Page 12 of Mating Her Dragon

"Two Dragons commenting on my driving is not an electoral process, Sydney."

But her feet stayed exactly where they were, and Garrett, after one more long-suffering glance, let it go. Smiling, she scooched down in her seat and looked out the window.

A few miles later, her hand drifted to the radio dial without thinking about it, and his hand caught hers, gently, before she reached the knob.

"May I ask you something first?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You want permission to talk about the radio?"

"I want to know if you're about to change it because you're bored, or because you actually hate this song, because those are different problems and I have different responses to each of them."

Sydney studied him for a second, and then something in her expression softened into real amusement. "You're doing the thing."

"I am not doing a thing."

"You're doing the thing. The 'ask, don't assume' thing. On my radio."

"I have found," Garrett said, with as much dignity as he could locate, "that it works reasonably well on larger matters. I see no reason to abandon good practice over a song."

She laughed and let her hand fall back into her lap instead of onto the dial. "Bored," she admitted. "Not hate. Definitely bored."

"Then may I make a suggestion?"

"You may."

He reached over himself, this time, and changed the station—to something with even more fiddle in it than what had been playing before, just to hear her groan.

"That is so much worse."

"You said I could choose."

"I take it back. Democracy is repealed."

"Two Dragons," Garrett said, entirely too pleased with himself, "just voted."

The one thing she was slowly working out, mile by mile, was the fact that Garrett wasn't turning into some entirely new person just because they were on a road trip. He wasn't going to start wearing Hawaiian shirts or asking her to teach him how to relax.

He was still Garrett. He still checked every mirror, still cataloged every exit sign as if it might matter later, still radiated the quiet, coiled readiness of a man who'd spent centuries assuming the worst was always one turn away.

But there were small changes… And she noticed them all.

He complained about her music– genuinely, specifically, with detailed critiques of the fiddle-to-lyric ratio– and never once reached over to change the station. He kept looking at the towns they passed through, not scanning them for threats exactly, just looking, the way a man looked at something he hadn't let himself want to see before. He asked her questions that had nothing to do with tactics or logistics. What that crop was. Why that water tower was painted like a strawberry. Whether people actually lived in towns that small or just passed through them the way they were doing now.

Sydney was still turning over the last question when she saw it. A hand-painted sign, half a mile out: WORLD'S LARGEST JACKALOPE — 200 FT AHEAD.

Then, two hundred feet later, they came upon an eighteen-foot fiberglass jackrabbit with a truly alarming set of antlers. Not only that, but he stood sentinel in a gravel lot beside a gas station that looked like it had last been renovated during the Eisenhower administration.

"Pull over."

"Absolutely not."

"Garrett."

"That is not a tourist attraction. That is a cryptid."

"Garrett Acheson, pull this truck over right now."

He pulled the truck over.