Page 4 of Mating Her Dragon

Garrett was in awe. There was no doubt about it.

Sipping her third cup of coffee while Garrett finished his huge stack of pancakes, Syd looked at all the memorabilia the Sampsons had collected over the years. Following a line of framed postcards from all over the world, she noticed a frayed strand of the Magical Wards protecting Two Wolves hanging between the massive, wooden doors.

Her eyes tracked the tiny sparkle as it swung back and forth. She thought that shouldn't be like that, and in the next tick… It wasn’t.

In the blink of an eye, the Magical thread straightened. The frayed fibers pulled together. The Ward quietly repaired itself, and nobody noticed… Except Kara.

Sydney paused. Then she mentally whispered, “Kara?”

“Oh, no, my girl. I did not do that,” the Dragon Queen answered slowly.

“Well, neither did I.”

“Yes, my girl. You did.”

Sydney stared at the perfectly repaired Ward. “How?”

“You did not cast a Spell. I would’ve heard that. The Ward simply… listened.”

“Okay, then, tell it I said thank you. I’m gonna finish my coffee now.”

Later, after they’d eaten so much that Sydney was contemplating going back to their room and putting on shorts with a stretchy waist, a young girl, a Wolf Shifter, walked up to their table. Holding out her hand, she gave Sydney a gorgeous smile that made her eyes sparkle. “My name is Charity, and Bonnie said you might wanna see the shortcut Mr. and Mrs. Judy…” She motioned towards the older couple walking out the door. “…used to get here so quickly.”

“Absolutely,” Sydney agreed. Pointing at the chair across the table.

Taking a seat, Charity started tapping on her phone and turned the screen toward Syd and Garrett. A map appeared in bright colors, with a compass and a legend.

Garrett leaned closer, frowned, and said, "That's Texas?"

"That's Google Maps,” Charity chuckled.

"Oh, that’s right. I know what it is." He studied it another second, something faintly betrayed in his expression. "It used to look bigger."

Sydney choked on her coffee. "You looked offended," she managed.

"I am not offended by cartography."

"You absolutely are."

Somewhere in the middle of all that– people eating breakfast, the wonderful scent of coffee, and the ordinary noise of ordinary people living ordinary lives– somebody at the next table asked Garrett, kindly enough, if he'd gotten to see much of the country since coming home.

"No," Garrett said. Matter-of-fact. No self-pity in it at all, which somehow made it worse. "There hasn't been time."

The conversation moved on. Nobody else seemed to notice anything except a polite, unremarkable answer to a polite, unremarkable question.

Sydney went very quiet. She'd heard what nobody else at that table had heard. A hundred years, gone. And in all the time since he'd come back– since he'd clawed his way out of Leviathan's grip and back into his own skin– Garrett had spent nearly every waking minute fighting for somebody. For her. For the Clan. For a war that wasn't finished yet.

He hadn't had time to see his own country, or the one he’d adopted after leaving the Isle of Skye when he was a young man. He'd never driven anywhere simply because he felt like it.

He had never once, in a hundred years or in the months since, stood somewhere new and thought, I wonder what's over there, with nothing chasing him and nothing on the line.

Garrett caught the look on her face and immediately set down his fork. "No."

"I haven't said anything."

"You don't have to. I know that look."

"I'm allowed to think."