“I brought food,” he added, shrugging his shoulder where the knapsack’s strap rested.“I just need your help to make it taste better than I could.”
“I’m going to have to teach you how to cook.You know that, right?”she asked as she began walking home.
Darian followed.“I’m sure my uncles would thank you for the rest of their lives.”
“I’m sure they would,” she teased, “but on second thought, perhaps the three of you deserve to live with your miserable cooking.They certainly don’t care.”
“Oh, they do,” he assured her as the fire dragons flew ahead.“They just care more about other things.”
“And right now, they’ll take any excuse to send you toward me,” she quipped.
Darian didn’t respond, and Celia glanced at him.Why was he not responding?Had she hit a nerve?
“You know I don’t mind, right?”she asked.
He looked at her, his normal smile gone.
“Are you sure?”he asked.“I think that sometimes I’m a little much for you, and I know that my uncles definitely are.”
Celia reached out and put her hand on his arm.“I don’t mind,” she said.“In fact, you make up for it by carrying all of the heavy things for me.”
He grinned, and her heart felt lighter just seeing it.
“Oh, good,” he said.“As long as you need me for a pack mule, you’ll keep me around, right?”
Celia smiled.“That’s it,” she said.“I only need you for a pack mule.”
That’s all she could say before she had to look away.
She didn’t need him for anything more than that, even if something in her thought perhaps she wanted more.
But that couldn’t be.She couldn’t be falling for Darian.He was entirely wrong for her, no matter what her heart was trying to say.
She didn’t want to follow her heart again, not when it had only led to so much pain before.
Chapter ten
Darian
Darianmadehiswayhome slowly.He plucked a long piece of grass from the meadow before he entered the forest, letting it tap along the tree trunks he walked past.
Things had been different today.
Celia had admitted that she liked having him around, and if his uncles had asked him when he went out this morning, he wouldn’t have guessed she would say that.
But hearing her admit it had made that thing inside his chest—the thing the baby dragons called a spark—flare to life.
He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
He hadn’t talked about it with anyone, definitely not Celia.It wasn’t even until the last day or two that he’d known for sure that the feeling in his chest was the spark they were talking about.
But now he couldn’t deny it.It was brighter whenever she was around, and when she was gone, his chest almost hurt.He had no doubts that the hatchlings were right.
She was his mate, but he didn’t know what that meant, or what to do about it.
And what did you do if a woman who was meant to be yours showed no signs of wanting to be in a relationship?
She was warming up to him now, and he would do whatever it took to change her mind, even if he still wasn’t quite sure what that meant.All he knew was it had something to do with the dragons.
