Page 20 of Mating Her Dragon

"I know."

"Then…"

"That isn't the same as being ready."

He watched that land. Watched her understand, fully, for the first time, what he was actually offering her. It wasn't a proposal disguised as patience, but genuine, open-ended permission to take exactly as long as she needed, with no clock running in the background.

Sydney was quiet for a long moment. "What if I am?" she said.

Garrett stopped breathing.

She apparently saw exactly what those four words had done to him because something wicked and pleased flickered across her face. "I'm not saying tomorrow."

"I understood that," Garrett said. He had not, in fact, entirely understood that.

"I'm saying," Sydney said, softer now, reaching across the table to lace her fingers through his, "maybe we should start talking about it."

That was enough. More than enough. The Mating Ceremony sat there on the table between them now, not planned, not scheduled, but chosen– openly, mutually, as a possibility they were both finally willing to hold in daylight instead of carrying separately in the dark.

The rest of the meal was, somehow, entirely normal. Garrett ate his fries. Sydney stole several without asking, as she always did, and he let her, as he always did.

"You're staring again," she said.

"I am."

"Stop."

"No."

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, and neither one of them mentioned the Mating again for the rest of the meal, because it didn't need mentioning. It simply sat there between them now, warm and real and entirely theirs.

Garrett's hand drifted toward his phone once they were back in the truck.

"You are not calling Carrick," Sydney said instantly.

"I wasn't."

"You absolutely were."

"I was considering it."

Dragon Mating tradition, technically, did eventually involve Clan leadership– notifications, blessings, the kind of ceremony that tended to draw every interested party from all over the world.

"Nobody," Sydney said, fixing him with a look that would have made lesser men reconsider several life choices, "gets to know we're even talking about it yet."

"Agreed," Garrett said. No hesitation at all.

It belonged to the two of them first. No family. No Ancient Elders weighing in with thousands of years of opinions. No one taking over the moment before either of them had fully decided what it meant.

"Kara," Sydney said, in the specific tone Garrett had learned meant she'd caught something.

"My girl."

"Don't."

"I have said nothing."

"Your silence is screaming."