“Ok,” she said. “Then I can live with it. What about other dragon legends. Are they true?”
“Like what?”
“Like, you know.” She opened her mouth and breathed out hard, her fingers waving like a claw in front her mouth.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, totally confused.
“Breathing fire!” she exclaimed, exasperated that she didn’t get her charade.
“Oh. Yeah. We can do that.”
“What? Really?! That is so frickin cool. I wish I could do that.”
“No you don’t,” he said, amused by her enthusiasm.
“Why?”
“We can only do it when our mates are threatened. And apparently it hurts like hell.”
She looked up at him thoughtfully. “You use it to protect your mates? I thought dragons didn’t care about their mates very much.”
“What?” Nothing could be farther from the truth.
“Well, when you explained the whole single parent thing, I just assumed it meant that you didn’t care about-,” she waved her hand in the air to symbolize whatever it was she couldn’t put into words.
“I see how you could have thought that, but trust me. It’s not how I meant to say it. Most of the time a dragon chooses to become pregnant with someone who isn’t important to them. They do it because that other person is the right choice to keep their family line strong and healthy. The way my father did with my biological mother.”
“The way the King wants to do with me.”
Amos nodded tersely and moved on, not wanting to talk about that. “But that’s not what I mean when I say ‘mate’. When dragons take a mate, a true mate, there is nothing more important to them than that other dragon. When dragons take a true mate, they are setting aside all other things. All their duties, all the things they were born to do. It’s all consuming. And inconvenient. And rare. Most dragons choose not to even search for it. Because it disrupts the order so much.”
“How does it disrupt the order?”
Amos searched for the words. “True mates typically raise their offspring together as a family. They don’t choose one parent to apprentice the child. And they become deeply protective of their family unit. The true mates will fight and die for one another and their children. It creates tensions in the community. It’s why most dragons don’t go looking for their true mate. They only take up with them if they happen to meet and have no other choice but to bond and mate.”
“No other choice? You say it like you come under a spell or something.”
“It’s almost like a spell.” Amos traced a hand over her hair. Only a few days ago he would have been speaking hypothetically. But now, feeling her soft weight draped over him, smelling her light, powdery smell, he spoke from experience. “You try to fight it at first, to keep your life the way it was. But every molecule in your body pushes you toward that person.”
He leaned forward and gently kissed her lips.
“You try to take a step away,” he continued. “But you find yourself taking a step closer.”
She let out a slow breath that washed over his face. “You’re talking like you’ve been through it.”
“Actually I kind of wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About what?” She raised her head up off his chest and rested her chin on one fist.
“About what I realized when I was in my dragon form. What came clear for me.” He twisted a lock of her hair around his fingers. Her eyes were light blue pools of light and he felt like she could see right through to his heart.
“Yes…” she prompted, obviously impatient to hear what he was having so much trouble finding the words for.
He reached behind her neck and unhooked the fidelity cuff they’d both forgotten she was wearing. He flipped it over in one hand and ran his finger over the dragon’s eye he’d drawn on. “I was wondering if maybe the cuff could symbolize something more than just my promise to keep you safe.”
“What else?” She reached out to trace the eye as well and their fingers whispered past one another. Her guileless eyes took up her whole face.
“I want it to symbolize your fidelity to me.”
His eyes searched hers for reaction and he was surprised and a little incensed when he saw disappointment there.
She sat up, the covers falling away from her. “Of course I’m going to be faithful to you, Amos. Who the hell else would I sleep with?”
He cocked his head to one side, confused by her anger. “Ok. Why did that make you mad?”
“It didn’t.” She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It really didn’t. I just thought, after that whole conversation, that you were gonna tell me something else right there. And I guess I was disappointed when you said the fidelity thing.”