This next bit. Oh, this next bit was hard.
She had to swallow down a growing lump in her throat and clench her whole body tight just to force the words out of her mouth. “…what if being married isn’t what a dragon needs to be? What if he needs more freedom to fly, and he would be happier visiting his mate once in a while instead of living with her every day? I’ve heard of Wyr mates who do th—”
He spun to face her, ablaze with anger, and hissed, “Shut your mouth!”
Never, in all the time they had been together, not even in the worst of their arguments over the past few weeks, had he ever spoken to her like that. She was caught staring at him, mouth open and eyes wide.
Some kind of gigantic emotion held him in its grip, and his eyes shone with lambent fire. Moving slowly, but with inexorable deliberation, he gripped her arms.
“Pia,” he growled, “you are mine, and I am never letting you go. I am never leaving you. I don’t care what other marriages are like or what other Wyr mates work out between themselves.”
Her lips trembled. She had needed his restrained ferocity from the very beginning, and that was still true. But sometimes it was tough to face. “I was only trying to tell you that I love you enough to do anything you need, even that.”
“I don’t need that!” The patio underneath her shook with the force of his exclamation. Then he drew himself up, sucked in a breath. Let it out. Passing a hand over her hair, he kissed her forehead and then her mouth, lingering over the caress as she touched his cheek and ran the short silken strands of his black hair through her fingers.
He was much calmer when he lifted his head. “You aren’t what is wrong. I can say with absolute certainty that you are the one thing that is most perfect and right in my world. You are the center around which everything else revolves, always.”
Closing her eyes, she breathed, “You’re that for me too.”
He took in another deep breath. Blew it out. Then he picked her up to sit down with her in his lap. As she settled against him, he tucked her head under his chin and locked his arms around her.
“Thank you for that story,” he said. “It actually told me a few things that I needed to hear. Now, let me tell you one. Once upon a time, there was a wicked, jaded dragon who came upon a treasure so wondrous he knew almost immediately he needed to have her in his life, to love and guard for the rest of his days. For this treasure, he would try to be a good man, although he wouldn’t always be very successful at it. But he would try.”
“And he would always, always be good enough,” she murmured into his neck.
He had calmed down enough to smile. She could hear it in his voice. “The thing about this treasure,” he continued. “She was so miraculous there was a part of her she always needed to hide, and it roused every protective instinct the dragon had. And more and more people began to find out her secret. That didn’t feel good to the dragon. His instincts were to hoard and hide. And some shit happened to them, but that was life. Shit happens. The really important things were the children and the family. Those were the best of all treasures. But the younger one of those children, it must be said, is going to be a disastrous miracle.”
Laughter exploded out of her. “He is, isn’t he?”
“Stinkpot has your Wyr form and what appears to be my temperament,” Dragos said. “Gods help us.”
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“You’ll follow me anywhere,” he said.
She nodded. “And I meant it.”
He fell silent for a long moment. “When you said move back to New York, everything inside me rejected the idea,” he told her. “When I was talking to the mayor, the whole conversation felt needlessly laborious and wrong. Wasting my time on that new stadium project felt wrong. And as far as living here goes—you’re right, this doesn’t feel right either. But there’s another option.”
She straightened to look into his eyes. “You want to leave New York. You want to move to the Other land.”
He didn’t deny it. Instead, he smiled crookedly. “Would that be so bad?”
“No,” she breathed, testing it out in her mind. “It would be strange, but not bad.” And anything would be light-years better than if he had left her. “It would be a challenge.”
His hard features lit. “Yes, it certainly would be.”
“All that space,” she said, watching him carefully. “The clear skies, no airplanes, no air traffic control, only birds and avian Wyr. No border disputes with other demesnes.”
With a wry tilt of his head, he acknowledged that one. “No television or cell phones,” he added. “No government, no real community—yet.”
“Pffft!” She blew that off with a wave of one hand. “How many people are there right now?”
His gaze narrowed as he thought. “Over two hundred construction workers and their families, along with a team of civil engineers and a few consultants from Adriyel.”
“Dragos, two hundred construction workers along with their families is a community,” she told him. “At least it’s the beginning of one. And if we move there, you know other people will want to come with us.”
“Several houses are already finished, and you already know the prototype house I’ve been experimenting with for the past several years is very comfortable. There’s also a regular caravan that transports supplies in every two weeks, and I’ve got border stations built at both ends of all three crossover passageways.” His smile widened. “Nobody gets in or out of that land unless I say so. And the lake where the flagship city is being built is easily the size of Lake Superior.”
She could almost see the wheels turning over in his mind. They would have so much work to do. City planning, nation building.
And for the first time in an extremely long time, that could be a land where Dragos’s reign would be undisputed. There would be no more need for compromise with humankind and other populations, at least not there.
He would not only thrive on the challenge. He would thrive on the power and autonomy. Compromise had always been difficult for him.
She frowned. “Your departure would leave a big power vacuum here on Earth.”
His expression turned calculating. “Not necessarily. Not if I establish someone here to rule the Wyr demesne in my place.”
She sucked in a breath. “Do you mean Liam?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He gave her a swift kiss. “We can’t talk to Liam while he’s at school in Glen Haven. We’ll have to see what he thinks during his term break. He’s not ready to rule a demesne, Pia—just as he’s not ready become a sentinel, no matter how much physical or magical prowess he gains while he’s away. Look at the age, seasoning, and experience all the other sentinels have. Liam can’t match that kind of real-life experience by going away to school for a year.”
Growing troubled, she reminded him, “But you made him a promise.”
His mouth thinned. “I gave a grieving, uncertain boy a sense of purpose and the hope of finding his place in this world, and I don’t regret that. But I never should have made that promise to him, and I’ve been waiting for him to come home again so I can tell him so.”
Thinking about that promise made her forehead tight with anxiety. She ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what to say. You and he are going to have to work that out.”
“Exactly,” he said. “This isn’t your issue. It’s his and mine. I’ll handle it. The only thing you and I have to decide is what we’re going to do.”
Watching him, she said, “You want to go, don’t you?”
“I do,” he said after a moment. “It wouldn’t be perfect, because nothing is. But it would be so much more secure than even this compound is. It would be a good place to protect you and raise the baby, especially if your secret ever got out. And we would have so much more freedom there, but despite your generous offer, this isn’t all about me. You need to weigh in too.”
“Well, as long as the caravan carts in lots of books.”
Dragos waved a hand. “We’ll have whole libraries, and theaters, and every kind of music you can think of.”
“Well, I think it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun,” she told him. “And we’ll still have this place and the penthouse in the city to visit whenever we want.”
Noises from the baby monitor interrupted whatever Dragos was about to say next.
Strange noises…
Trot trot trot BAM! Trot trot trot BAM! Trot trot trot BAM!
“What the fuck is that?” Dragos set Pia on her feet and stood.
She snatched up the monitor. The baby wasn’t in the bassinet.
The baby wasn’t in the bassinet.
She and Dragos exchanged a grim look. He said, “Take the stairs.”
She nodded. As she lunged indoors, he raced to leap onto their balcony. There was nothing and no one on the stairs. By the time she slammed through the door of their bedroom suite, her heart pounded in full-blown panic.
The sight that greeted her stopped her dead in her tracks.
Dragos stood in the balcony doorway, both french doors flung wide open. He had covered his mouth with one large hand as he stared at the small creature rampaging the open areas of their spacious bedroom.
The bronze creature was roughly the size of a small dog, with an equine head and legs that seemed too large for its body. It was perfectly, exquisitely formed, from the large gold eyes and the dainty hooves to the slender, graceful horn at its wide forehead.
When Pia plunged into the room, the creature spun to face her, legs splayed wide and his head lowered in a threatening stance. Oh, dear gods, she wanted to laugh so hard it hurt.
Instead, she said, “Don’t you point your horn at me like that, young man.”
As soon as she spoke, the creature’s entire attitude changed. He galloped over to her, cavorting with delight. As he left the area rug and his hooves struck the hardwood floor, she recognized one of the sounds from the baby monitor.
She fell to her knees, crooning, “Aren’t you beautiful?”
Happily her son careened into her arms. She picked him up and hugged him, and he allowed it, but after a few moments he wriggled to get loose. As his hooves hit the floor, he galloped in a wide circle and then headed straight at the corner of Dragos and Pia’s bed.
And he didn’t stop until he slammed the tip of his horn into the wooden corner that, she saw, already bore the scars from previous attacks.
Trot trot trot BAM!
Pia’s brimming gaze met Dragos’s. They both exploded with laughter.
Tossing his head with exuberance, the little foal galloped around the room again. Trot trot trot BAM!
What had Dragos called him? A disastrous miracle.
“That settles it,” she gasped when she could speak. “We’ve got to move. We have a moral duty to protect Earth from whatever comes next.”
* * *
After sleeping on the idea, they talked it over again at breakfast the next morning, and the decision to leave had solidified further.
“Let’s not make a big deal about it,” Pia said with a shrug. “Let’s just do it. If we don’t like it, we can always move back or do something else.”
“I agree.” Dragos grinned. “Let’s do this.”
“We’re going to have to name the place.” She tapped a thumbnail against her front teeth as she considered.
“I’ve been tossing around the idea of Rhyacia,” Dragos told her. He could never seem to get enough baby time, and he cuddled Stinkpot under his chin as he sipped coffee. After exhausting himself by running around the bedroom, the baby had changed without fuss back into his human form. “It’s a bastardization of the Rhyacian Period, which is a geologic era. The Greek root of the word means lava.”
“Huh.” Pia didn’t ever want him to know that sometimes she tuned him out whenever he got all sciencey on her. She was just content to gaze at him and enjoy the interest and focus in his expression.
The sexy on that slow burn. Man, it was getting hotter by the minute. She twisted restlessly in her seat, and by the awareness in his gaze, she could tell that he took note. The strong lines of his beautiful mouth pulled into a knowing smile.
But he didn’t do anything. Instead, he held his son, sat back in his chair, and watched her. When his long denim-clad legs brushed against hers, that slow, sexy burn turned excruciating.
No hurry, his body language said. We have all the time in the world.
Her own breathing felt tense, and when she picked up her coffee mug, her fingers clasped it too tightly. That easy all the time in the world attitude had felt comforting back when she hadn’t been ready to resume intimacy, but now it was starting to get to her.
And by the subtle flare of his nostrils, she could see that he could tell that too.
“So, we’re doing this,” he said.
Mmmmm, doing it… She lost herself in sensual memories.
“Pia,” Dragos said in a soft voice.
“Hm?” she responded. She ran a finger across her lower lip, back and forth as she thought of the feeling of his long, muscled body sliding over hers as he moved in her, and the deep whisper of his voice in her ear.
His knowing smile widened. “Are we moving to Rhyacia?”
Oh. She coughed. “Yes. Yes, we are.”
“Excellent. I’ll let the sentinels know.”
As he stood and handed the sleeping baby to her, she caught his hand. “It’s only a few weeks now until Liam’s term break. Be sure to tell everybody to keep quiet around Liam until we get a chance to break the news ourselves.”
His warm, hard fingers curled around hers reassuringly. “I will.”
Then he strode down the hall to his home office. Pia watched him walk away. Whatever else might be said about Dragos, he sure had one hell of a fine ass.
“Mama needs you to sleep extra well tonight, punkin, okay?” she murmured to the baby. Spending a quiet night together while the sexy burn between them stoked higher and higher… She lost herself in happy anticipation.
But then, two hours later, a knock sounded at the front door. When Pia answered the summons, she found every sentinel except one standing on her doorstep. Alexander was missing. A sentinel always had to remain on duty, and he must have volunteered to stay behind in the city.
She felt her daydreams of a private, sexy evening with Dragos shatter as she looked at each one—Aryal and her mate Quentin, Bayne, Graydon, and Grym. Graydon had even brought his mate, Beluviel.
With an inward sigh, Pia stepped back and opened the door wide. “Come on in, guys.”
Quentin, Beluviel, and Graydon gave her a kiss and a hug. An angry Aryal said in her face, “What the hell, Pia?”
She felt her eyes widen. “What the hell, what?”
“It was not okay to tell us in a text that you guys decided you would move to Rhy—Oh, whatever the fuck Dragos called it.”
Oh Lord. Pia sighed. “He didn’t tell me he was going to do that.”
“Where is he?” the harpy demanded.
Wordlessly, she pointed in the direction of Dragos’s office, and they all stalked past her, except for Bel, who looked at her with a small, regretful smile. “You didn’t know we were coming, did you?”
“It’s all right,” Pia told her. “I know this is big news, and Aryal is correct. Dragos shouldn’t have dropped it on them in a text.”
“Well, I, for one, am tremendously excited for you.” The Elven woman gave her a smile as bright as a spring morning.
“Thank you. I am too.” Pia returned her smile. Loud voices came from the direction of Dragos’s office until someone shut the door firmly. “I’m glad we’re not a part of that conversation.”
Bel laughed. “Me too.”
Pia said, “Let’s go talk babies.”
The happiness in Bel’s expression was entirely infectious. “I would love to.”
Chapter Eleven
It was almost four o’clock in the morning by the time Dragos was able to go
to bed. After a quick shower, he brushed his teeth and slipped silently into the shadowed bedroom. Pia had tucked the baby in his bassinet.
He tried to ease into the bed without disturbing her, but when his weight pressed down on the mattress, she rolled toward him and complained sleepily, “It’s almost dawn. I said good night to Bel hours ago. You guys talk too much.”
He snorted. “Don’t I know it.”
She was wearing his favorite red nightgown. The lace looked gorgeous against her creamy skin. Desire was a welcome, restless friend.
He pressed his lips against the curve of her breast and murmured, “If I had known you would be wearing this, I would have tried to get away sooner.”
She snickered and started to wind her arms around his neck, but then she bolted upright. “Oh—hey! I was dreaming, and the baby finally told me his name! He’s Niall.”
“Niall Cuelebre.” Dragos liked that. He smiled at the shadowed, quiet baby. “Good boy.”
“I love it.”
He hooked an arm around her and coaxed her to lie down beside him. She settled willingly against his side in one of his favorite positions, with one slender leg draped across his hips. The feeling of her warm curves nestled against him, the scent of her hair—there wasn’t anything finer or more complete than moments like this.
He grew hard, his erection lying thick and full along the edge of her thigh, but he had been hard and aching for her for the past two weeks, so he schooled himself to patience even as she walked her fingers across his chest.
“How did your talk go?” she asked. “Or should I say argument?”
He expelled a soft laugh. “It’s complicated, but bottom line, I think Graydon and Bel might like to come with us. He’s very aware that she puts up with the city in order to be with him.”