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Tremors ran up Bethany’s arm, and a sigh escaped her lips.
Math moved his arm to her waist, leaning toward her, and then sat back in his chair. “No. I have to concentrate.”
“Or we could stop talking about this madness and go back to the way things werelast night.I liked the way things werelast night.”
“I can’t resist you.I actually can’t.”
“I liked it when you couldn’t resist melast night.”
“We have to talk about this. It’s important, and we have to talk about this now. Do you want to marry me? Because if you don’t want to, then this conversation doesn’t need to go any farther. I’ll tell you everything I know, but if you don’t want to marry me, it doesn’t matter.”
Bethany still felt like she’d been picked up by a wind elemental, whirled around, and spit out, but she sucked in a deep breath. “So, this seems to have come out of nowhere for me. We had a great night. I’m not saying anything bad about last night. Not at all. Not saying anything bad about the first, second, or fifth times.”
Math raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong with numbers three, four, or six?”
“Nothing, just editing for brevity. Wait, there was a six?”
“After we got out of the shower.”
“Oh, I was counting that as number five, part two.”
“But the point is that we have to decide whether to mate, whether you want to,” he cleared his throat, “accept the mating.”
“Is there a ceremony or magic ritual?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
“I’ve never even heard of a mating ritual involving dragons. Witches have betrothals and handfasting ceremonies. Some people have regular marriage ceremonies, too, especially if they’re marrying a natural.”
“It’s not a ritual or a ceremony. It’s more of a biological imperative. When I was meeting with the king—”
Bethany couldn’t believe how much information was packed into this crazy conversation. She couldn’t keep up. She should be taking notes. “You have a king? There’s a dragon king?”
“Yeah, we should come back to that at some point. Dragon society is old-fashioned. A dragon clan is a modified feudal system, though every generation tries to modernize our societal structure and how we live our lives. Our monarchy isn’t inherited anymore. The king when I was young, King Ianto, took control of the kingdom when he was quite old, and he had some terrible ideas about how dragonmates should be second class citizens. He was overthrown, and the end of his reign prompted change. The current king, King Llewellyn, is much more modern. He was selected by magic from among the dukes of his generation. So, the kingdom isn’t inherited by the first-born prince anymore. And like we discussed earlier, no more caves.”
There were so many things she should ask about that. “Wait, dragonmates? Dragons don’t marry other dragons?”
“Female dragons are rare. In my generation in New Wales, there are a hundred and some males but only thirteen females, and female dragons almost always prefer naturals or mages as mates. Most dragons mate with people from other magical species or naturals.”
“That’s weird, especially for a conservative society.”
“There are some magical reasons for it, I think, but I don’t know for sure. Anyway, when I was meeting with King Llewellyn, he said I was on the cusp of a mating frenzy.”
“Matingfrenzy?What the heck is that?” Sounded like it could be fun.
“I don’t know, other than that a mating frenzy comes after a mating fever, and it sounds worse. I tried googling it. Google returned three links, two of which led to Chinese pages phonetic translations of other words, and one was just a huge page full of random keywords for search engine bait. I don’t think there are any websites about dragon mating biology.”
“Really? My mom told me that the first time she went on the internet, the first thing she did was search for online spell books and grimoires. Even back in the days of the text-based internet and message boards, witches were typing their potions, recipes, and spells into forums. My mom said that alt.witching.spellcraft was huge, back in her day.”
“Dragon society is exceedingly old-fashioned. The dens just got an internet connection about ten years ago.”
“I guess witches are more social that way. You know, covens.”
“Whereas dragons started trying to live together in communal dens only a few centuries ago. Before that, we lived far away from natural society, in solitary caves on mountaintops. The breathing-fire thing turns some people off. And we were territorial as hell. Still are, really. Dragon society has a lot of upheavals.”
“But this mating ceremony—” she prompted him.
“The king said that I had to ‘prepare’ you for it, but I don’t know what to do.”
