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He paused, studying my expression. His voice dropped to a pitch that sent eager shivers over my skin. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you? That pull toward each of us—the same way we all feel towardyou.”
My breath caught. I couldn’t look away from his brilliant blue eyes. I wet my lips, and his gaze dropped to them. Suddenly they felt as hot as if he’d already kissedthem.
How could I lie to him when he was looking at me likethat?
“I have felt it,” I said. My voice came out in amurmur.
“Then you understand how innate it is. How meant-to-be.”
He raised my hand to press a kiss to my knuckles. The heat of that touch flared down my arm and right through the core of me. I might have yanked him into a different sort of kiss if someone hadn’t cleared his throat rather rudely at that exactmoment.
I flinched back from Aaron, an embarrassed flush prickling over me. West was standing in the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed in his usual standoffish pose. His dark green eyes glowered atus.
“That might be how it’s worked before, but that doesn’t mean it’s supposed to stay that way forever,” he said in his low, throatyvoice.
Aaron rested his hand reassuringly on the small of my back. My embarrassment didn’t stop me from wanting to lean intohim.
But the most infuriating thing was that neither that embarrassment nor West’s jerk-ish demeanor stopped the pull drawing me toward the wolf shifter too. Even as I glared back at him, some part of me longed to see that handsome face soften with affection. A few strands of his silvery auburn hair had drifted across his angular cheekbones, and my hand itched to tuck it behind his ear. To linger on his cheekafterward.
I curled my fingers into my palm. Meant to be or not, West clearly wasn’t mooning overme.
“We’ve got more reason to believe the arrangement should stay the same than that it should change,” Aaron said. “That pattern of stability has held the kin-groups in balance for hundreds if not thousands ofyears.”
“How do we know it’s the arrangement that’s kept us in balance?” West said. “Maybe we’d have been just fine without ittoo.”
Aaron’s mouth tightened. “That’s a careless perspective to take. Throwing aside all that history could ruin us. Look at how things have gone even in sixteen years without the dragonspresent.”
West shrugged. “Because we’ve been waiting and waffling, not knowing what to do, not letting ourselves make any decisions. Maybe it’s time. Maybe all it’d take is for us to step up and pick a differentpath.”
I didn’t feel enough connection to these politics to try to argue on either side. And anyway, my mind had kept spinning with Aaron’s revelation, which was bringing up all sorts of otherquestions.
“Wait,” I said. “If this is how it always worked, with the dragon shifters and the alphas... My mother must have had four mates, right? One of them would be my father. Is he still—do you know who heis?”
I tried to keep my hopes in check, but excitement bubbled up inside me. Mom had never been willing to say much on the subject of my father, but I’d always wondered. Especially in the seven years since she’dleft.
Then I noticed how West’s expression had tensed. Aaron looped his hand right around my waist. “Every dragon shifter has four fathers,” he said. “That’s part of the unique structure of our rulership. A dragon can only be formed from the best qualities of all four kin-alphas: the loyalty of the wolves, the strength of the bears, the cunning of the wildcats, and the grace of the birds of prey. When all is at harmony between a dragon and her mates, a new dragon may beconceived.”
I blinked. “Fourdads.” But the solemn note in his voice hadn’t escaped me either. “What happened tothem?”
He swallowed audibly. “The alphas before us, the ones who were your mother’s mates, they passed away—passing on the responsibility to us... right before sheleft.”
I turned to look him in the face. “Sixteen years ago? You must have been awfullyyoung.”
He waved aside my concern with the hand not resting on my waist. “Marco was ten, West and me eleven, and Nate twelve. Old enough that our mentors knew we’d grow into the roles. Every alpha has trusted advisors—the ones already in place worked alongside us almost like regents until we were of age to hold ourown.”
So they grew up like that, one generation after the next, dragons and alphas in unison. “You don’t pass being alpha on to your kids,” I said slowly, piecing what he’d said together. “I’m assuming? Do the alphasonlymate with a dragon shifter—and only one? All of your kids would be dragon shifters,then?”
“And only one quarter ours,” West put in from behindme.
Aaron frowned at him. “It isn’t that less of us goes into helping make a dragon than any other child. It’s that a dragon child is so much more than any other.” He turned his attention back to me. “You’re right, we don’t pass on rule from parent to child, at least not that way. The alphas before us were your fathers. They picked us from the kin-group because they believed we’d be strong leaders—and the best mates for theirdaughter.”
I didn’t know how I felt about that. A few minutes ago, I hadn’t known anything about my dad—or dads. I wasn’t ready for them to suddenly be picking out my future partners-for-life.
“So thedaughtersnever have any say init?”
The corner of Aaron’s lips twitched, I thought with amusement. “Oh, you can have a say. If a dragon feels one or more of her offered mates is unsuitable, she can reject him and wait for the kin-group to propose another. Or... Another shifter can fight to take the role of alpha from the one chosen. If the chosen alpha isn’t strong enough to fend off the attack, then they weren’t worthy of the honoranyway.”
“Is that what happened to the alphas before you?” I said, and then realized that didn’t make sense. If the previous alphas had been challenged and lost, then presumably the disciples they’d chosen would’ve been chucked aside as well. What the hell could have happened to all four of the last guys, all atonce?
