Page 17 of Dragon King’s Duty Bride

Lucas stilled. Of course Aldrek would circle there.

“The dragon line is no secret,” Lucas said.

“To the council. Or other dragons. But not usually with humans.”

Silence stretched.

Outside, Celeste had begun braiding Sia’s hair with grave determination. Stella supervised while Luna chased a butterfly.

Aldrek’s voice lowered. “Does she know what you are?”

Lucas’s throat felt unexpectedly dry.

“I have not spoken of it,” he admitted.

“And her sister?”

Dian. The name was not spoken, but it hovered like smoke between them.

Lucas’s gaze drifted back to the lawn, but he did not see it. He saw instead a moonlit terrace, silver light on dark hair, the moment his hand had closed around Dian’s and fire had roared to life in his veins.

Had she told Sia?

Had there been whispered confessions between sisters? Childhood secrets about scales and wings and the way Lucas’s eyes sometimes glowed when he was angered or worried?

Or had Dian protected the knowledge, as he had once asked her to?

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

Aldrek absorbed that. “If she doesn’t know, and she discovers it by accident, you risk more than embarrassment.”

Lucas’s dragon shifted sharply at that. It did not like the word risk attached to her.

“She is not fragile,” Lucas said.

“No,” Aldrek agreed. “But humans do not always respond well to the surprise of what we are.”

That landed because it was true.

Sia moved through the palace with curiosity, not instinct.She had no awareness of the secrets woven into the walls. She had never once looked at him with the wary recognition that dragons sometimes saw in one another.

If she didn’t know, and if she learned that her husband could fly, would she look at him with fear?

The thought hit harder than he expected.

Aldrek’s tone softened, not gentle, but less biting. “You cannot build a future on concealment, Lucas.”

Lucas gave a short, humorless chuckle. “You mistake this arrangement for a future.”

Aldrek’s gaze slid back to the lawn. “Do I?”

Sia had managed to tangle all three girls into her embrace now. She laughed helplessly as they collapsed onto her in a heap of limbs and skirts.

It did not look temporary or political. It looked… like family.

Lucas felt the dragon rise again, not in hunger this time, but in something far more dangerous.

Belonging.