by Rosko, Mandy
“Of course, ever since I was old enough to hold a blade or a gun.” He wasn’t so bad at hand-to-hand either. He’d made the top of his class several times over, and when in training with the other men around the palace itself, it wasn’t unusual for him to best them in combat.
He didn’t tell her that, however. There was reassuring her of his skills, and then there was bragging.
She seemed somewhat put at ease. “Do you think you could teach me how to defend myself? I mean, in case something happens?”
He did not want her thinking she should have to go up against a group of men, or even a single man for that matter, but he had to admit, it might help if she could handle herself some.
“For your peace of mind, yes. We can start tomorrow if that is your wish. Hand-to-hand, and then the gun range.”
The hand-to-hand would do nothing but teach her how to escape certain holds her attackers would have on her, and when and where to run. She wouldn’t know how to fight off an actual attack properly. Not in the first lesson. Not even on the tenth. It took years to develop these skills.
The first rule of defending oneself was learning how to avoid the fight entirely. It was a lesson she would still need to learn.
Her smile, and the way her shoulders heaved, as though she had just launched a heavy weight from them, made his decision worth it.
“Your maid is waiting. I won’t be long.”
“Thank you. For everything.”
He nodded. “For you, anything.” The more he was around this woman, the more he was having trouble holding back. Typically, this was supposed to be the best time in a dragon’s life with a natural-mate. But for now, Inferno had to hold back his instincts as much as he possibly could. He needed his head clear before he went back to his aunt and cousin to ascertain if they were perhaps involved in Fiona’s attack.
Inferno hated to think about it like this, but since he was something of a betting man, he was willing to bet Tinder might be the one with the most significant motive to harm Fiona since she was the one Inferno would have married to replace the mate he never thought he would have. And she’d had a front-row seat to the fire that had ignited between the two at the bakery that day.
9
Inferno hadn’t exactly been telling the truth. It wasn’t just one maid. It was a trio of them.
The first woman, the one who had knocked on the door, had a timid appearance and voice but appeared to be the one in charge of the others. She gave a small curtsey to Fiona. “My lady, my name is Leanne. I will be honored to be your attendant.”
Heat climbed right up into Fiona’s face. Never in a million years had she imagined that someone would speak to her that way, especially while offering to perform tasks that Fiona personally hated. Her days working in a department store, folding clothes and finding different sizes for the customers to try on, had been some of the worst of her life.
“My lady?”
Fiona blinked. “Umm, sorry,” she said, glancing over at the other maids who were in similar black skirts with white aprons. They had pulled in what appeared to be a small wardrobe on wheels. Many outfits were hanging from it. The other girl had a big cart with her, and when she settled it in the room and opened it, Fiona made out the many different bottles and containers of face washes, creams, scrubs, and other various bits of makeup.
None of them had any labels she recognized, but she was willing to bet they were all expensive.
“Is there something the matter, my lady?”
Fiona shook her head, though she felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience.
“I’m fine. I just…I’m not used to people talking to me like that.”
Leanne blinked such a wide-eyed look it was almost owlish, but it still looked good on her.
“Ah, yes. I apologize. You’re human, and were raised as a lesser.”
“Lesser?”
“Non-royal,” Leanne said, still smiling softly, innocently, as if she didn’t realize how much she’d just insulted Fiona.
Fiona took in a deep breath and let it go. She was new here, so there was no point in getting worked up for nothing. “So there are more rules in the dragon world?” she asked.
“Nothing too specific, my lady,” Leanne assured her. “This is simply for your station.”
“My station?” Fiona asked, carefully watching the two women behind Leanne. They seemed to be quietly arguing over which set of clothes would be best for her to wear, what would go better with her hair, what would make her eyes stand out, and what piece would lift and accent her breasts the most. “Well, I could pick out something for myself. If that’s okay.” Fiona didn’t want to seem too bossy if she was going to live here. These women were being hired to do a job, and it wasn’t their fault that Fiona didn’t want them to do it, but she was a grown woman, not a child, and certainly not a doll.
“I’m grateful you brought all these clothes here, and that you want to help me with them.” Some of the clothes had back zippers, pantyhose, and other feminine-looking things that appeared she would need help with. She didn’t even want to think about all that makeup. “But I don’t need all of this.”
Leanne frowned softly, glancing away from Fiona as if it would have been against the law to let someone else see her face when she was glaring. Was she glaring?
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, my lady,” Leanne said quickly. “It’s just…rather uncommon from a lady from one of the high families to react in such a way. Apologies, I should not be saying so much.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I might need some of your help anyway. I just wasn’t raised to need help with every single little thing. What, exactly, were you hoping to do to me?”
Leanne smiled at her this time, and at least now her expression was much more relaxed. “We will start with a wash. A bath with essential oils. We would very much like to pamper your hair. I know Fleur has never seen hair quite like yours before, and she is especially excited.”
Fiona glanced to the side. Which of those two blushing maids was Fleur?
“Uh, well thank you. I appreciate the compliment.” At least, she thought it was a compliment.
Growing up, Fiona had often been asked if she dyed her hair to look the way it did. Sometimes people didn’t believe her when she claimed it was natural. Never once had she suspected it was the trait of a long lost noble family capable of mating and breeding with the dragons.
Fiona listened, almost in a daze, as Leanne went on and on about all the things they intended to do to her. She couldn’t believe it. The more she heard, the more unbelievable it seemed. She’d thought she would just hop in the shower and come out to a fresh set of clothes. No. These women seemed as excited as school girls for Fiona to soak in a bathtub while they did treatments on her hair, face, and nails.
They wanted to give her a manicure, pedicure, and wax her whole body from the sound of it. Then massage some sort of skin scrub on her arms, legs, back, stomach, and even her breasts, before giving her a facial she’d never even heard of before. These ladies were looking less and less like maids in a dragon palace and more like they were supposed to be working in a spa somewhere.
“What do you think, my lady? Would this sound pleasant for you?”
“Uh, how long will all of that take?”
“With the three of us working together? Two hours if we hurry.”
Fiona thought for one scary second that the floor dropped out from under her feet. “Two hours?”
All three women smiled at her as if they didn’t see anything wrong with that time limit at all.
Inferno had said he’d wanted her to meet up with the rest of his family and show her around. He couldn’t have meant for it to take that long for her to get dressed. Though, she had never had any spa treatment before, and she was insanely curious to try it out.
“How about I have a quick shower, and we can trim my hair later, skip the full body scrub, and just do the manicure, facial, and then I can pick out an out
fit?”
From the looks she got, she might as well have offered to throw a kitten out the window.
“The waxing as well, though, yes?” Leanne asked.
Might as well go for it. “Sure, yeah. Though I should warn you, my legs are pretty gross right now.”
Leanne smiled. “Ah, but remember it’s a full body wax.”
The tiny muscle beneath Fiona’s eye twitched. “Uh, what else would you need to wax?” Her immediate thought went to her brows, but no sooner did she lift a hand to touch them did she remember there was hair on her arms as well, and then she knew what was going to happen.
One of the other maids, maybe Fleur, went to the trolly and rummaged through several small pots and bottles and rollers, and when one of the girls opened up a black case and revealed a swatch of colors, Fiona figured she might have bitten off more than she could chew, even after trying to portion this out.
Uh oh.
* * *
He found them in the gardens. His aunt, Princess Charrling, in a sundress and wide straw hat that hid away most of her sun-blonde hair. She was an older woman, sister to his father, but still beautiful. Her daughter, Lady Tinder, stood at her mother’s side, arms held loosely behind her back as she spoke to her mother.
Their guards stood a reasonable distance away, enough to give the two women privacy, but close enough for their protection. Inferno nodded to one of the men as he passed.
He couldn’t see the women’s faces from this angle, but when he came around to the side and noted the redness and puffiness around Tinder’s eyes, Inferno paused. Had she been crying? He’d expected it from her when there was room to make a scene, but crying alone with her mother wouldn’t serve any selfish purposes. Perhaps it was the tears of someone who had just lost a game in the final round because theirs was undoubtedly never a love match.
He caught sight of a handkerchief in her hand, which she used to blow her nose. Shame crept into Inferno. Tinder couldn’t have had anything to do with Fiona’s attack. She might be spoiled, but she was a sheltered girl who didn’t know how to drive a car on her own, let alone set up an attack on a woman. She wouldn’t have noticed any spark between him and Fiona at the bakery, not when she’d been so focused on wedding plans.
Plans that he’d abruptly eliminated from her life with no hint of a warning.
He was so focused on getting the deed over with, breaking off the engagement, that he hadn’t had the chance to consider her feelings and apologize. He figured that now something to that effect was going to have to be in order.
His aunt and his cousin attacking Fiona? Who until this morning was a virtually unknown lesser? No, that was unlikely, and now he felt like an ass for thinking it.
“Tinder?”
Tinder’s red eyes flew wide as she looked up at him, then glared and turned her back. “What do you want?” Her voice was small and cracked as she spoke.
Charrling put her hands on her daughter’s small shoulders. Her expression when she looked over Tinder’s shoulder at Inferno was disappointed, though there was nothing there that hinted that she wanted to do him, or his mate, any harm.
“She needs some time, nephew.”
The situation sucked. Sure, they’d promised to make each other happy, but here she was, left with nothing, while Inferno was entering into the best kind of life a dragon could hope for.
“Tinder, I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry you’re experiencing this unexpected and unfair treatment right now. None of us could have known this was going to happen when we first made our engagement. Nevertheless, you still have my protection, and I intend to do whatever I can to help you find a new match.”
She didn’t turn to face him. If anything, she appeared somewhat smaller at that moment as her shoulders bunched together. It was not good. Not good in the least.
If there was nothing he could do, he’d have to task Flare with comforting her. They didn’t always get along, but they were family, and it was more ideal than letting someone waste away on the grounds. Maybe Flare could convince her to get back out there and find someone who would be a better fit than Inferno ever could have been.
Charrling looked down at her daughter, taking the younger woman by the cheeks so Tinder had to look up at her. Charrling smiled a warm, motherly smile as she whispered to Tinder in such a voice that even Inferno could not make it out.
Tinder nodded, then Charrling walked over to Inferno.
He stood straight, offering the older woman that respect.
“Can I have a word?”
Not what he expected.
“Of course.”
With a parting glance at his cousin, he followed his aunt deeper into the rose garden.
It was a wide-open space. The humans seemed to think there should be a maze of shrubs in here, but that offered too much in the way of cover for potential assassins. No, there was a long fountain, stone paths that branched off, and very few garden bushes that were thick enough to hide behind. Even the rose bushes weren’t allowed to become so tall or thick that they could provide much cover.
Because of this, even when they were fifty feet away from Tinder, Inferno could still see her in the distance as she sat dejectedly on a bench.
Charrling sighed. “Well, there is nothing to be done for it if you’re certain the woman is your natural-mate.”
“I am,” Inferno replied. “I’m also more than willing to help with Tinder however I can.”
Charrling scoffed. “The Crown Prince rejecting her will look bad on her prospects for a noble match. Though, because of her connections to you and the family, I have been trying to explain that things are not so bleak. Regardless, tongues will wag for the rest of her life.”
Inferno sighed, running his hand through his hair while propping the other on his hip.
“Why do our mating habits need to be so complicated?”
Charrling huffed a small laugh. “Well, at least we have them. The humans have been making a mess of it since they stopped climbing around in their trees and left their caves. They forgot their instincts.” She looked at Inferno again, her blue eyes flashing with a harsh glow. “You are quite certain?”
He knew what she meant. “I am.”
“Because when the families were looked at, the Istavan family would have produced a mate for you this time around.”
“And they did.”
Charrling narrowed her eyes.
“She is an Istavan. I knew it the instant I saw her. I felt it.”
“How very unexpected.”
More and more he was beginning to sense a hidden layer of displeasure that made his hackles rise. “She will be my queen, and there is an investigation into who could have sent those men to her apartment. Blaze filled you in on that incident?”
She faced Tinder, but she gave him a sideways glance. He’d seen that look on her face before when he’d been a child and had been misbehaving. He was going to have more of a problem here than he’d thought, but not because they had something to do with Fiona’s attack. This was something else he didn’t entirely understand, but he was going to have to deal with it. Because at some point, he’d have to introduce Fiona to these two women, and there was likely nothing he could do to get his aunt and cousin to like it.
“How long can I expect the two of you to be out of commission, from social events and—gah!” Inferno stopped short when he felt something hard smack him on the back of the head. He turned. Ember was there, glaring at him with his full set of teeth bared.
When had he gotten there?
“Idiot,” Ember hissed, smoothening out his expression to something more pleasant when he faced their aunt. “Charrling.”
She nodded. “Ember.”
Inferno rubbed the back of his head. “Did you just punch me?”
“Only before you could make yourself look like more of an idiot. How is Tinder?”
Charrling glanced toward her daughter. “Young, fearful of what everyone will think, and unsure of what he
r future will hold, but with some effort, she will recover.”
Inferno could understand Tinder’s pain and would extend his compassion to her. He was more impatient with Charrling’s attitude, though. She has the same wisdom of other dragons her age and should understand better than most the intricacies of dragon mating. Best to not ask about it, however. If Ember was willing to hit him over it, then it must have been an insensitive question, as Ember and Blaze would put it.
He didn’t get the chance to ask about anything else before his watch suddenly vibrated. He and Ember glanced down, having the same device on their wrists. They looked at each other, a silent agreement stretching between them as Inferno started to run.
The silent alarm had been tripped. Ember would stay with the ladies. Inferno needed to get back to his mate.
10
“Is something going on?”
Fiona noted the way the maids had all looked down at their wrists at what appeared to be incredibly high tech watches. She went on high alert after observing the distress on their faces.
When they didn’t answer her, Fiona stood up, not caring about the wax strips on her legs, or that her face was half covered in a green mask of some sort.
“What’s going on?”
The bedroom door burst open. Fiona jumped slightly just as Eric and three other men in black suits and sunglasses stormed inside.
Okay, guards with guns didn’t do that sort of thing if there was no reason for it. Eric went to the windows, pulling shut the curtains that Fiona had only managed to get open because she didn’t want to feel so closed up. More men stood guard at the door.
That just made her all the more nervous. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
“It’s just a precaution,” Eric said, smiling softly, and almost managing to look normal for her with his sunglasses and earpiece. “An alarm went off. You’re Lord Inferno’s top priority, so we will stay in here until given orders to leave.”
Fiona figured that made sense, but as she looked around, she couldn’t help but wonder. “Isn’t this a bit much for just an alarm?”
