The Dragon's Mate

by Emilia Hartley

  The fact that the file was still there meant Beauchamp hadn’t told anyone what he knew yet. That also meant Beauchamp hadn’t given up on her. She felt her lip curl as she thought about it. Next time she saw him, Anya was going to give him a swift kick to the baby makers. Beauchamp had rightfully earned it.

  She input her father’s security code, feeling her face warm when his eyes narrowed at her. Sorry, Dad, she thought. The folder opened and the files filled the screen, all labeled with meaningless letters and numbers unlike the other files that had been labeled by date. Her father gripped the back of her chair as he leaned in to look. She moved the whole folder over to her thumb drive before clicking a random file.

  Nathan Forrest opened his mouth to comment on the movement of the encrypted file, but before he could form words the screen filled with photos and documents. The first was a mugshot, not the same one as before. This was a man, with gaunt cheeks and a dead look in his eyes. The only indication that he was alive was how hard he gripped the letter board in his hands.

  Anya flicked over to the next photo. It showed the man strapped to a table with his chest open. She pulled back, her stomach lurching so violently she thought she would vomit. Her father filled the space she left and began reading through the redacted documents.

  “They’re trying to figure out where his breath abilities come from,” her father whispered to the screen. With frightened eyes, he glanced toward the door as though it might swing open at any moment and GOE guards would swarm in to arrest them.

  Anya moved back and searched for the file folder that she’d opened days ago. A familiar face filled the screen after she clicked the file.

  “I think that is Luc’s mother,” she told Nathan.

  Her father mulled over this information. “Luc. That’s your mate, right?”

  Anya nodded. She opened her mouth to tell him that she had no plans to continue her relationship with the dragon, but her father raised his hand to stop her. She didn’t have to explain anything to him. He turned back to the screen and closed all the folders before jerking the thumb drive out of the modem.

  Her heart gave a heavy thump. Nathan Forrest held the thumb drive between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a strange look. For a moment, she thought he might crush it in his hand. Everything would be over. He would drag her home and try to brush all of this under the run, but, instead, he handed it to her. She took it with surprise dancing along her frayed nerves.

  “I hope you trust me when I say I had nothing to do with this,” Nathan Forrest told his only daughter. “You have no reason to believe me, but I hope you still have faith in your old man. Take this and go back to your mate. I won’t tell anyone where the two of you are laying low. This is between us.”

  Anya pocketed the thumb drive in the tiny, hidden pocket of her purse before throwing her arms around her father. This was more than she could have ever expected from him. He, in turn, hugged her tight. He held her like it might be the last time he saw her. She spared a second to hope, to pray, that it wouldn’t be that way.

  “All of the computers are monitored for restricted activity,” Nathan Forrest said into her hair. “You need to leave as soon as possible.”

  Anya sucked in a breath. That was how Beauchamp knew about what she’d done. It was only logical for Beauchamp to assume Anya, the champion of dragon rights, told the dragons about the encrypted files when he saw her returning with a dragon. Yet, that meant Andrea Backus should know, too.

  If the head of the facility knew, they why hadn’t she arrested Anya, yet? The information sat like a stone in Anya’s stomach. It threatened to drag her under, but she held her head high and did as her father commanded.

  Nathan Forrest would go out and distract the receptionist while Anya snuck out of the building behind him. If they had any luck, no one would notice her disappearance. Anya was familiar with the imbalanced concept that was luck. It chose odd times to shine its favor upon her.

  That, again, was not one of those moments. Her father left the room, head high and hands in his pockets like nothing in the world was wrong. It was a bit off for a man who was supposedly missing his daughter, but Anya had a feeling no one in the facility knew she’d run away with a dragon.

  Run away with a dragon. Those had to be the strangest words she’d ever thought, but she thought it might not surprise many agents in the facility.

  When Anya cracked the door open, she heard a familiar voice coming down the hall. She slammed the door shut again, her heart beating so hard it made her hands tremble. Beauchamp was here, chatting gaily with another agent as they walked down the hall. She waited, listening to the voices pass by. Trapped behind the door, she could hardly tell which direction they were moving in.

  Anya closed her eyes and eased the door open again. She had to take a chance or else she would never get out of the facility. Luc needed the information that was in her purse. Nothing else mattered. She had to get him the information so that he could find his mother or, at the very least, figure out what happened to her. She forced herself to glide out into the hall, carefully closing the door behind her so that the noise wouldn’t attract any attention.

  Anya looked up and down the hall, but there was no sign of the excuse of a human that was Beauchamp. Her father’s voice drifted toward her through the hall. He was chatting with the receptionist in the lobby. All Anya needed to do was be patient and quiet.

  This isn’t about me, she said to her thumping heart. The words steadied her. She repeated them over and over again until they became a mantra that overpowered every nervous tremble. Her father would distract Beauchamp if he didn’t pass through.

  She started down the hall when a hand gripped her arm and spun her around. A hawkish nose hovered a hair’s breadth away from hers. Beauchamp smiled wide. Anya gritted her teeth and forced her churning stomach to settle. She stood her own ground. There was no way she would turn into the cowering brat she’d been the day before.

  “What brings you back so soon? Dragon couldn’t warm your bed like you thought he would?” Beauchamp sneered at her.

  Anya held down the urge to bring her knee into his groin with as much force as she could manage. Flashes of the heated kisses she’d shared with Luc danced through her mind. Her father’s approval filled the spaces between. Luc was her mate. He was the man the universe promised her, dragon or not.

  “He does so much more than you ever could have,” Anya whispered back as a smile crawled over her lips.

  Beauchamp’s grip on her arm tightened to a painful point.

  “Don’t like being denied? Too damn bad. I was never yours and I never will be if I have anything to say about it.”

  “You think you have anything to say? I could let the world know what you’ve done, let GOE know that you’ve shared their secrets with the dragons and then your life will be in shambles. You’ll be behind bars. What then?”

  Anya leaned in closer. “You don’t have the balls.”

  Beauchamp leaned back with a confident smile. His mouth opened and Anya panicked. She brought her knee up. It slammed into his groin. She felt soft bits flatten and his face contorted with pain.

  His hand slipped away from her arm so that he could clutch himself.

  “I guess you do have the balls,” she said before scurrying down the hall.

  As promised, her father was chatting away with the receptionist. The conversation was stretching thin as he’d been there for a while at that point. Anya cringed. The receptionist perked up when her eyes met Anya’s, but her father launched into a tirade about the Welsh dragon Ambassador. He said things Anya normally would have admonished him for. This time, she let the words fly because she knew they were saving her skin.

  The door slid open before her, offering freedom only steps away. Beauchamp’s voice followed her, hoarse with rage.

  She picked up her pace, struggling not to drag attention to herself.

  “What are you screaming about, you immature baboon?” her father used his co
mmanding voice when he shouted at Beauchamp to drown out the other man’s shouts.

  Anya stifled her laugh. This was not the time. Ahead of her, Luc gripped the steering wheel of the truck. His eyes were on her.

  ***

  “I hate this,” Luc growled at his brother. They sat in the cab of their truck as they waited for Anya to retrieve the encrypted information from inside the GOE facility. There was no way two dragons were getting inside the building without being recognized, so Anya had no other option but go alone and it was making Luc anxious.

  Marc let his head fall back against the seat, eyes on the truck’s ceiling and not the facility ahead of them.

  “You’re just freaking out because of the bond.”

  There was a low growl that vibrated from Luc’s chest. He never took that kind of attitude with his brother, but Marc let it roll off him. Luc often wondered if there was a core of Zen inside his brother, a kind of imbalance that happened in the womb that made the brothers so drastically different.

  “What do you know about it?” Luc grumbled. All he wanted was to see Anya coming through those doors. His mind didn’t help, playing out scenario after scenario of everything that could go wrong while he was trapped outside and she was inside.

  What if the agents caught her? What if they figured out she was a dragon’s mate? It wasn’t often that a dragon found a human mate. It was never something anyone talked about. Probably because of the American dragon stigma.

  “I know that she keeps saying she doesn’t want you,” Marc acknowledged.

  Luc burned. Anger writhed through him like a living creature that was anxious to break free. His words felt like a bomb hidden behind his lips. Anya said over and over again that they couldn’t be together, but she would still lay kisses on his lips, she would still reach for him. The mixed signals were driving him mad. He had no idea what his future held. He couldn’t afford to look toward the future. All he could do was take it one step at a time, those steps being one forward and one back so that he never moved anywhere.

  “But, she does want you,” Marc finished.

  Luc’s anger fled out the window. His chest deflated and he turned to look at his brother. Marc’s somber face helped center his twin. Marc had to be lying, saying what Luc wanted to hear and he told him as much.

  Marc shook his head. “She’s your mate. She feels the same you do. There’s no getting around the feeling of a mate bond, but life can often get in the way. If she’s holding back, it’s because there’s something else in her life that’s making her keep her distance. Use your brain, meathead.”

  Luc turned his attention back to the facility outside the windshield. They sat in a GOE parking lot, the very facility that his mate’s father worked at. When it dawned on Luc what his brother was trying to tell him, he let out a soft curse. Was he daft or dull? Did it take eons for things to sink in? Luc let his head fall against the steering wheel. How could he win his mate when she still stood on her father’s side?

  The door ahead of them slid open and Luc’s heart lurched. A familiar head of golden brown curls appeared, one hand holding tightly to the purse over her shoulder and a speed to her gait that made Luc nervous. Once she was a distance away from the door, she burst into a sprint. She threw open the door once she got to the truck and threw herself inside.

  Anya’s breathing was fast, either from the run or nerves, Luc couldn’t tell. All he knew was that panic gripped his own heart. Was his mate safe? Had she been found out?

  “We need to leave,” she breathed from the back seat before ducking below the windows. “Don’t gun it out of the parking lot, but we should go now.”

  Luc nodded and turned over the ignition. The old engine protested. Ahead of them, the facility door slid open again. Beauchamp appeared, his face bandaged from where it had collided with pavement after Luc threw him, and his face purple from something else. Luc wished he could have done more. The urge to get out of the truck and teach the human man another lesson was overwhelming. So much that his hand paused on the key.

  “Meathead!” Marc yelled at him, reaching over to turn the key himself.

  The engine roared to life and the truck jerked forward. Anya’s father lurched out the doors and grabbed the younger agent, spinning him around. Agent Beauchamp’s eyes narrowed at the truck as it rumbled past. Luc was going to kill that man someday. He knew it deep down as a fact that would never change. He would kill Beauchamp, because if he didn’t Anya would never know peace.

  Unfortunately for Luc, today would not be that day.

  They hit the highway as fast as they could. Isaac was waiting at the house on the waterfront with his desktop. If there were any protections on the file Anya had just procured, Isaac would be able to bypass it. While in Wales, Isaac had happily chatted up Liana’s sister-in-law, a royal Egyptian gold dragon, and exchanged a plethora of computer secrets like the nerds they were. Too bad she was mated to Liana’s older brother or the two of them might have made a cute couple.

  Behind Luc, his own mate, the most confusing woman he’d ever met, leaned back and let out a long sigh of relief. Their eyes met in the rearview mirror and something struck Luc. There was something different in the way she looked at him. What had changed while she was inside?

  “You’re on the wrong side of the road!” Marc shouted at his twin. The passenger dragon grabbed the wheel and jerked the truck back to the right side of the road.

  Luc’s heart thumped. He’d been so distracted by his mate that he almost hurt them all.

  Whatever was going on needed to be resolved soon. Luc couldn’t take the come and go nature of Anya’s affections. She was a distraction that kept returning to rip his heart out. His brother helped him sort out some of the reason she’d been so confusing.

  Chapter Nine

  Anya sucked in a deep breath of the waterfront air while she sat on the small dock. She closed her eyes and looked for the bond that tied her to Luc in the darkness of her mind. It felt a little like what she thought meditation should feel like, a concept she’d never found the time to try. But, the bond wasn’t a tangible string she could grab with her hands. It wasn’t even something she could visualize. It was more like a note that sang in her mind when Luc was near, a vibration that jumped across her skin and ended with a chord that moved through her.

  As if to prove its point, Luc appeared. Her eyes were still closed, but she knew it was him from the feeling that touched her skin. It was almost as if the sun was shining from his direction. As he moved up and down the bank of the lake, pacing like he often did, the feeling followed him.

  That was the bond. That was the thing that tied the two of them together, fate’s pinky string. Slowly, Anya opened her eyes. Luc was pacing while talking to himself. Anya raised an eyebrow and had to stifle a laugh. This caught his attention and he stuttered to a halt.

  “What are you doing?”

  He pressed his lips together and turned his whole body toward her. This was a talk. Not a conversation, but a talk. Anya could tell from the look on his face, from the way he’d been pacing. Something was bothering him.

  She opened her mouth to explain, but he cut her off.

  “I know there is a mate bond between us,” Luc began. He wouldn’t look at her. His eyes were on everything but her. “I know how that feels, especially when we’ve been cooped up in this house together for a while. It’s a magnetic pull that keeps tugging us together. I understand why the past several days have been the… way they’ve been.

  “What I’m trying to say is that you have the option to deny this bond… if that’s what you want. Just tell me once and for all. If you do, I’ll leave. I’ll take the information we get today and I’ll get out of your life forever. You can finish your degree. You can move to DC and still do all of the things you’ve ever wanted to do.

  “But…” Luc paused. He stopped pacing and his eyes finally met hers. “If you are willing to take this bond, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. I’ll follow you whil
e you finish your degree. I’ll stand by you while you scream your convictions to the world. I’m yours if only you’ll have me.”

  Anya’s heart soared. It launched itself into her throat while her eyes watered.

  Luc went on. “I know why you’ve tried keeping your distance. A dragon doesn’t fit into the life you already have. I mean, having a GOE agent and a dragon at the dinner table for Christmas dinners is just inviting trouble for the holidays. I get that…”

  Luc didn’t have a chance to finish. Anya closed the space between them, threw her arms around his neck, and captured his mouth with her own. His words were lost when her tongue swept past his lips. He gave a small sound of surprise, but quickly recovered and pulled her into his arms.

  Together, they sank to the dock. Luc balanced his weight above her before breaking away from the kiss. His gaze met hers, a question in his dark eyes. Anya raised a hand to smooth away the furrow in his brow.

  “I’ve been an idiot, like usual,” she whispered to him. “I am yours, from here on out and for however long we live.”

  Luc sucked in a breath. Joy lit up his face. It was an expression that made Anya’s own heart light. Then, the smirk touched his lips. Luc’s hands gripped her waist right before he lurched into a roll. Together, they splashed into the water.

  Anya let out a cry of laughter. Luc held her above the water long enough for her to wrap her legs around his waist. His lips left a trail of kisses up her wet neck before he pulled back to let his gaze drop over her wet body. His hands held her to him, one hand lowering to cup her ass.

  Luc leaned in, his lips brushing her ear. “I want to be inside of you.”

  Anya felt things inside of her tighten in anticipation. Her legs tightened around him until she could feel exactly what he meant. The hem of her skirt was floating above her waist, so when she rubbed against him small shocks of pleasure rocketed through her. Her hips rocked, grinding against it until his hands tightened on her waist. Luc let out a small growl, his eyes glazing over.