by Sofia Stone
She looked shocked. “I have an uncle? No way!”
“Your father’s older brother,” he confirmed. “You can see the resemblance.”
Her fingertips rose to brush the ends of her hair. “I thought that was just how Zavinians look,” she muttered, taken aback.
“It is that also.” Gabriel smiled at her. “You have a very classic look in Zavinia.” You are incredibly beautiful, he wanted to say, but it wasn’t the right time or place.
“So, I have an uncle,” she said tentatively, as if she were testing out the unfamiliar words. “Does he have kids? Do I have cousins?”
“No, he has never had children. And therein lies our problem.”
“Oh,” she said, realization breaking over her face. “He doesn’t have an heir.”
“Not directly. There is an heir to the throne—a distant cousin related through your uncle’s great-grandfather, as I understand it. His name is Henri.” He couldn’t keep the distaste from his voice, and Amelia picked up on it immediately.
“You don’t like him?”
Gabriel had nothing but contempt for the man, but he still chose his words carefully. “He’s unsuitable. Let’s put it that way.”
Amelia’s gaze was shrewd. “I’ve never even stepped foot in Zavinia. If you’re considering calling me in, there must be something really wrong with him.”
“He doesn’t have a temperament for ruling other people. He is . . . cruel. Prejudiced. He enjoys power.”
“Or, alternatively, he’s just on the wrong side of your political agenda,” she said slowly, but not with commitment.
“I have no agenda but the good of Zavinia,” he said earnestly, leaning across the table. “The same is true for Lady Nancy. She wants the best for our country, the same as I do.”
“For some reason, I do believe you,” she said, looking out the window with a sigh and chewing her bottom lip. “This princess business . . . it’s a lot to take in. What would even be my job? Get married and have babies, I guess?”
Gabriel smiled. “Diplomacy, primarily. Or so am I led to believe. You would interact a great deal with the Zavinian nobility. I believe your uncle calls it ‘dragon-herding.’”
“Like herding cats. Ha!” A wry smile twisted her lips. “Dragon-herding. I like that.”
“It’s rather appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Definitely goes along with the whole Zavinian . . . motif.” Amelia waved a hand. “I don’t suppose you’re going to cover me in dragon-patterned dresses and dragon-shaped jewelry all the time. I mean,” she added hastily, “assuming I agree.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. Unless, of course, you have a particular love for covering yourself in images of dragons,” he said teasingly. An image popped into his head of Amelia dressed only in dragon-shaped jewelry, and a rush of desire swept through him, making his skin feel hot and his dragon growl its appreciation for the idea.
Her face was turning pink, as if she knew what he was thinking—or as if her dragon had suggested the very same thing to her. Her eyes grew unfocused for a moment. Gabriel recognized it as a conversation with her inner dragon and waited patiently; it was only polite among shifters.
After a moment she shook herself out of it. “Knowing how much you guys love to slap a dragon on anything and everything, that’s surprising, but no thanks.”
“Your grandmother—Lady Nancy—would have more details for you than I do. If I’m not mistaken, she has a plan to prepare you for rulership.”
Amelia’s eyes widened fractionally. “A plan, huh? I’ve only known her for a few hours, but I have to say, that sounds a little ominous.”
Gabriel chuckled. “I know what you mean. She’s frightening at first, isn’t she? When I first began getting to know her, I could barely talk to her. I didn’t know what to say.”
Her brows knitted together. “You make it sound like more than just an employer-employee relationship.”
It was his turn to widen his eyes in shock. “Not like that!” Even his dragon found the idea too hilarious to be offended by their mate’s suggestion, fluttering its wings in amusement.
Amelia covered her giggle with a hand. “I didn’t think so. That’s pretty, um, hard to imagine.”
“She’s more like family than anything,” he explained.
“Family?” she said skeptically.
“Ornery, exacting, emotionally distant family, yes. But she funded my education at Oxford and she’s looked out for me ever since.”
Her lips formed an ‘o.’ “What was your major?”
“I was in their PPE program. Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.”
“Why did she do that?”
He shrugged. “The only time I asked why, she just said I had potential.” He couldn’t quite hide the bitterness in his voice. His degree had turned out to be of little use. When Gabriel had returned home, fresh from Oxford, he’d hoped the Zavinian nobility would accept him as one of their own and offer him his father’s seat on the draconic council, which had been empty since his death several years before, as he had no legitimate heir.
They did not, of course, do any such thing. He only had his current job as a guard for the Royal House because of Lady Nancy’s influence. It was likely the highest position he’d ever obtain.
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m not using my degree either,” she confided, blue eyes twinkling.
“What did you study?”
“Colonial American literature.” She took a sip of her water. “Exactly what every prospective queen needs to know, obviously. I’ll be well prepared.”
“You make it sound like you’re considering it,” he said carefully.
She was quiet for a moment. “Maybe I am. I feel like, for several years, I’ve just been waiting. Like something big was going to happen, just around the corner, something I was meant for. You know? Maybe that’s sad.”
“It’s not,” he said softly.
“Your timing isn’t bad, honestly.” She drummed her fingertips on the tabletop. “I just lost my job and here you are—what a job offer! The plot of a young adult fantasy novel has become my life. It’s a lot more surreal than I imagined it would be.”
“You can still decide not to,” he pointed out. It hit him, all of a sudden, what that would mean: he would follow his mate to America to be with her. Leave Zavinia, perhaps forever. It would be a monumental upheaval of his life—but he knew he would do it in an instant if it meant he would be with his mate.
“I’ll talk to Lady Nancy again.” She glanced out the window, in the direction of the hotel. “And Mom!” she said, obviously realizing it just that moment. “I need to talk to her. Did she know anything about this?” she asked herself. “God, she couldn’t have. She would have told me. Right?”
“We’ve worked to keep our mission here very quiet,” he advised her cautiously. “It’s a matter of national security, after all.”
“I’ll be discreet. No state secrets from me.” She made a zipping motion over her lips. Which served to draw his attention to them—they looked very soft and kissable.
Her gaze dropped low too, as if she were contemplating the same thing. A force like magnetism seemed to draw them together over the table. Without thinking he reached for her hand, enfolding her fingers in his and running his thumb over her knuckles soothingly.
“I’ll help you in any way that I can,” he promised huskily. “I’ll protect you.” With all that I have, forever.
Her eyes fluttered halfway closed, in anticipation of a kiss. Yes! his dragon growled. Take our mate now! His heart leapt and he was halfway over the table, already dreaming of her kiss, the warmth of her body, the expanse of smooth, pale skin beneath her dress . . .
These daydreams were interrupted by the sudden, high-pitched scraping of chair feet against the floor.
“Okay!” Amelia said brightly, her hand slipping out of his as she stood. “Let’s head out!”
Gabriel woke to his surroundings with
some embarrassment. His dragon was ruffled by thwarted desire, but he tried to contain it as sense reasserted itself. His blood thrummed with the desire to take his mate now, with no delay—but a coffee shop maybe wasn’t the best place for that, he thought sheepishly. Predictably, his dragon was not at all concerned with such trifles as human propriety.
But he didn’t think it was entirely propriety that had her avoiding his eyes as they made their way out of the cramped coffee shop and toward the hotel. No, it was something more like shame.
He remembered the first words she spoke after their eyes met—Oh, no—and his heart sank.
* * *
Gabriel took her back to the dining room, where Lady Nancy was overseeing the last of the clean-up after their dinner. As she disappeared into the doorway, casting him a last look before the door closed behind her, he wished he could be there with her instead of on the other side.
He found his co-workers in a nearby niche with a couple of chairs and a little table. Edric half-rose to offer Gabriel the chair he was sitting in, but Gabriel waved him off and leaned against a wall instead.
“I assume it went well,” Edric said in French. They conducted most of their public conversations in French for security reasons. It was hardly a foolproof strategy, but the few Americans who did know any French were terrible at it and wouldn’t easily understand the Zavinian accent anyway. Even so, they tried to speak as vaguely as possible.
“Good work reeling her back in, boss,” Apolline said. “We needed her to say yes.”
His dragon bristled at the implication that he was manipulating his mate, and informed Gabriel of his dissatisfaction.
“She isn’t sure yet. She may yet turn us down,” he said shortly.
The corners of her lips turned up faintly, which was the closest to a smile enigmatic Apolline ever got. “The rest of us didn’t.”
“I’m not recruiting her to be a bodyguard,” Gabriel pointed out. “I think this might be a little more stressful than that.”
“You think?” she asked, deadpan.
When Gabriel first began working for the Royal House of Zavinia as a bodyguard, part of his work was to preserve the interests of that house—specifically, on many occasions, shifter secrecy. Few in the outside world knew that Zavinia was ruled by dragons and housed many other types of shifters within its borders, but the tiny country was not the only place shifters resided.
Because Zavinia depended so heavily on shifter secrecy, it was sometimes necessary to interfere in the shifter affairs of other places. That had been Gabriel’s work: locate threats to shifter secrecy and neutralize them.
Gabriel was a powerful dragon, and many ordinary shifters didn’t even know dragon shifters existed, so it wasn’t difficult to intimidate shifters into renewed secrecy about their powers, without even revealing the existence of Zavinia. The mere prospect that there might be dragons watching from the shadows had a silencing effect all on its own.
Occasionally, however, he came across more difficult situations—shifters who had trouble concealing themselves. Most of the world did not know about any kind of shifters, but mythical creature shifters were unknown even to many ordinary shifters, and they sometimes had special powers that were difficult to control and use properly.
Over the years, Gabriel had learned there were many more types of shifters than he’d ever dreamed of, including creatures long thought extinct in Zavinia. He’d encountered sea serpents, poisonous wyverns, and enormous dire wolves, among others. Some of them he’d brought into Zavinian custody, for their own safety or that of Zavinia . . . and some of them he’d recruited to work for the Royal House alongside himself.
Edric had been his first recruit, almost a decade before. Edric was a griffin shifter, his animal part tawny lion and part eagle, with the strengths of both. Gabriel had never come across another griffin shifter, before or since—and neither had Edric. For all they knew, he was the only griffin left in the world. Griffins were elusive even by the standards of mystical shifters, and none had been seen nor heard from in decades. Edric himself had no memories of his parents or of any other griffins, having been raised by ordinary humans in a mountain village since he was very young.
Gabriel had met Edric when he was sent to investigate sightings of a strange flying creature in the mountains. The young golden-haired griffin shifter was no danger to those around him, but at the time Gabriel thought his powerful animal could be an asset to the crown. It was the first of what Lady Nancy sometimes called, with amusement, his many ‘acquisitions.’
The ones who joined him all had their own reasons. Edric’s was to find out what had happened to his lost family. As for Apolline, she kept her reasons close to the vest, and her background too; only Gabriel even knew what she shifted into, so secretive was she.
Apolline bid them good night, and Gabriel sank into her chair after she was gone, his mind churning with thoughts of his mate and how she’d pulled away from him.
It must have shown on his face, because Edric asked, “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Gabriel said, probably too quickly. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Uh-huh,” Edric said. “That sounded convincing. And you’ve got that . . . broody face going on.”
“I am not brooding,” Gabriel said with dignity. “I have a serious face.”
Edric smiled slightly. “Yes, and it has a brooding expression on it.”
Gabriel tried to rearrange his face so that it gave less away, but apparently his efforts were unsuccessful, because Edric started laughing.
“Okay, spit it out.”
“Hypothetically speaking,” Gabriel said slowly, “you haven’t ever known someone who met their mate, have you?”
Edric’s eyebrows rose. “Are you saying you have?”
He didn’t want to say yes, but his dragon wouldn’t let him lie about it. “Hypothetically—”
“Right. Hypothetically,” said Edric dryly.
“Right. If one were to meet one’s mate, and she was a shifter too, she would know, wouldn’t she? It wouldn’t be the case that one would know and the other wouldn’t?” He ignored his dragon flapping his wings and saying, She knows. But how would his dragon know, anyway?
“You’re asking the wrong guy, honestly. The way you dragons talk about mates . . .” Edric shook his head.
“Do griffins not have mates?” Gabriel asked, distracted. They’d never discussed the matter before, and he’d honestly never given it any thought. All shifters had fated mates, didn’t they? It was simply a fact of life.
Edric shrugged theatrically in a how-would-I-know? gesture. “Beats me. But I grew up with regular humans, mostly, people who fall in and out of love in the regular way.”
“I don’t personally know that many dragons who have met their mates,” Gabriel admitted. “Mostly, I think, because I’m not close to many dragons.”
“No, you spend all your time with a gaggle of oddballs instead.” Edric gestured to himself.
Gabriel flashed him a brief smile, considering. “I think the only mated dragon I know is Lady Nancy.”
Edric whistled. “Well, good luck finding out anything from her. That’s one person I would never ask. She’d take off your head.”
Likely true, Gabriel reflected. Lady Nancy never mentioned her late husband, though their courtship—which had happened before he was born—had been a matter of national interest. But she was notoriously tight-lipped about anything personal.
“I can’t imagine being so curious as to risk it, anyway,” added Edric.
“No? You’re not curious at all?”
The other man gave a half-shrug, noncommittal. “The ways dragons talk about finding their mates—the stories they tell—it’s a little much, isn’t it? Finding the perfect second half of your soul, knowing on sight you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together . . . It’s the stuff of romance novels. Not really realistic. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a little exaggerated, to be honest with you.
”
At this point Gabriel’s dragon was pawing at the ground restlessly, agitated by Edric’s words. Yesterday he would have agreed wholeheartedly with Edric; today he knew, deep in his heart, that the other man was wrong. Mates were real, and Amelia was his. He knew it in his bones, in the same way he knew the sun would rise tomorrow, the same way that he knew himself to be a dragon.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re suddenly so interested in talking about mates?” Edric asked, his eyes flickering to the door Amelia had disappeared through.
Part of Gabriel—a big part—wanted to shout the truth from the hotel’s rooftop. Tell everyone he had found his mate, and she was perfect.
But the rational part of him knew that they were in a delicate situation, no matter how impatient his dragon was. If she’s our mate today, she’ll still be our mate tomorrow, and next week, and next year, he told his dragon firmly. His dragon couldn’t argue with that logic, although he still swished his tail in dissatisfaction at the idea of not being with his mate until next year. You and me both, he thought to his dragon. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
“I think I’ll let you wonder,” Gabriel replied out loud to Edric.
Before Edric could press any further, at that moment the door opened, and they both jumped.
Amelia emerged, her cheeks slightly pink with an emotion he couldn’t identify until she spoke.
“I said yes,” she said breathlessly, looking shocked by her own words. “I think she used reverse psychology on me, actually. She told me I probably wouldn’t do a good job anyway and I said, yes I would! Like a two-year-old!” She frowned, offended. “I can’t believe that worked.”
“She’s very talented that way,” said Gabriel, unable to contain a smile.
She was going back with them to Zavinia, he thought with wonder and relief . . . and excitement. She’d never been to her father’s homeland and he would be going with her. He would be able to show her the nation, he thought: the people, the countryside, the mountains. Surely, living here in a big city, she wasn’t able to assume her other form very often. She had probably never been among so many of her own people.
