by Zoe Chant
She led them inside and started undressing again as soon as she was through the door. She headed straight to the bedroom.
Hannah paused for a second in the doorway, looking at the king-sized bed awaiting them. She’d bought it a few years ago as a silly indulgence, after one too many business trips where she luxuriated in a huge hotel bed. It had felt a little lonely sometimes with just herself in all that expanse of sheets, but now...
Hannah finished undressing and climbed in, settling herself in the middle. Radu and Sorin followed without hesitation, fitting themselves around her.
Now the bed was just the right size for Hannah and her mates. It seemed as if everything had just been preparation for this, for the day they came home to her and everything fit into place.
Hannah settled her head on the pillow, and Radu and Sorin seemed to understand without words that she had brought them to bed for a bit of post-coital cuddling, not another round. Not just yet, anyway.
Radu and Sorin snuggled close to her, nuzzling but not kissing.
Hannah sighed dreamily and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of their bodies around hers.
“It’s too bad you two were so busy everywhere else all these years,” Hannah murmured. “We could’ve been doing this ages ago.”
Sorin, pressed up against her back, tensed.
Hannah turned her head. “It’s all right, I know you weren’t...”
But Sorin was looking across her at Radu, and Hannah could tell they were having a conversation she couldn’t hear.
“Radu?”
Radu’s gaze broke from Sorin’s to meet hers. “It’s all right now. We’re here now.”
Hannah nodded, smiling reassuringly. “I was just being greedy, that’s—”
“No,” Sorin said stubbornly. “No, Radu, we can’t just—”
“Sorin, don’t.”
Hannah sat up between them, looking back and forth, bewildered. “What are you two talking about?”
“I knew,” Sorin blurted, before Radu could stop him.
Radu closed his eyes and sighed.
Hannah just stared back and forth between them. “You knew...”
“I knew you were my mate,” Sorin said. “Not Radu’s—if I knew you were meant for both of us I wouldn’t have waited a second, I swear. But I didn’t want Radu left out. I thought he must have a mate somewhere, so—we just had to find her.”
Hannah looked over at Radu, who growled and said, “Tell her the rest, then, if you’re going to tell.”
Sorin looked away.
“Sorin meant to nobly give you up if I found a mate,” Radu said through gritted teeth. “We have only one hoard between us. We could only take one mate, officially.”
“And you didn’t want it to be me,” Hannah said numbly, pulling away from them both.
Sorin and Radu both sat up, eyes wide, and Sorin reached for her frantically. “No! Hannah, I wanted you so much, it was killing me every day—”
“And I was jealous,” Radu insisted. “Desperately jealous, knowing you were meant for him and not me, thinking you’d only want him. I always wanted you, even before I knew you were mine—”
“It was like carving out my heart every day,” Sorin went on. “Hannah, being away from you, thinking I might never be able to make you really mine—”
“But you could have,” Hannah said. They’d avoided her for years, left her wondering what she’d done wrong, wondering whether she had any future here at all.
She stood up and turned away, grabbing her bathrobe and wrapping it around herself before she faced them again.
“You knew. You knew right where I was. But you didn’t tell me. You didn’t give me a chance to say yes or no, to want one of you or the other or both. You hid from me. You lied to me.”
“We never,” Sorin tried to argue, but Radu shot him a glare.
“You didn’t let me choose,” Hannah said, starting to shake with anger and hurt.
“You just left me here waiting, knowing I wouldn’t find anyone else because I was meant for you. You knew I’d just be alone, waiting, whenever you decided to come back, and you didn’t have the decency to tell me that that was what I was doing. To ask me to wait. To tell me why.”
Radu’s face got blanker and blanker, shutting down as she spoke. Sorin looked horrified and hurt and so lost she almost wanted to comfort him—but he was the one in the wrong. He was the one who had known and never told her.
“Get out,” Hannah said, making her voice steady like she’d done in dozens of contentious town hall meetings. “Both of you just—get out. Go.”
Radu opened his mouth, spreading his hands in a placating gesture, but Sorin grabbed him by the wrist and tugged him out of Hannah’s bed. She stepped back as Sorin towed his twin to the door, and she didn’t meet their eyes as they went. She stayed right there until she heard the back door close, and then until she heard the sound of great wings taking to the air.
She went to the back door and locked it, and then leaned against the wood for a moment. It was perfectly quiet in her house. It was still hours before she usually came home from work. How on earth had she found her mates, and fallen out with them, all in a single day?
***
Radu and Sorin didn’t speak to each other as they flew, and they didn’t have to consider where to go. They touched down together in the clearing by the entrance to their hoard cave. They both changed into human shape and grabbed clothes from the shelves just inside before they walked down through the tunnel to their hoard.
They climbed up onto the pile of gold together, stretching out side by side.
Sorin was painfully aware of the space in between them, which he’d hardly ever noticed before. It was Hannah’s place; she belonged here with them.
“You weren’t wrong,” Radu sighed after a while. “We had to tell her.”
“And the longer we waited the easier it would be to keep waiting,” Sorin agreed. “But now what? I already miss her, it’s like—”
“Like our hoard is out there in town without us,” Radu finished.
He dug his fingers through the gold at his side. For the first time it was no consolation to be near it. Not when their mate was angry with them—and right to be. They’d hurt her by staying away, even if she hadn’t known it until they came back.
“I didn’t know...” Sorin said, frowning up at the ceiling, where strategically designed skylights let the sunlight filter down to them.
I didn’t know it would feel like this.
Radu nodded, knowing just what Sorin meant without him having to explain more. Father had told them once that having a mate didn’t mean everything was easy—they could still hurt each other sometimes. They shouldn’t depend on destiny to smooth things over when they’d done something wrong.
They’d all been out in the woods at the time, all three in dragon shape. Father had gone back to the house before dinner to apologize for something—the twins had never known what it was—and everything had been all right again by bedtime.
How do we apologize? Radu asked silently. She barely knows us, and the first thing we do is tell her we hid from her for years.
“We didn’t give her a choice,” Sorin murmured.
There was something...
He remembered, suddenly and painfully clear, the moment he’d first seen Hannah. For years the thing he’d remembered about that instant was the certainty that struck him like a physical force when he recognized her. He’d also remembered the soft, full beauty of her, her flashing eyes and curling red hair.
But now he remembered what she’d been saying as she argued with Gus.
“You might be right. You might be the best mayor Gray’s Hollow could have. But people still deserve to have a choice.”
“People deserve a choice,” Radu repeated.
He looked over at Sorin and grinned.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Sorin agreed. “There’s only a week until the election.”
“Plen
ty of time,” Radu insisted. “The town’s not that big. We just have to make sure we do everything right. In the proper order.”
Sorin could feel Radu making lists and plans already. He got up himself to look around for shoes. They had things to do.
***
Hannah was nearly ready for work on Wednesday morning when someone knocked at her door.
She knew somehow that it would be Radu, or Sorin, or both. She was surprised they’d waited this long, honestly.
She had spent a long night tossing and turning in her lonely bed, going back and forth between being furious and feeling hurt beyond bearing. When her alarm clock went off she was too tired to feel much of anything anymore. She just knew that she already missed them so much that she was afraid she’d let them off the hook the first time they asked.
And now here they were to ask.
“Who is it?” she called through the front door without opening it.
“Sorin,” he called back. “I’m not here to apologize.”
Hannah felt anger blaze up, bringing her fully awake at once. She yanked the door open only to find Sorin standing behind a huge sign.
Hannah Cole for Mayor, it said, bright red on a gray background. In smaller type it said, The logical choice.
In even smaller print, down in the corner, it said Paid for by the Committee to Elect Hannah Cole.
“I just wanted to ask if you’d let me put this sign in your yard,” Sorin explained.
Hannah jerked her gaze back up to meet his eyes.
He looked serious and a little sad, and like he hadn’t gotten any more sleep than she had. He wasn’t trying to be charming at all, but she felt herself melting anyway.
“Sorin...”
“I’m the president,” Sorin added. “Of the committee. Radu’s the treasurer. He’s at the printer’s, getting the rest of the signs, but we won’t distribute any if you don’t want us to. I came to ask you first.”
Hannah looked at the sign again.
“I’m not even on the ballot,” she said after a few seconds of staring. It was a proper campaign sign, not like the handmade photocopied flyers she’d distributed four years ago.
“Well, there’s always a write-in space,” Sorin said easily. “It’s just a matter of letting people know.”
“The logical choice, huh?” Hannah arched an eyebrow.
“You are,” Sorin said earnestly. “You’ve been deputy mayor for four years, you know more about running Gray’s Hollow than Radu does—probably more than Gus does. And...”
Hannah waited, watching Sorin’s hands shift on the big sign. She wanted to lean across it and kiss him so badly it was almost a physical pain.
“And you were right,” Sorin finally said, meeting her eyes again.
“People should have a choice. They should know what their choices are, and they should be free to choose. That was what you were saying, the first time I saw you. When I knew—you were in the diner, arguing with Gus, and you were saying people should have choices. Radu and I thought we should make sure everybody in this town knows they have a choice. And we thought we should make sure they all know that our choice is you. If you’re willing.”
“Sorin,” Hannah said helplessly. He’d said he wasn’t here to apologize, but this was so much more than an apology.
“To run for mayor,” Sorin added. “The rest—we’ll talk about it when you’re ready. But we wanted you to know first that we choose you, and if you don’t mind, we’re going to tell everyone in town that we think they should too.”
Hannah swallowed hard. “I... all right. You can put up the sign.”
Sorin grinned hugely. “Thanks, Deputy Mayor.”
He gave a little salute and then trotted down her porch steps with the sign to find the best spot for it in her small front yard.
Mr. and Mrs. Pawelsky across the street were already standing on their porch watching. Hannah waved to them and then went back inside to finish getting ready for work.
***
Hannah barely had time to sit down at her desk before there was a knock on her office door. She braced herself for God-knew-what and logged in to her email.
“Come in!”
Gus slipped in, barely opening the door and closing it firmly behind himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said first. He was using that self-consciously serious tone that Hannah thought of as his Mayor Gray Voice.
“Did you know?”
Hannah was sure she knew the answer to that, but it was still a relief to see Gus scowl and shake his head. He sat down on the other side of Hannah’s desk.
“Believe me, if I’d known, I’d—well, this wouldn’t have gone on so long.”
“I know, Gus.”
Gus nodded, still frowning. “And—I know they’ve decided to run a mayoral campaign for you—”
“I told Sorin this morning that it was all right,” Hannah said quickly, not wanting Gus to think the twins were still keeping her in the dark.
Gus nodded. “They told me that, or I would have quashed it. But if you... you know you have other choices, too. If you wanted to take off and leave them to wait until they’ve learned their lesson, or if you just want some breathing room to actually make up your own mind—I could recommend you a few places. If you wanted a job in Harrisburg or Philadelphia or New York...”
Hannah felt like crying for a second. It felt very different from last night, and very different from the startling way she’d been tempted to cry this morning. She had watched through the blinds as Sorin hammered that sign in and then met Radu at the curb, just as he was arriving with a load of smaller campaign signs.
“I just want you to know you have options,” Gus said, looking up and meeting her gaze. That wasn’t just the mayor looking at her now, it was the Gray of Gray’s Hollow, the head of his family, the ruler of all the local dragons.
“You’re my friend, and you’ve been my right hand all this time, and I want you to be a hundred percent clear that I’m not siding with my brothers just because they’re my brothers. They’ve been idiots. If you want to forgive them, believe me, I’ll be delighted to have you as part of the family. But if you’re not ready to—or if you just don’t want what they’re offering—I want you to know you can walk away. You’ll still be my friend and someone I owe a lot to.”
Hannah smiled, and it only wobbled a little. “Thanks, Gus. That’s—that means a lot. I don’t know if...”
She didn’t know if she could bear to be any further away from Radu and Sorin than she already was. She didn’t know how long she could hold on to the hurt and anger of having been left alone so long, when they were working so hard to prove that they knew better now.
But she didn’t think her pride could bear letting this go the first second they showed that they were sorry. Neither of them had actually apologized, for that matter, so Hannah didn’t feel unjustified in declining to forgive them quite yet.
Besides, the people of Gray’s Hollow really ought to experience an actual democratic process for once. She was the logical choice for mayor. She didn’t want to spoil the campaign by making the whole point moot on the first day.
She smiled again. “I don’t know. But thank you.”
Gus nodded. “Okay. In that case, I have an appalling number of ceremonial proclamations to sign.”
“That wouldn’t happen if you didn’t put them off for months on end.”
“And I never will again,” Gus assured her solemnly. He winked before he walked away.
“Oh,” he turned back in the doorway. “I should tell you, in the interests of full disclosure—I joined the Committee to Elect Hannah Cole. I’m vice president. You really are the logical choice.”
***
By early afternoon, Sorin and Radu had made their way downtown, and it was clear everyone knew what they were doing.
When they walked into the florist’s shop, Mrs. McCullough gave them a bright, expectant look and said, “What can I do for you boys?”
&nbs
p; Radu nodded solemnly and held up the window signs they’d been distributing, with mixed success, to the businesses they’d visited.
“We’d like your permission to post one of these in your window, and we’d like to tell you why we think Hannah Cole should get your vote for mayor.”
“She should get folks’ votes for mayor because she’s practically been mayor for the last four years,” Mrs. McCullough said briskly, waving her hand.
“Put the sign up if you like, for what good it does. Two hundred years, folks in this town have voted for Grays. You think some of them haven’t been ridiculous choices? You think no one’s ever been more qualified than a member of your family to be mayor?”
“Regardless,” Radu said firmly, “in this election—”
“We’d like her to be a Gray, though,” Sorin interrupted.
Stories not logic, Radu, we’ve been over this.
That particular story does not yet have an ending, Radu shot back, but he let his twin take charge.
Mrs. McCullough’s eyes were twinkling. This was clearly the part of the pitch she was interested in seeing them perform anyway.
“Would you now?” she prompted.
“She’s our mate, mine and Radu’s,” Sorin explained. “Or we’d like her to be, and all else being equal I think she would be willing to be. But it’s important to her that she isn’t just—appointed to us by fate. She wants to choose, and we want her to have the opportunity to choose.”
“Always figured it was some kind of dragon pheromones, myself,” Mrs. McCullough opined, turning her attention to assembling a bouquet.
“Whatever the cause, she’s the one we would choose,” Radu put in.
He wasn’t any good at putting those feelings into words, the rightness of Hannah, the way she fit between him and Sorin. He certainly couldn’t bring himself to describe the way he could already feel the lack of her. He always would, now, if this didn’t work.
“We want her to be able to choose us without fear of the situation being misunderstood,” Radu went on.
“Dragons being how we are, we tend to be possessive, and we want people to understand that Sorin and I are happy to share her as our mate, the same way we share a hoard.”
