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She urged me to sit down on the steps. “What happened?”
That was when Sarah joined us. She stood at the top of the stairs with her new husband, took one look at me and her shoulders sank. “Oh, Kat...”
I gazed up at her and shook my head. “Go back to your honeymoon.” I could see from her disheveled hair and swollen lips that I’d interrupted something.
“Dymitri will understand.” She gave a pointed look to her husband. He nodded and whispered something into her ear before disappearing into the hallways upstairs. Sarah walked down the stairs and sat on my other side. Both of my sisters held me close. “Tell me everything.”
“I took your advice and danced with Lucian,” I said. That seemed the easiest place for me to start. Maybe if I put it all together from the beginning, it might make more sense to me as well. Everything about coming to the castle felt like a dream. “We hit it off, like you said we would.”
“That’s wonderful!” Sarah’s eyes grew wide with excitement.
I bit my lip and shifted where I sat. “We hit it offreallywell, and I stayed the night in his room.”
“Ooh-la-la!” Nadia teased.
I shot her a glare. “Our morning started great. We woke up and were kind of canoodling in bed. Then he started acting funny. Like he was sick. I thought maybe he was faking it so that he could get rid of me. That he’d gotten what he wanted from me and everything else had just been a line.”
I want you to stay. I want to talk. I want...”What had been that third thing he wanted but never got to say? His eyes had been so sincere, his words so pure.
“It wasn’t a line,” Sarah said. “Kat, he—”
“I’m not finished,” I said stiffly. “So, he’s walking through the room, trying to get me to understand he’s honestly not well. Just as I’m about to believe him, he...he...” Just the memory of his transformation and the way he’d spoken to me sent a shiver down my spine. “You’re not going to believe this, but he turned into a monster.”
“A dragon,” Nadia said.
“Right, it looked like a—” I frowned. “Wait a second, youknew?”
She pressed her lips together tightly, her eyes avoiding mine. “We met before the wedding, and he might have done the same thing in front of me too.” She hurriedly added, “Not after having sex with him. I never touched him, I promise! But he has a tendency to get overly emotional and then—”
“Changes into a dragon!” Sarah finished. “Lucian is passionate, and he’s passionate aboutyou.”
I held up both my hands. “Youbothknew?”
“Yes,” they said together, both quiet after.
I took in a slow breath, trying to keep my rage at bay. “Why didn’t you tell me all of thisbeforeI met him! Before we...we...” Had the most incredible sex of my life. Oh, goodness. I’d never been loved so thoroughly. “That one detail changes so much!”
“Would you have believed us?” Sarah asked. “I certainly didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.”
Nadia nodded slowly. “It’s a lot to take in. I had the same reaction you did, Katerina. I ran away!”
“We both did, because it was almost too much to handle,” Sarah continued. “But then I saw the softer side. The man behind the beast. Lucian is still in there. You have to look past the scales and the rough exterior and then you’ll realize nothing about him has actually changed. That’s what I did with Dymitri!”
“He’s one of those things too?” I gasped. Of course, he was. They were brothers, so why not? “How many of these dragons are there?”
“A few,” Nadia said. “This town is their home. It’s in another realm. Again, I know this is a lot to take in.”
Another. Fucking. Realm. She had to be joking. “So, I’m not even on Earth anymore? I’m not in some fancy small European country? I’m in another dimension?”
Nadia winced. “Kind of? There’s a magical veil we cross over to get here that separates the world we know from theirs. There are other shifters and witches and—”
“This is impossible.” I shook my head and slowly got to my feet. “This isinsane.”
“But it’s true!” Sarah put a hand on my arm and urged me to sit with her again. “And you know it’s true because your heart just...knows that it is! We wouldn’t lie to you. We didn’t lie about Lucian, either. He’s special and thinks the world of you. You’re...” She looked down and shook her head.
“I’mwhat, Sarah?” I pressed.
“You’re his fated mate,” she whispered. “That’s part of why he’s losing so much control whenever he’s with you. The two of you are meant to be one.”
