Alashiya, barefoot and dressed in a soft linen dress, moved between the cooker and the various stations set up around the marble countertops with the breathtaking grace that was so inherent to her. With her curls piled high on her head and secured with a silk scarf he’d given her just the night before — daily gifts had become something of a ritual for them, to make up for lost time — she looked beautifully at ease in a space that had once seemed so foreign to her.
And all around her were dragons.
“Don’t over-mix that,” she calmly instructed Pasha, who was absolutely over-mixing something in a large stainless steel bowl.
Pasha, with his broken horn and megawatt smile, gave Alashiya a bemused look. “How can you over-mix something,kuninganna?It’s either mixed or it’s not. And faster is always better, yes?”
“No,” she answered serenely, with all the patience in the world for the dragon mixing so vigorously that the contents of the bowl had begun to splatter the counter. “When you mix flour, you develop gluten, which is what makes things bready. You don’t always want that, right? We’re making cookies, Pasha, not mini loaves.”
Pasha’s mixing slowed. Glancing at Alashiya with a hopeful expression, he waited for her to give him a thumbs up before he shot her his signature grin.
“Couldn’t we use a mixer?” Aivar muttered. He was stationed by the stove, where he was meticulously leveling out scoops of powdered sugar before dumping them into a bowl.
“Doesn’t taste the same,” Alashiya and Radek answered simultaneously. The pair shared a knowing look as the rest of the dragons grumbled.
Radek, Alashiya’s partner in crime, was armed with a knife, which he used to cut a massive bar of chocolate into thick shavings. His normally grim expression hadn’t changed, but the line of his shoulders was always a little softer when he was with his Emand. The two were thick as thieves.
Taevas wasn’t entirely certain Radek would hand over command of her security when the day finally came for Alashiya’s own Wing to take up their post. They’d been vetting soldiers for months, trying to assemble the best of the best, but he had a feeling Radek would request that his position as Wing leader be made permanent.
He couldn’t complain too much. If Radek wanted to make up for what he felt was a failure to protect his own mate by devoting his life to protecting Taevas’s, then so be it.
In fact, he was pretty sure hisentireWing would’ve abandoned him for Alashiya if they could’ve. They did sowhenever they got the opportunity, like today, when he’d been stuck in his office all day.
When they didn’t have to worry about guarding him, they shot off like a pack of puppies looking for their mother. Even Roman, who was generally the least sociable of the group, was quietly moving cookies freshly out of the oven onto a cooling rack with his bare hands. Next to him, Vael and Hele had their heads bent together as they attempted to pipe what looked like white frosting onto crescent-shaped cookies, secret smiles on their faces.
And floating between them all was his Alashiya. The warmth of the busy kitchen made her cheeks a delightful dusky color, and the way her eyes lit up every time she gently corrected the technique or explained something to one of her workers made his chest tighten.
The smell of sugar and butter and his queen had lured Taevas from his office, but the sight of his closest friends gathered around his Chosen was better than any sweet.
Minu metsalill, you are a vision,he thought, wings twitching with the need to wrap her up tightly and whisk her away.
Alishya’s head turned toward him as the hyphae channeled his affection and his need for her. A grin rounded her cheeks as she spied him by the door. “You’re late,” she scolded.
She padded across the kitchen on her bare feet, her dress fluttering in the sweet air, to greet him with a kiss that tasted like chocolate and cinnamon.
“My apologies,” he replied, curling his tail possessively around her waist. “My meeting ran long.”
“I’ll forgive you this time. Did you bring the presents?”
Taevas held up the large bag she’d tasked him with fetching from her workshop. “Of course.”
“Presents?” Pasha’s voice carried across the room. “No one said anything about presents!”
“It’s only a small thing,” Alashiya demurred. Giving Taevas a nervous look, she reached for the bag. “Since I knew we’d all be baking today, I thought it might be nice if— Well, it’s a little silly, but, um…”
He didn’t like seeing her nervous, but no matter how many times he’d assured her that her gifts would be a hit, she hadn’t been able to shake the worry. In the end, he’d been forced to accept the fact that she wouldn’t be reassured until she saw their reactions for herself.
So Taevas simply gave her a confident look and handed over the bag.
Alashiya kept her eyes down as she quickly flitted around the room, distributing small, cloth-wrapped packages to their intended recipients. “Taevas picked the colors,” she babbled, practically shoving the last package into Radek’s hands. “If you don’t like them, I can make you another. It’s really not a big deal. I just?—”
Taevas crossed the kitchen to draw her into his side, interrupting her nervous rambling. “Open them,” he ordered, giving the room a sweeping look. He didn’t need to tell them to be nice, but it didn’t hurt to give a little reminder.
The dragons didn’t waste a moment. Carefully unwrapping their packages, they revealed what Alashiya had quietly been working on for the last several days: matching aprons she’d sewn for them and embroidered with silver moons and stars.
There was a moment of astonished quiet.
Alashiya paled, but just when her wide eyes swung toward Taevas with panic, a ripple of noise went around the room. Whoops of joy and whistles of appreciation filled the kitchen as everyone began showing off their gifts to each other, noting the colors and the fine craftsmanship of the embroidery.
