"Of course." She sipped her wine and grinned. "I feel very relaxed right now."
"Gods, I wish I did," he replied, which made her chuckle again. "The whole pale clothes, sweet girl thing you do, is it because of people like Afon?"
"You know Afon?" she asked, genuinely surprised.
Valentine snorted. "I ran into him before I came to rescue you. He accused Taranis of taking in another feral. I may have growled at him."
"I wish I could have seen that," Yelena replied, delighted at just the thought of it. "To answer your question, when Taranis took me in, it was a massive risk for him. I couldn't speak. I didn't know how to act. I don't even know how old I am. I noticed that when I dressed and acted in a certain way, people were less afraid of me. Only Taranis and the knights know there is another side of me. Even then, they…" She struggled to find the right word.
"They see what they want to see," Valentine guessed, and she nodded. "I understand that. I went with the opposite, becoming so unlikeable that people left me alone, but it was still the same thing. I know my family loves me. All of it, including the fae sides. I don't have to pretend so much with them, but they don't really understand me either."
Yelena put her goblet down. "My turn for a question. When did you first feel like you couldn't trust yourself and decide to bind your dragon? You did it for your family's safety, I assume."
Valentine blew out a breath. "Yes, I did. When I first heard the dragon, I thought it was some kind of personality trying to emerge. Everyone already thought I would be the one to go crazy in this Greatdrakes generation, and I was determined not to prove them right. Back then, we knew we had a dragon ancestor, but apart from being good at magic and knowing who our mates were, there was no real sign that we had a dormant dragon side."
He tilted his head, lost in thought for a moment. "I wonder if the Greatdrakes family members who went crazy could hear the dragon like I could."
Yelena hummed. "And you didn't trust that side at all? Didn't even try to?"
Valentine picked up a bread roll from the platter and started to tear it into bits, like he needed his hands to be doing something in order to talk. Yelena understood that. To make him feel more relaxed, she picked at some grapes.
"I'm not going to judge you either, Valentine," she said and chewed one slowly. "I'm only trying to understand so I can help you with your magic and your dragon. You can't keep it locked up anymore, but you need to be able to move past your hesitation and trust it and yourself. It's the only way forward."
Valentine ate some bread, but his eyes were somewhere far away. "I haven't told anyone this, but I saw… I had a vision of my mother's death. It was about a week after I first heard the voice, my dragon. It was trying to warn me, and I was so upset by it that I didn't tell anyone. I thought it was just anxiety. A bad dream. She died in the crash a week later, in exactly the way I had seen. After that, I was so angry and freaked out by it that I started working on the binding spell."
"You were still a child. I'm so sorry," Yelena said, wanting to comfort him and unsure of how to.
"I was, but I knew I couldn't let it stay free inside of me. My family had lost too much. Cosimo went insane for a while. My brothers and I did the best we could until he pulled himself out of it. Her death broke all of us in different ways," Valentine replied, leaning back in his chair. "I perfected the binding sigil year after year. Tried to make it stronger. Then the fae returned, followed by magic, and it began to unravel. It's in tatters now that I've shifted. Fuck knows how it can be fixed now. I don't know if I even want to fix it."
Yelena swallowed the lump in her throat. "You let the dragon out to rescue me. I won't ever forget that. Or what it cost you."
"It saved you, so it was worth it." Valentine's expression shifted to one she had never seen on him before. It was almost soft. "I chose to let it out, Yelena. It was already beginning afterthe fight in France anyway. Saving you and Avallach was the excuse I needed to release it."
Yelena chewed her lip, hesitating to say what she wanted to. "You do know that it wasn'tentirelyreleased, don't you?"
Valentine nodded, just once. "I haven't been able to think about it. I don't know what I am, if I am not a dragon."
"Oh, you are definitely a dragon," Yelena said and smirked, thinking again of the dominance he had shown earlier. "A big, alpha dragon into making people submit."
Valentine read her expression and grinned back. "Only you, baby girl."
"You are fortunate that I wanted to submit. I'm an alpha too, you know," she said, letting some of the dragon come into her eyes. It liked looking at him as much as she did.
"I know, and I like it," he replied. "I wish you had shown it to me earlier. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble."
"Or gotten into lots of it."
Valentine's eyes heated. "There's still plenty of time to do that."
Yelena liked the thought of that far too much. "You make me feel volatile whenever we are in the same room," she admitted. "I don't know if I should worry about us tearing each other apart."
"Now you are just flirting with me." Valentine drank some more of his wine. "Do I scare you?"
Yelena shook her head. "Not even a little."
"Why?" he pushed.
"You like to play rough, like I do. Not just the sex, but with magic too," she said, needing to reassure him so he didn't run. "You like to be pushed to see what your limits are. It doesn't matter if it hurts. Then, when you realize once again that youhaveno limits, that settles you down because you are afraid of going too far. It's that side that's still afraid of going too far thatmakes you a good person, Valentine. I know to my bones that you would never hurt me intentionally. It's not who you are."
