Page 19 of Mating Her Dragon

Kara's opinions. Han grumbling about Kara's opinions.

He didn't merely want his Mate. He wanted a life with his Mate. Small. Ordinary. Entirely theirs. The thought settled into him like something finally coming to rest after centuries of motion.

They found a diner an hour later in a town barely large enough to warrant the name. It was the kind of place with a laminated menu, a pie case by the register, and a bell over the door that announced every customer whether they wanted it to or not.

Sydney ordered something involving three separate meats and two forms of cheese that Garrett had long since learned better than to question. They sat across from each other in a cracked vinyl booth. They were both sunburned, dusty, and travel-weary in a way that felt, somehow, entirely good.

The server– a warm, older woman with gray hair piled high atop her head, who plainly had no idea she was about to detonate an emotional grenade in the middle of a diner — set their plates down, glanced between them, and said, "Your wife need anything else, honey?"

Garrett's entire brain stopped functioning. Before he could produce a single word, Sydney said, easily, without a flicker of hesitation, "Not yet."

The server wandered off toward another table, entirely unaware of what she'd just done.

Sydney picked up her fork.

Garrett stared at her.

"What?" Sydney said.

He kept staring.

"What?" She was close to demanding. Then her eyes went wide, the words clearly replaying themselves in her own head for the first time. "Oh."

"Yes," Garrett said.

"I meant…"

He didn't rescue her. Didn't laugh it off, didn't wave it away, didn't do a single one of the easy, kind things he might have done a year ago to spare either of them the discomfort of the moment sitting there, unresolved, between them.

He wanted to hear what she meant. So, he waited.

"I don't know why I said that," Sydney finally said with a shrug.

"I do."

She looked at him then, careful, searching. Did she know exactly how long he'd been waiting for this particular door to open on its own?

"Do you?"

"You didn't say no."

Sydney's mouth curved, slow and a little unsteady. "Neither did you."

And there it was– both of them, suddenly, entirely exposed across a diner table that smelled like bacon grease and burnt coffee.

"I've thought about it," Garrett admitted.

"The Ceremony?"

He nodded. "Every day."

Not dramatic. Simply true, the way the truest things between them always seemed to arrive. So, he made himself keep going, because this was important enough to say properly, all of it, out loud, where she could hear every word.

"I will never ask you because Fate decided you're mine," he said. "I won't ask because Tradition says it's time, or because thousands of years of Dragon Guardsmen before me did it a certain way." He held her gaze. "When we do this, Sydney, I need to know it's because you chose it. Not because it was chosen for you before you were born."

Sydney's eyes went bright, and Garrett watched her fight the sudden wave of feeling with the same stubborn will she brought to everything else.

"You know I choose you," she said quietly.