“I do,” I nodded, fighting the urge to roll onto my side and look at him properly because I didn’t want to dislodge the kitten from his spot. “But I think you learned your lesson about that.You should trust your instincts about who shouldn’t continue to breathe and if you don’t my mother will clean up your mess. She’s technically sort of your mum too now.”
“I won’t make the mistake of leaving them alive again,” he nodded and took my free hand in his to kiss it. “So, is that a yes?”
“What happens if I say yes?” I asked, yawning and wishing that I had a coffee pot inside my bedroom.
“Then we are mates,” he shrugged. “We can have the big fancy wedding if you want it. I’ve heard tale of the way some dragons do things. Perhaps we wait until your mother is well but we can do that.”
“What would you do back where you come from?” I asked him.
He wiggled his eyebrows and smirked, “Would be fair play to use your words against you but first I must feed you.”
“Like you’re going to cook?”
“I can or we can order in, or we can see what Raiel is cooking downstairs. I hope it’s okay, but he’ll be staying for a short time until we are certain that those who died do not have the sort of friends who seek revenge,” Beal said.
“I’d bite off their heads on my way to the coffee pot this morning, but Raiel is welcome to stay. It’ll give mum someone to talk to if she wakes up while we’re – uh busy. Oh, does he have a name?”
“He hasn’t told me if he does. I believe it will be okay if you gift him something to be called by,” Beal said, stroking the kitten’s back with one of his big fingers.
“I’ll have to think on it. You know it’ll probably make it into the papers or something, right?”
“Those silly little gossip and lie books that come out each morning?” Beal arched a brow. “They’d want to talk about our companion?”
“Probably.”
“Because you have money?”
“That and because my mum killed three men,” I nodded.
“I can’t wait for our mothers to meet! Mine’s going to love yours to pieces. She too would kill three men if she thought they posed a threat, or she might do it for fun if they were the wrong sort.”
A chill shimmied down my spine. That was that. It was time for coffee. There was only so much death and murder talk a dragon could take first thing in the morning.
“Is that a yes?” Beal asked again.
“YES!” I said, tossing one hand in the air and scooping the kitten up with the other. “Now, I need coffee and breakfast. Then I’m going to wear you out for making me wait so long! Like seriously, I could’ve devoured you last night!” I left the room before my mate had time to retort.
***
It broke my heart a little to leave my new kitten with Raiel when me and Beal retired back to the bedroom after breakfast but in a room with a romping dragon and sabertooth tiger wasn’t the best place for a tiny kitten.
“We left Raiel on Mum duty. The least we can do is let the kitten keep him company,”my dragon chuckled into my thoughts as I stepped into the shower.
Under the hot water, I tried to sort out my thoughts from my feelings. Jon was dead. Chard, whom I only met a few times, was dead. Tops too. I’d never met Tops but apparently at one time my mother nearly married him. He’d broken her heart and then encouraged Jon to break mine. It made sense to me why she wanted to hold his beating heart in her palm.
Was it fate or luck that brought Beal to me at the perfect time? Some small part of me was angry at him for not introducing himself straight away. The last few days would’vebeen radically different if he had. The other part of me – the part of me I barely admitted to – felt oh-so-fucking special that he’d taken body parts from those who’d hurt me and turned them into courting gifts.
Eventually, I’d tell my friends that I met my mate. They’d hear it from the news before they heard it from me but that was just going to have to be okay for now. I had enough on my plate, and the magic of the true-mate response wouldn’t leave me alone as I soaped up.
Beal waited for me in the bedroom, but his scent crept in through the door cracks. It clung to the steam and dove into my lungs again and again until it even overpowered the patchouli and lavender soap I used. I let out a long, slow breath and tried to imagine that I washed my past down the drain. Only the past never really went away, did it?
“You’re not haunted. People have to care about people enough to haunt them. Jon never cared about us that much. I like to imagine that he and Chard are bitching up a storm in the Pit and that Tops is trying to get away, but they won’t stop bitching about how he said this plan would work. They’re just so infuriated at him and it’s hilarious. I hope that’s what’s really going on with them too. Now everyone deserves to rest in peace. Some deserve to rest in piss,”my dragon said, rambling on as I shampooed my hair.
I chuckled at the idea. Was it fair for me to just put thoughts of him away now that he was dead and I’d met my mate?
“Life’s not fair. We don’t have to make it fair,”my dragon chimed into my thoughts again.“That’s not our job. We don’t have to mourn for those who wish us harm. We get to celebrate that they didn’t get to kill us after all. Besides, do you really want to spend all this time thinking about Jon and them? Don’t you think you should consider what we’ll say when Beal pops the condom/no condom question?”
“Do you think he knows what a condom is?”
