“Weird.” Ella shook her head. “I’ve never smelled anything like that from him.”
“Wait. Really?” I’d thought everyone could smell it on him.
“No. He just smells like … dragon to me.”
My dragon growled her displeasure at the idea that another woman would be smelling him. My mate.
Calm down. This is Ella. Besides, she doesn’t smell what we do. It must just be for us because we’re special to him.
Mate,the dragon echoed with a happily possessive growl.
“So that’s just for me then.” I smiled dreamily. “Even better.”
“You smile a lot more too,” Ella added.
“Do I?”
She nodded slowly, playing with some strands of her hair that had fallen in front of her face. “Yes.”
“Here,” I said. I moved behind her and grabbed her long hair, beginning to do my best to separate it without a brush.
“Thanks.”
“Mmm hmm,” I said, thinking more on her last comment as my fingers worked on their own, spinning her hair into a braid that would keep it out of the way. “I guess I’m happier.”
“Because of Caz.”
“Yes.”
“Even knowing that he’s the ice tyrant?”
“Don’t call him that when he’s around,” I said, explaining to her how he hated it, the negative connotations that came with itand how he was fighting to find and punish an elite to start change.
“It’s still a big deal what he is,” Ella said as I finished with her hair and let her scoot around behind me to do the same.
“I know.” I thought about what he’d told me about his father’s death and then what had happened with Mirko and Andrik as well. “But he’s trying to change it, Ella. For all of the dragons out there like us. But he needs my help, my perspective. For all his good, he’s neverbeenone of us. I have. If I can help people like us out, I owe it to them.”
“But won’t that be dangerous, living among them? They could hurt you, bad. Even kill you. I don’t want you to die.”
“I know,” I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about the consequences of who my mate was. “I’m not planning on letting it happen, but I can’t be scared either. If I let that fear ruin a monumental shift among our people, I’m not worthy of what might come of that change. Am I? I have to be strong, for all the people out in the wilds who sleep with one eye open.”
“That’s deep.”
Was it? To me it had just seemed right. The way it should be. “Maybe it’s being mated to Caz. Having seen him as the ruler, and considering that if I let him claim me, I’ll be at his side one day, I can help make those changes.”
“I’ll be right there with you,” Ella said with quiet but unshaken bravery. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“It’s a worth a ton,” I said fiercely, reaching over a shoulder to grab her hand and squeeze it tightly. “Don’t you forget that. You’re my best friend. Having you and Milly with me will be a huge help.”
Ella leaned forward, and we took comfort in one another’s presence.
“Do you think he’ll find her?” she asked quietly.
I understood the hidden fear in her voice. Without the third member of our tripod present, it wasn’t the same. And not just because Milly was the loudest of all. The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was a constant reminder we were incomplete.
“If anyone can, it’s him. He has more resources than anyone else. He swore to me he would do whatever it took to find them.”
“You like him a lot.”
