Page 63 of Mating Her Dragon

"Don't encourage her."

Somewhere in the middle of the food, Maggie produced a small, ordinary cake, iced plain and white, and a bottle of champagne that had absolutely nothing to do with Dragon tradition or Elven blood rites or anything ancient at all.

"Figured you'd want something human in the mix too," Maggie said, setting it down carefully. "Since apparently that mattered to somebody."

Sydney felt her throat go tight, because it had mattered. Garrett had asked her several times over the last couple of weeks, sitting at the little Airstream table with his ridiculous requirements list, whether she wanted anything from her life before she and Kara were joined was represented here.

She hadn't fully known the answer then. She did now.

Carrick walked them through the sequence that evening, partly, Sydney suspected, because she'd actually asked what she'd be doing tomorrow, and he'd taken the question seriously.

He would open the ancient rite. The Commanders present would give their Blessing. Then Sydney and Garrett would speak their vows– freely written, their own words, nothing recited from two thousand years of tradition unless they chose it themselves. Each of them would consciously open their own side of the Mating Bond. The Mating Bond would fully join.

Then they exchanged blood, sealing the physical promise beneath everything else. This was part of the Mating Ceremony because Sydney was the Special One. It had been an integral part of the first Mating Ceremony of the first Special One and her Dragon Guardsman Mate, and Shavon had said it had to be a part of hers.

Sydney listened to the whole sequence and felt something settle into place, clean and certain. No ambiguity left for tomorrow. No standing on the bluff wondering what came next.

"What about Kara and Han?" Sydney asked, once Carrick had finished.

Garrett had asked her that weeks ago, sitting in the truck somewhere in Arizona. Did she want Kara involved separately, or simply as part of her?

She finally knew the answer, but she wanted to ask Kara herself first, privately, before she gave it to anyone else.

“You're part of me,” Sydney said, that night, lying awake long after everyone else had gone quiet.

"Yes, my girl."

“But you're also you.”

Silence, warm and considering.

“When I open my side tomorrow,” Sydney asked, “are you choosing this too?”

Kara went very quiet for a long moment.

"I chose you," she said finally, "before you knew my name. I chose him the moment I knew his heart." A pause, deep and ancient and, for once, entirely without irony. "But yes, my girl. Tomorrow, I will choose again.”

Sydney lay there in the dark, tears she hadn't expected slipping free. Four presences made up their Mating Bond, not two– and none of them, apparently, intended to let tomorrow happen to them passively.

They were all choosing it. Every single one of them.

Writing her own vows, by contrast, went terribly.

Sydney sat down that afternoon with real confidence. She was certain the words would simply arrive the way Kara's had.

Fate brought us together…

She scribbled through the words.

You are my destiny…

She scratched X's through each letter.

The Universe…

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

She ripped the page out of the binding, tore it into little pieces, and tossed them into the trash can.