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I close the laptop and go to the kitchen. I do not know exactly what Nina likes to eat. I know she drinks coffee. I know she looked at the jam this morning. I know she has not mentioned specific preferences because she has been in my home for barely a day.

Twenty-two hours. I have known my mate for twenty-two hours. Cage made it fourteen seconds before he reacted. I showed restraint for twenty-two hours and twenty-three minutes.

I stood in a coffee shop and judged that man for scent-marking his mate.

I have now stolen a pen and an earring and ordered four thousand dollars in bedding for a woman who has not complained about being cold.

If Cage ever learns about this, I will not recover.

Cage does not need to know, my dragon says.

Cage will absolutely find out. Mara will tell Nina everything about how Cage behaved in the early days, and Nina will tell Mara everything about how I am behaving, and Mara will tell Cage.

I walk back to the study. Sit at my desk.

The study smells like her. Like us. Like something that was always supposed to be here and finally is.

Good, my dragon says again.

I open the investment correspondence. Read the first line. Read it again.

Her earring is in my desk drawer. Her pen and hair clip and cup are beside it. Her laughter is in my ears.

I have managed empires. I have managed fortunes across generations. I have lived without a mate for more than a century and a half.

I cannot manage this. I find I do not want to.

Chapter Five

nina

Ihave been in this shower for twenty minutes and I am not getting out.

The water pressure is fantastic. The temperature stays exactly where I set it, the tile is natural stone, and I am standing under it with my eyes closed, thinking about the man downstairs.

I am in so much trouble.

I put on the robe hanging on the bathroom door, because of course a new silk robe just appears in this house. It falls to mid-thigh and feels amazing.

This is fine. I’m going downstairs to get dinner. He’s seen all of me. A robe is practically formal wear at this point.

I pad downstairs barefoot. Something herbal and warm drifts from the kitchen. Tea.

I round the corner into the kitchen and stop.

Silas is at the counter in his shirtsleeves, rolled to the forearm, which I have determined is his version of casual. He is making tea the serious way, loose leaves measured into a strainer. A jar of honey sits open beside a small wooden dipper.

He looks up.

He looks at my hair. My bare feet. The robe.

His hands stop moving. His eyes, which were amber when I walked in, shift. Gold bleeding from the edges inward.

“You are wearing the robe,” he says.

“Yes.”

He has not resumed making tea. His hands are on the counter. The tendons in his forearms are standing out, and along the inside of his wrists, I can see it: the faintest shimmer of gold scales, there and gone, like light catching something just beneath the surface.