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I liked that. “Do you miss the mountains while you’re here?”
“Yes and no. Since my parents died, I’ve spent more time in Scale Ridge than back at home. And when I’m there, I’ve been dealing with the thunder being assholes.”
“And now Jasper took over?”
“Yes. Finally.”
I laughed. “After your six months in prison, are you going to stay at the mountain?”
“I’m undecided on that.” He lifted a shoulder. “Tradition says I need to rejoin the rotation guarding the prison as soon as I’m free. My gut brings me back here.”
“But when you’re here, you’re constantly worried about sending someone into heat?”
He nodded.
“And that won’t change when our bond is broken?”
“Not that I know of. An unmated shifter is an unmated shifter. We have no control over our magic when it comes to heat.”
“Wow. You could walk away from this when it’s over and send another woman into heat the next day,” I said, gesturing between us.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Irritated, maybe?
Like an object?
There was nothing special about me to him. I was just the unfortunate woman whose scent he caught at the worst possible time.
“Theoretically. In practice, it doesn’t work that way. Hardly anyone makes it through without sealing the bond, remember? The only couple I know of that did ended up as mates shortly after heat ended anyway.”
He had told me that.
We were just going to have to be the outliers.
“If it had happened, that dragon would immediately be questioned,” August added. “His tactics would be incorporated throughout the world, and he’d probably brag about it. It wouldn’t be a secret.”
“But we’re not becoming mates.”
“We can’t,” he agreed. “And for the record, I’ve unintentionally come face to face with an assload of human women over the years. I raised Brynn here, which meant taking her to school, dance, and the grocery store, on top of everything else. I had to accept that taking a mate would probably happen when I moved with her to Scale Ridge when she was an infant.”
“But it never did?”
He shook his head. “None of their scents caught my attention. Yours did, immediately. That’s not insignificant.”
So there was something special about me to him. And he wanted me to understand that.
We just couldn’t do anything about it, even if we wanted to.
Which we didn’t.
So… yeah.
That was it.
“Why did you raise her?” I asked.
“Our parents died. There were complications when our mother gave birth to her, and our parents lives were tied together with a mate bond, so they both passed on. Traditionally, a mated couple takes a parentless female infant to a human city to raise her, but on their deathbed, they asked us to do it. They didn’t want her growing up with strangers, or even with friends. They wanted us to be her family.”
