Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 61872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
There, I’m surprised by what I find.
My bride, sitting at the large wooden block table with both my butler and my chef.
I clear my throat, and both Buttons and Giampi jump to their feet.
“Master Dieter, you have returned,” Buttons says.
“I have.” My gaze is on Tabitha, who has twisted in her seat to look my way. Her face is full of light. She’s more relaxed than I’ve seen her since she arrived, and there’s a lovely smile in place, which droops slightly when she sees me. Maybe because I’m frowning.
That’s not like me. I usually don’t allow emotions to show on my face. I usually don’t feel emotions. “Why are you eating in the kitchen?” I ask.
She waves a dismissive hand at me. “Your dining room is far too formal. I prefer it here.”
She prefers it…with my servants?
I try to dislodge the jealous bone that gets stuck in my throat. Surely she’s not interested in either man. They are a couple. They don’t seek the attention of women.
My brain reels trying to figure out what they could have offered her to make her smile that my dining room and I didn’t.
I force a smooth demeanor back in place. “I see. Will you join me in the library?”
To my relief, she stands. “Yes. We have some things to discuss,” she says.
“Whatever you like, my treasure,” I say, taking her hand when she approaches. She withdraws it, and I shift to placing my hand at her lower back, guiding her out to the hallway and in the direction of the library.
“What I would like is to leave,” she says primly, and my heart shoots down to my feet.
“I’m afraid that is not a possibility, my treasure,” I say smoothly. I have to squelch the blast of heat from my dragon’s internal fire that threatens to erupt.
“You can’t keep me as your prisoner here.”
“Tabitha, you are not my prisoner. You are my mate. Queen of this castle. Born to rule at my side.”
“News flash, I’m not some fair maiden you can carry off and keep in your tower. My knights will come to rescue me.”
Steam comes out of my nostrils, and I avert my head to keep her from seeing. “Are you referring to your wolves?” I ask when I’m back in control.
“Yes.”
“I’m sure they will try, but they will not succeed.” Gah. This is not how I wished our conversation to go. Not at all. I don’t want Tabitha to feel like a prisoner. But there’s no way I can let her leave. A dragon never relinquishes his treasure. Especially not a mate. And keeping her safe consumes me enough, even with her here protected in my castle.
I lost a mate once.
I won’t lose her again.
She lifts her lovely chin. “I know what you are.”
“Ah. I wondered when you would figure it out. Did Buttons tell you?”
We arrive at the library, and I lead her to a seat in front of the fire, watching with pleasure at how graceful and glorious she looks when she curls up in the overstuffed chair, her legs tucked up to the side, her hair falling over her bare shoulder. She’s truly magnificent.
“I had a dream.”
I lean forward and pin her with my gaze. “Did you? What did you see?”
She tilts her head and studies me back. “There was a dragon in a cave. He wore gold cuffs like mine.” She holds her wrists up.
I draw in a sharp breath through my nose, sensing an angry stirring of my dragon within. Do I keep him in cuffs?
Perhaps I do.
With good reason. When he gets free, he rampages. Especially where our mate is concerned.
Most recently, he torched that drug cartel in New Mexico that had been threatening Adele, who I believed was my mate because she’d been wearing Tabitha’s scarf.
“You saw my other form.”
She doesn’t seem afraid. Not like she was when I picked her up in New Mexico. When she fainted dead at the sight of me. “I saw.”
“Did he…speak to you?”
My dragon used to speak to me. His animalistic urges, his desires were in my mind, even when I was in this form. But no longer. Now I only feel his pain. His resentment.
As I’m sure he feels mine.
“Yes. He spoke into my mind.”
A lump forms in my throat. I’m both healed and torn apart knowing Tabitha and the dragon side of me have bonded. Torn apart because this side of me still stands so far apart from both of them.
“What did he tell you?”
She hesitates a moment. “He showed me his treasure.”
My lips kick up. Of course he did. “Ah, yes. We dragons love our treasure.”
“I don’t care about your treasure,” she says with a note of challenge.
“Yes, I’m coming to see that. But I have other ways of persuading you to stay.”
“So you are persuading me? Because I’m not feeling like I have much of a choice here.”