Page 67 of Dragon King’s Duty Bride

“So, help me understand something.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell me again how you found Luna.”

Lucas glanced at her. What was she up to? “Why do you want to hear the story again? I’ve already told you twice.”

“Because you got Luna home awfully fast,” she said quietly. “Even though it seemed like forever, you really weren’t gone very long. Certainly not long enough to search the fields and the mountain base.

Lucas paused halfway to the coffee pot. “The trip was easy enough,” he offered as an answer even though it wasn't really an answer.

“Especially with wings.” She tipped her head and studied him over the rim of the mug. “Luna told the girls you were flying.”

He blinked.

Of all the ways he’d imagined this conversation beginning, that hadn’t been one of them.

“She said you were faster than the wind,” Sia continued, almost conversationally. “And that she trusted you not to let anything happen to her, like falling.”

He set his hands flat on the counter to keep them from curling into fists. Luna had always had a talent for inconvenient honesty but he hadn’t expected her to be so quick about it.

“They’re imaginative,” he said carefully.

Sia’s mouth twitched. “Oh, they are. That much is true. But Luna wasn’t using her imagination.”

Silence stretched between them.

Lucas had faced down the lightning that split the sky over Crystafalls. He had shifted midair as soon as he was out of sight to make the search for his daughter easier. He had found the two little bodies, one girl, one goat, within minutes nestled in a small alcove in the hill.

Flying them back had been easy. Almost too easy when one of the guards almost caught him landing behind the castle. Luckily the storm had masked him just enough that the guard missed the scene in front of him.

Nothing involved in the rescue compared to the danger he felt now. He turned to face her.

“I need you to know,” he said, and his voice came out rougher than he’d meant it to, “that I would never put them, or you, in danger.”

“I know.”

Her immediate answer and unquestioning trust almost undid him.

He swallowed. “I’m not exactly…” He exhaled slowly. “I’m not exactly what most people would call ordinary.”

“I gathered.”

He searched her face for mockery. There was none.

Lucas forced the words out before he could lose his nerve. “I’m a dragon shifter.”

There it was. Laid bare between them. He braced for it. The flinch, or the step back, or the careful rearranging of her expression into polite fear until she could escape.

Instead, Sia set the mug down with deliberate calm.

“I know,” she said gently. “But I’m glad you told me before you knew that.”

He stared at her. “You… what?”

“Dian told me.” She winced faintly. “A long time ago. I don’t think she meant to tell me the secret. It just slipped out. And then she panicked and said I wasn’t supposed to know.” She let out a small laugh. “Sister secrets are… complicated.”

His mind snagged on one word. “You knew?”