“My bet is he didn’t realize my mate is an Aždaja.”
“Then he’s not just a prick, he’s astupidprick.” Taevas grimaced. His fangs flashed in the morning sunlight that streamed in from the floor to ceiling windows. “I would have broken Alex’s phone, too. What the fuck was she thinking?”
“She wanted me to pull my head out of my ass.” Vael shrugged and peered down at the steaming pool of coffee in his earthenware mug. “It worked, obviously. I didn’tmeanto break her phone, though. That was an accident.”
Visibly reining in his temper, Taevas shook out his massive, purple wings and took another long sip of his coffee. When he lifted his arm, Vael spied more sprigs of olive leaves around the slit in the wrist cuff. It looked like the leaves were falling down his forearms to pool around his wrists. A rather subdued design for a man who was known for wearing velvet suits, leather, and gold.
“Well then, I suppose I should be congratulating you and my cousin,” his Isand said, tipping his mug in a salute. “I assume you’ve Chosen one another, what with the head-ass removal?”
This moment might have made him puff with pride and maybe even a little self-deprecating laughter if Vael didn’t feel a bit like throwing up. “Yes,” he answered, setting his coffee down on the bar. Elation warred with the dread of what he had to do. “I don’t knowwhyshe Chose me, but she did. I’m so fucking lucky.”
Taevas snorted. “Eh, no accounting for taste.”
“Shut up.” Vael wadded up a small stack of cocktail napkins that sat next to the coffee maker and tossed them at his Isand. Without so much as a glance, Taevas’s long purple tail snapped out to intercept it, sending the paper ball across the room.
“It’s about damn time.” He eyeballed Vael with barely concealed reproach. “She’s been mooning after you for over a year. I was starting to get annoyed with you on her behalf.”
“I wastryingto give her time.”
Taevas snorted. “Keep giving someone a gift they don’t want and eventually they’re going to bust your ass about it.”
Vael rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. “I was an idiot. I should have been looking for the signs and listening when she told me what she needed. I was just trying to take care of her.”
“You’re not the first dragon to think with his instincts rather than his brain,” Taevas sagely replied.
“You never have that issue.” Vael shook his head, even more impressed with his Isand’s coolheadedness than he usually was. He’d neveronceseen Taevas give in to his baser instincts — for a woman or anything else. He was playful, yes, but also tightly controlled.
“I don’t, but then again, I am not exactly a normal dragon.” His Isand’s lips twisted, not into their usual smirk, but into a wry, close-lipped smile. Tilting his mug in Vael’s direction, he continued, “But this discussion is not about me. It’s about you, and how you came here to forfeit your place in the Wing.”
Vael jolted. His heart beat double time in his chest when he rasped, “What? How do you—”
“Because I know you,” Taevas answered. “We’ve only spent over a hundred years together. It happens.”
Words failed him. Vael could only stare at him, his chest aching with the expanding pressure of conflicted guilt and stalwart conviction. After several strained seconds, all he could manage was, “I…”
Taevas swallowed a sip of his coffee before he snorted. “Don’t give me that look, whelp. I never said I wasacceptingyour resignation.”
Vael’s brow furrowed. “Wait, what? You can’t do that.”
It was Taevas’s turn to throw something. Snagging a lime from a stainless steel bowl just behind the bar, he tossed it at Vael’s head. It bounced off of a horn before it landed somewhere on the marble floor behind him.
“I can do whatever I fucking want,” Taevas informed him, brows arched in challenge. “If I say you aren’t quitting, then you aren’t quitting. I’m your Isand. I make the fucking rules.”
Indignation began to bleed through his astonishment. The desire to care for his mate in the way she needed made him less inclined to let Taevas bulldoze his will. “No, not in this. Hele needs the freedom to find herself, and I can’t give her that when I’m chained to the duties of the Wing. And since I can’t exactly reduce the load, then Ihaveto quit.” His voice broke. “I know that I’m letting you down, but my mate needs—”
“It’s like you’ve learned nothing from this spat with Hele.” Taevas rolled his eyes. “You aren’t listening to me, Vael. I’m telling you that you aren’t quitting because you don’thaveto.”
Vael speared his claws into his short hair and tugged. “I don’t understand.”
Taevas plonked his mug onto the bartop. The humor disappeared from his expression in an instant. “Vael, you have served the ‘Riik and me since you were barely more than a kid.Every single dayof your life, you’ve served. I allowed it because I thought it gave you purpose and the sense of having a clan again, but I draw the fucking line at you thinking that you are failing me or the ‘Riik by takingtime off.”
Taevas circled the bar to stand in front of him. Dropping a heavy hand onto his shoulder, he leaned in and rumbled, “You are not letting me down. You got it into your head when you were a kid that you owed me something for digging you out of that rubble, but you didn’t and you don’t. And even if you did, that debt would have been paid a thousand times over by now.”
Vael’s throat tightened painfully. He couldn’t bear to look at his Isand, so instead he closed his eyes and lowered his head until his forehead touched the crisp fabric pulled tight over Taevas’s broad shoulder. All he could manage to croak was, “You saved me.”
“And you have watched my back every day since you were a teenager. We’re fucking even.” Strong, clawed fingers glittering with gold bands squeezed his shoulder. “You’re taking a sabbatical. Go live your life with my cousin. Have fun. Raise some little electric dragons while she gets her PhD or whatever. Let her run you ragged. This doesn’t have to be a sacrifice for Hele.It can be about finding out who you are as well.”
Taevas’s hand moved to the nape of his neck. Grasping it with playful roughness, he continued, “And when you’re ready to come home, your position will be waiting for you. Maybe you won’t want it, or maybe you’ll need to make changes to your duties. What-fucking-ever. You’ve more than earned a permanent space in the Wing, Vael. That’s not going to change. Those tattoos aren’t exactly temporary, are they?”
