Page 7 of Mating Her Dragon

"You're shopping."

"I'm gathering information."

"You've made a spreadsheet, Garrett."

"That is how one gathers information." Not looking up, he added, “You taught me how to use this program.”

“Yeah.” She stared at him a moment longer, then reached over and turned her lamp on properly, sighing, “Apparently, we are abandoning sleep. I love that for us.” Propping her pillows against the headboard, she leaned back and added, "You've been at this since I passed out."

"The decision merits due diligence."

"Uh-huh." She was smiling. That soft, delighted, look-what-I-created smile that made something in his chest go warm and unsteady, the way it always did when she looked at him like that. Mr. That's Not a Plan, the name she had given him the previous evening, had spent the entire night quietly building the plan, one tab at a time, and he was about to make sure that Sydney Kavanaugh was thrilled about it.

He didn't mind being caught. She had gotten the ball rolling, and he was on board for the adventure– even if it took him a while to get there.

After all, he hadn't planned to say it when she asked. At least, not out loud, not to her, not standing on a sidewalk in a town he'd known for less than two days.

But he had. The words– I've never seen the Pacific Ocean– just flew out of his mouth before he had time to think about what that actually meant.

They had simply appeared, right there in the way true things sometimes did when a man stopped guarding every door in his own mind. And once they were out, something in him had shifted, quiet and permanent, like a stone settling into new ground.

He'd grown up on the Isle of Skye. Water wasn't novel to him. He'd crossed oceans the old way, on ships that took weeks, in centuries when weeks were simply the price of distance. He knew water. Knew its moods, its frigid temperatures, its depths, its indifference to whatever a person needed from it.

But the Pacific had always existed somewhere past the edge of what mattered. Past the missions, the wars, the centuries of duty that had shaped every direction he'd ever traveled. When he was young– properly young, before Leviathan, before any of it, before he was a Dragon Guardsman– the Pacific had been almost conceptual. It was little more than a word on a map, somewhere beyond everything he'd ever been assigned to care about.

And Sydney had looked at him and said, then let's start there.

No mission. No orders. No strategic value whatsoever.

Just because he wanted to see it.

That single fact was still rattling around inside him hours later. It refused to settle, the way a man's first taste of something sweet after a lifetime of rationed bread refused to be anything but overwhelming.

Lost in his thoughts, Garrett wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Sydney had fallen back asleep beside him. One hand was curled loosely against his thigh. Her breathing was slow and even in a way that told him she trusted the room, the night, him. Garrett set the tablet down and simply looked at her for a while.

He felt it the way he always felt it now– the low, constant hum of the Mating Bond between them, warm and alive, steady as a second heartbeat. He'd known she was his Mate for longer than he cared to examine. Had known it before either of them had said the word out loud, back when knowing it had felt like one more impossible burden in a life already buckling under the weight of them.

But now, with the two of them safe– or as safe as anything ever truly was, with Leviathan still somewhere out there and a mystery Dragon Queen's roar still echoing in Kara's memory– the thought had changed shape.

It wasn't she is my Mate anymore. That part was settled, immovable, true as gravity.

It was: I want her to choose it.

He could ask her tomorrow. Dragon tradition, if he were being honest with himself, would say they should have completed the Mating Ceremony months ago– bond and blood and vow all sealed together the way his kind had done it for thousands of years.

But Garrett didn't care what tradition said, because Sydney Kavanaugh had spent her entire existence being told what she was. The Special One. Chosen by Prophecy before she'd taken her first breath. Chosen by Kara. Chosen by the Universe, by missions, by responsibilities that had never once asked her permission before landing on her shoulders.

Garrett refused– refused– to become one more thing life simply handed her. Something– or someone– she had to take care of.

He wanted this to be different. He wanted, more than he'd wanted almost anything in his very long life of wanting things, for there to come a day when Sydney looked at him and chose him. Freely. Completely. Not because a Bond compelled it, not because a Prophecy expected it, not because it was simply the next assigned step in a life built entirely out of assigned steps.

Just because she wanted to.

And until that day came, he would wait. Guard the door on his own, patiently, the way he'd once guarded borders, quietly, completely, without complaint.

He looked at her sleeping face a moment longer, then reached over and turned off the lamp. Turning off the tablet, he set it on the bedside table and turned off the light on his side of the bed.

Cuddling up beside Sydney, he held her close. Kissing the top of her head, he thanked the Great Goddess and the Universe for her and drifted off to sleep.