin. Father and son were spitting images of one another, that much was evident immediately. In her mind, she’d always been certain of it, but now up close, it was striking just how much Tony’s features were carved from the same tree as his father’s.
Though the boy was still tiny and carried all that happy, healthy baby chubbiness, he had the same high cheekbones, and the same proud nose of his father. They both had an air of seriousness about them that always amused Julie, a one-year-old who seemed to carry the weight of the world with him at times was not a common sight. But then again, there was never anything common about his father either.
“So it is true,” Antonio said, wonderment in his voice. “You had my child. I’ve been a father, I’ve had an heir… for more than a year.”
That warm, exciting buzz that had been heating her from the inside seemed to twist and change immediately when he uttered that. There was no blame in his tone, but in her head, Julie clearly heard it. Her subconscious gladly filled in ‘And you did not bring him to me!’, accusing her of everything that truthfully, she was to blame for.
“What?!” a shrill voice cut in, destroying the awkward, but so far less dramatic than Julie had expected, conversation on the spot.
Her head snapped to look in the direction of where the voice had come from, immediately meeting the absolutely gorgeous frame of a golden-eyed woman. She was standing in the doorway, with motion behind her from another woman approaching, and she seemed to be practically fuming. Or perhaps she was – Julie might have been wrong, but she was certain that there might have been steam rising from her narrow nostrils.
She took an immediate step backward, releasing herself from the immediate hold that Antonio had on her, and held Tony tighter.
“Rossella, this does not concern you,” Antonio said, his features becoming visibly tighter.
“Does not concern me!?” the woman gasped, her eyes growing so wide they looked to be at the risk of popping out of her head. “This mongrel of a woman seems to be holding some runt that is posing as your child, and you are saying this does not concern me? I don’t think there’s anything on this earth more immediately concerning to me than my future husband’s illegitimate children.”
Julie burst out laughing.
She wasn’t sure why. If it was the backdrop of the opulent splendor of an Italian manor that she seemed to remember perfectly, or the classical beauty flailing her arms, practically foaming at the mouth and steaming from the nose as she screeched about illegitimate heirs, or the fact that it was her, in her rattiest jeans and her plainest top in the middle of all of this drama, but it all seemed… well, ridiculous. Like she’d been kidnapped in Texas and flown halfway across the world just to take part in a live-action telenovela, with all the trappings of ridiculousness that came with it.
“Why is she laughing, Antonio? Why is she laughing at me?!” Rossella, as Antonio had called her, demanded, narrowing her eyes as her chin was pushed out.
Julie was laughing so hard that Tony joined her, giggling his happy, toddler laugh at the pure amusement of his mother. Julie had to straighten herself, tears brimming in her eyes and the chuckles barely dying down, as she looked from Antonio, to Giovanni, and then to Rossella. There was another woman standing behind her, but covered by the shadows of the house.
Both the Capirelli brothers seemed at least slightly bemused, if not as hysterical as Julie was. She wiped the tears away with her palm, managing to conjure what passed as a semi-neutral expression on her face.
“I’m sorry, Rossella. Did my kidnapping come at an inopportune time for you? Giovanni, you should have really picked your timing better. Seems we’ve really interrupted something here. Maybe you should have waited until after their wedding to come crashing into the villa with me and my child.”
Julie cocked a brow at Giovanni and the same half-eyeroll she’d seen on the dragon as he stood at the back door of her modest home made another appearance.
“I’ll try to do better next time, Julie,” he promised, riddled with sarcasm.
“This is not funny,” Rossella fumed, while Antonio’s arm slipped comfortingly around Julie’s waist once more.
Looking up at him, it seemed pretty clear that it was, at least a little. Julie was more than certain that the breadth of the situation would dawn on her sooner or later, but for now, a petty little part of her was sort of happy her compromising situation had managed to at least piss off the regal beauty who was apparently set to marry her man.
I have no claim over him, she reminded herself.
She’d never imagined for a moment that she did, other than perhaps when she’d shared his bed with him. Yet now? Well, for a second, she felt the bitter twinge of jealousy rocketing through her.
“Calm yourself, Rossella. This is not of your concern,” Antonio said, practically repeating his earlier comment.
Before Rossella could shoot back, Julie caught the withering, warning look Antonio gave her. The woman’s mouth clipped shut as Antonio nudged Julie to move forward.
“Does it not concern me either, son?” the other woman asked, coming into view as Rossella was motioned to move out of the way and provide a path to the house.
While Rossella’s hysterical anger and pouting had seemed no more than amusing, the look that the other woman gave Julie actually gave her pause. She carried herself in the same regal way that the other dragons did, and she was most certainly a dragon – the gold swirling in her irises gave that away easily. But the way she considered Julie, and most of all Tony, made Julie tighten her hold a little on the baby boy.
While Rossella looked to be all steam and no fire, this matron seemed to be the exact opposite.
“I will explain it all, mother, but I need a moment alone with Julie. Giovanni tracked her down as a favor for me,” Antonio announced, moving past his mother with Julie in tow.
“Is that what we call kidnapping these days?” Julie couldn’t help but quip.
“If you’ve hidden his son from him, human, then he’s been more than lenient with you so far,” Antonio’s mother said, making the hairs on the back of Julie’s neck stand on edge. “She will be staying then, I assume?”
“No,” Julie answered immediately.
She had no intention of staying there. As far as she was concerned, after a brief conversation with Antonio about Tony, she should have been in a cab, heading toward Milan to catch the first flight out of there.
“Yes,” Antonio said, overriding her without so much as a glance down at her. “She will stay.”
It was then that the jokes about kidnapping seemed a whole lot less funny to Julie all of a sudden.
Four
Antonio
As soon as the door to the small study that he’d lead Julie into closed behind her, she practically tore herself away from him and put a good few steps between them. His first instinct was to go after her and stop her before she could take so much as half a step, but he reined himself back in. There were no other exits in the room, unless she was intending to fling herself out of the massive second-story windows.
As pissed as Julie seemed to be, he doubted she’d go that far. Not with the child in her arms.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes as she paced almost to the opposite end of the room.
She was rocking the baby in her arms, the boy twisting around every time that she turned her back on Antonio, trying to get a better look at him. Antonio’s own attention was painfully split between his beautiful mate, and the fact that he had a son, and that he was here. Both filled his heart with so much joy that he felt like it might just bust out of his chest, for a moment distracting him from all the other implications that came with this discovery.
“Explain,” he said simply, clicking the lock shut on the door.
He didn’t need anyone storming in here, least of all his fiancée. The fiancée he could barely spare an ounce of thought for at the moment.
“Explain?!” Julie spat, whirring around to face him, though there was more than ten feet separating them.
Her face contorted with rage. She would have made for an excellent dragon, he thought. She certainly had the barely suppressed power and bluster bit down to a T.
Julie settled the boy on a carpet in front of a dormant fireplace. He sat down calmly, gray eyes that mirrored Antonio’s own considering the situation around himself with utter calm. Even from this distance, he could see the speckles of gold that seemed to be growing by the minute since they had landed and Antonio had gotten his first good look at the boy. He would be shifting in no time, now that he was surrounded by his own kind, there would be no doubt of that.