by Zoe Chant
When she dragged her gaze back from Sunny to Radu, Radu was staring at his twin, but his hand closed around hers and held on.
I don’t think I’m wearing the right outfit for this, Hannah thought absurdly.
She was standing in the mayor’s office with her hand in Radu’s. His twin and Gus and Cara were all looking on, and everyone was waiting for her to promise something.
But that wasn’t quite right either. Sunny shouldn’t be all the way over there when she said it. Radu and Sunny were inseparable.
Hannah kept her eyes on Sunny as she said, “What about you?”
Radu’s hand tightened on hers. When she looked up at him—way up, she’d never stood close enough to realize just how tall he and Sunny were—he was smiling wider than ever.
“Yes,” Radu said, looking over at Sunny. “What about you?”
Sunny frowned and smiled at the same time, his forehead wrinkling while his mouth turned up at the corners. He came a couple of steps closer, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“What would the mayor and deputy mayor want with me?” Sunny asked.
Radu huffed. “You are not the stupid twin.”
“Well...”
It finally started to dawn on Hannah what she was feeling, what it meant.
“You’re a package deal, aren’t you? Anyone who votes for Radu knows they’re getting Sunny—”
“Sorin,” Radu murmured fondly, squeezing her hand again.
She glanced up at him, and looked over at Sunny—Sorin, to Radu. And to her. Because she was—because they were both—
“Sorin,” Hannah corrected herself. “Can’t have one without the other. Everybody knows that.”
Her voice shook a little, but she knew that she meant it, though it made her heart pound to say it out loud. God knew she’d heard enough descriptions. Gus had told her about how it felt when he met Cara at least a hundred times. Ilie’s recognition of Becca as his mate had been literally life-altering.
And now she was standing here holding Radu’s hand, reaching out for Sorin. Now she, Hannah Cole, was feeling that combination of burning need and rock-solid certainty that she’d heard about so many times. For both of them. Not one or the other. Both.
A package deal.
“Everybody including you?” Sorin asked, reaching out his hand.
“That’s practically the only thing I do know about the two of you.”
Hannah put her hand in Sorin’s and tugged him closer, so he was standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Radu again.
“Radu is going to be mayor,” Hannah recited. “And you can’t have Radu without Sorin, or Sorin without Radu.”
“Those are the important parts to know,” Sorin agreed. His eyes looked very, very green as he stared down at her.
She looked over at Radu, to compare, or for a second’s relief from Sorin’s bright, intense gaze. Radu was giving her just the same look, though, his eyes shining silver.
They were her mates, and Hannah couldn’t help knowing it. She also couldn’t help noticing that she was their mate. Both of them were looking at her with the same expression of eager, thrilled desire.
Neither of them seemed to feel cheated at having to share a mate with his twin. They were both looking at her as if she were the magical creature. As though they’d never get enough of her.
“Well, now that you’ve worked that out,” Gus said in a pointedly hearty voice.
Hannah looked over at him and immediately realized that he knew.
Of course he knew. He was a dragon shifter; he’d found his own mate just last summer. He had to know what it looked like. It occurred to her to worry that Gus would think this was wrong—it should be, shouldn’t it? She should find this strange, the idea that Radu and Sorin were her mates, that they would share her.
But the thought had barely flickered into her mind before she had to dismiss it. Gus looked amused, not disgusted. He looked, in fact, exactly like an older brother who was about to take great delight in embarrassing his younger brothers.
“Hannah, you should really take Radu around and make sure everyone else has met him,” Gus said.
He sounded cheerful and utterly implacable. It was exactly the way he was in meetings when he’d made up his mind and no amount of arguing was going to budge him.
“We wouldn’t want anyone else to be taken by surprise after the election, would we?” Gus added.
“No,” Hannah agreed.
She fought down her instinctive reactions to having her mates so near, the heat coursing through her body. She closed her eyes and took a breath. Even if Gus was just trying to tease his brothers, he had a point.
It was the middle of a workday, only a week before the election. Hannah might have just discovered that she was the mate of two dragon shifters, one of them her future boss, but she still had a job to do. This could wait. They could wait.
But Hannah didn’t know how she was going to last ten minutes without dragging them both into a broom closet. She’d found her mates. How was she supposed to wait?
***
Sorin trailed after Hannah and Radu as they left Gus’s office and headed through the town hall. Hannah glanced back to make sure Sorin was following, but she stayed right at Radu’s side, their hands not quite touching as they walked.
She was as beautiful as he remembered after all these years, her red hair caught up so neatly that it begged to be undone. She was wearing a sensible suit, but it couldn’t hide the full curves of her body. He wanted to peel her out of her layers of propriety and touch her everywhere. He wanted to make her eyes light up the way they had when she saw him and Radu standing together. He wanted to make her happier than she knew how to be.
And he didn’t even have to do it alone; Radu would be with him.
Sorin was filled with a level of happiness he could hardly contain. His human body felt too small for it. He needed to shift, to spread his wings and soar. The only thing holding him to the earth was Radu’s calm.
But he could feel the joy under the surface of Radu’s mind, surprised but quickly assimilating. They’d both been braced for Radu to be left out, and now there was no limit at all on Sorin’s happiness. Radu had found his mate, and she was Sorin’s mate too. She understood what they were and had accepted them both without an instant’s hesitation.
After all this time waiting, she hadn’t made them wait a minute.
Settle, little brother, Radu murmured in his mind.
Sorin bit his lip and tried to make his face serious as Hannah led Radu into the treasurer’s office. City treasurer was a position of great trust, since they were the person who the Grays all had to hand their taxes to. It was no small thing to make a dragon surrender pieces of his hoard.
Elsa Stephens had been treasurer for as long as Sorin could remember. She was pleased to see Radu and Sorin, and to introduce them to her staff all over again.
And then, of course, Elsa said, “It’s been too long! What’s kept you two away all this time?”
Sorin felt Radu’s brain blank out a little. He was trying to protect Sorin and Hannah by smothering the truth.
That was Sorin’s cue. He gave a big grin. “I’ve been dragging him around—I wasn’t ready to settle down yet.”
Sorin launched into a story about his last job. He’d been a volunteer firefighter for nearly a year, so there were plenty of stories to tell.
Hannah smiled as she watched him tell the story, looking just as enthralled and entertained as anyone else listening.
Sorin felt an uncomfortable twist of guilt at the thought that he was lying to her along with all these other people. Hannah was the only one with a right to know what he’d been really running away from, but she was the last person he wanted to tell.
She was his mate, his and Radu’s, and they’d found each other now. After all the years of waiting—all the years dreading that he would have to choose his mate over his twin—everything had finally worked out all right.
All we
have to do is keep it that way, Radu pointed out silently.
Sorin smiled harder, and started another story.
***
There were only a handful of offices and departments in City Hall, but it still took nearly two hours to complete the tour.
In each room, Hannah introduced Radu to everyone he was about to take charge of as the new mayor. Radu would say a few polite, serious words about how well they performed their duties. As soon as he paused Sorin would jump in, smiling, to charm everyone with stories. Time would pass without anyone noticing until Hannah could pry them loose and move to the next door down the hall.
Sorin didn’t repeat the same stories to every group, but Hannah saw how the pattern repeated. Sorin was the one to win people over. He was a natural politician, in fact. She could easily picture him giving speeches, shaking hands and kissing babies.
But it was Radu who would be a good administrator, a steady and thoughtful mayor. Hannah could see that, too, because she watched him while everyone else was watching Sorin. She could see Radu looking around each office, tallying up who worked where, who did what. He saw the bulletin boards and calendars, the messy and neat desks. She would be able to tell him what everything really meant, but she had no doubt it would take only a word here or there to make him understand.
Sometimes, though, Hannah couldn’t help getting caught up in Sorin’s stories right along with everyone else. She could have listened to him talk all day. She could have watched the bright animation in his face and never wanted to look away—except to see where Radu was.
Usually, at those moments, she found Radu watching her.
She would have been horribly torn, if she had to choose between them. But she didn’t have to, she realized over and over. She didn’t have to choose. She belonged with them both, and they both belonged with her.
A few times Hannah noticed people looking at her, despite the presence of Radu and Sorin to take up all their attention. Specifically, people were looking at the way she stood close beside Radu, or touched Sorin’s arm to distract him before he could start another story.
Possibly other people saw the way she looked at them—or the way they both looked at her.
Everyone in Gray’s Hollow knew that dragon shifters were quick to recognize their mates. The whole town had recognized it in Gus and Cara last summer, and a few months later when Ilie met Becca.
She could see people starting to suspect what was there between her and the twins—but she didn’t think they realized it fully, not the way Gus and Cara had understood. Gus and Cara had seen Hannah and Radu and Sorin recognize each other. Everyone else seemed to be trying to puzzle out which one of the twins Hannah belonged with.
They were going to be in for a surprise, Hannah thought—and there her thinking stopped short.
She couldn’t actually marry both twins, not really, not even if they were dragon-mated. Would they just... tell people? Could they possibly not tell people?
No one would really object, exactly—no one objected to anything a Gray did in this town—but this was strange even by the standards of the Gray family. And she had no doubt who people would take that out on, in the tiny, petty ways they would dare to express it. Not on Radu, and not on Sorin.
On Hannah, who had run against Gus Gray and then turned around and somehow snared both of the twins just as soon as they came to town for the election.
Her stomach twisted with nervousness for the first time, thinking beyond the thrill of being chosen, destined.
This was going to be a mess.
Hannah felt a touch on her arm and found Sorin looking at her in concern. “We have more to do today, don’t we, Hannah? You were going to start Radu’s orientation.”
“Yes,” Hannah said, smiling at him without hesitation.
Sorin was giving her a conspiratorial little smile. He couldn’t have known what she was thinking, but he was there to rescue her from it all the same, and the feeling of certainty came back to her. Sorin wanted her, and Radu wanted her. No matter what anyone else thought of it, she would have her mates.
Hannah thanked Jeanie and Mitch, Radu shook their hands again, and soon they were all back out in the hallway. Hannah led them back upstairs. They’d met everyone now, seen nearly every office.
“Last stop,” Hannah announced, when they were nearly back to Gus’s door, where they’d started out hours ago. It was standing open, but the door across from it was closed.
“You must see the deputy mayor’s office,” Hannah told them with a smile, and she opened the door and led them inside.
Hannah’s office was airy and bright—nearly as big as Gus’s office across the hall. It still had that air of newness that came with a fresh redecoration. This had been a little-used conference room until Gus decided last month that she really ought to have her own space. Cara had insisted on making sure the room was freshly painted before Hannah moved in.
The office had wide windows that looked out over the few blocks of downtown between the town hall and the river. She could see Gray’s Landing, where the town’s dragons usually landed and took flight if they were in town in dragon shape. Ilie was down there now, in fact. She could just see Becca standing with a group of students while Ilie spread his wings and showed off his teeth.
Hannah turned back to face her own dragons. Radu and Sorin were standing just inside the door. Sorin was looking around appreciatively, smiling. Radu had his hand on the doorknob, his thumb brushing gently over the lock.
He raised his eyebrows when Hannah looked at him, and Hannah nodded and smiled her agreement. Radu thumbed the lock into place, and Sorin was already crossing the room toward her, his smile focusing in on her directly.
Hannah went hot all over. Just standing near Sorin when he was being charming had been distracting. Being in the room with him and Radu when they were all trying to remember that Gus and Cara were there had been dizzying.
Being alone with Sorin and Radu now was downright intoxicating.
“Hannah.” Sorin said her name like even the word was something to be treasured.
He set one hand gingerly on her shoulder, but she could barely feel the contact through shirt and suit jacket. She reached out and closed her hand in his t-shirt, tugging him closer.
Sorin’s smile turned incandescent—honestly, it was no surprise people called him Sunny. He stepped closer, cupping her cheek with one hand. The touch on her bare skin seemed to run all through her, but still she found herself looking around for Radu.
He was right there, standing just behind her shoulder with his hands at his sides. His eyes were darkly intense as he looked at her. Hannah shivered slightly. She reached for him with her other hand, bringing him in just as close as Sorin.
“This is right, isn’t it?” Hannah asked. “It’s both of you. It’s—the three of us.”
“Well, like you said.” Radu leaned in close, slipping one arm around her. “Can’t have one without the other. You don’t mind, do you? Getting two for the price of one?”
Hannah shook her head, glancing back and forth between them, and then Sorin’s hands turned her a little toward Radu. She grinned and went up on tiptoes, slinging her arm around Radu’s neck.
Both of Radu’s arms went around her as he kissed her. The first touch was light, almost reverent, but when Hannah’s lips parted Radu deepened the kiss eagerly. His tongue teased her mouth as his hand slipped under her jacket to rest against the small of her back.
Hannah obeyed the gentle pull, pressing her body to his. Even that much friction made her want to moan, and she tightened her grip on him, encouraging him to deepen the kiss. He gave her just what she wanted.
At the same time Hannah was aware of other hands touching her. Sorin was behind her, not quite pressed against her back, but his hands were on her hips, his thumbs stroking her curves through the thin fabric of her shirt.
“Hannah,” he breathed in her ear.
She turned away from Radu’s kiss, leaning toward Sorin.
Radu’s mouth didn’t leave her, pressing distracting kisses down the side of her throat while Sorin’s mouth met hers. He kissed differently than Radu. He was fast and hungry, pushing where Radu coaxed. He pulled away again before she’d gotten nearly as much of him as she wanted.
“I want to touch you,” Sorin murmured, raising his hands to tug at the edges of her suit jacket. “Will you let go of Radu a moment so I can get this off you?”
Hannah let out a petulant breath. She didn’t want to let go. But Radu nuzzled against her throat and raised his hands to her wrists, gently tugging her arms from around his neck.
“Kiss me again,” Hannah demanded.
Radu complied at the same time he was pushing her arms down and Sorin was easing her jacket away. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the sensations of being completely surrounded by her mates. Radu gave her a long, lingering kiss and then lowered his head to kiss the base of her throat, the little triangle of skin revealed by her shirt.
Sorin was pressed against her back. She could feel him getting hard, and his hands were caressing the curves of her belly and hips while he nuzzled at her hair, still clipped up in its working-day knot.
Hannah reached up and popped open the next two buttons of her blouse. Radu groaned softly against her skin and worked lower, kissing the top curves of her breasts, nuzzling at the edges of her bra. Sorin’s hand immediately found the lowest button of her shirt, and Hannah nodded, raising her arms to loop them around Sorin’s neck, leaning back against him and offering her body to them both.
Sorin disposed of the rest of the buttons, and his hands roamed over the bare skin of her round, soft belly and sides while Radu’s hands cupped under her breasts, pushing them up to his mouth. His tongue swept under the top edge of her bra, finding her nipple. Hannah gasped and pushed up for his mouth. Sorin held steady behind her, so she knew she couldn’t fall.
Sorin was kissing her throat while his hands slid lower, down over her hips to her thighs. Hannah was aware of how hot she was between her legs, how wet she was for them. She wanted more than kisses. She wanted everything.