Nathan sat sideways on my lap, curled up in a ball against my chest. I wrapped my arms around him and sat there quietly, allowing my heartsong to settle him. I wondered if my poor boy had always been this nervous, or if it was because of his abuse at the hands of Orris.

If I ever had the chance, that fucker would pay dearly for everything he’d done to my friends, and especially to my dear Nathan. Aside from the pull of the heartsong, the moment he’d peeked up at me so nervously from under that sweep of blond lashes, my heart had been a goner.

His green eyes had glowed with hidden reserves of strength while his body trembled, and when he’d swiped his pink tongue over the full lip that I’d already been fantasizing about pulling between my teeth? Fuck.

Still, knowing I’d scared him when I’d barked at my friends and ordered them out had made me feel like a piece of day-old dog shit. It was only when I’d run my hand through his silky curls and he’d immediately responded to the touch, that I was able to forgive myself for what I’d done to him.

The way he rested against me was all my heart had needed to fall all the way. Something about this sweet, fragile omega pulled me in. It was only a matter of time before he figured out that he owned me, whether or not he wore my mark—not that it would be long before that was no longer a question. He’d wear my mark, and I his… hopefully before we left this room again.

My nostrils flared at the scent of his heat drawing closer, but I pushed aside my need to take this boy and instead focused on giving him the time he needed to find his own way to me. I had no doubt that he would.

“Thank you,” Nathan mumbled against my chest, his warm breath tickling over my hardened nipple, not two inches from his lips. I gritted my teeth, willing my cock to behave and not spring to life. The last thing I wanted to do was scare this fragile young man.

“What are you thanking me for, dear one? Simply holding you is a gift.” Unable to resist, I leaned forward and kissed the top of his head, inhaling the sweet sunshine of his hair.

“Not that, but yeah, I like you holding me, too. I meant, thank you for not acting like I’m weird, or thinking I’m a helpless child for the way I freak out sometimes. My family always goes overboard trying to protect me like I’m damaged, and that’s not what I need.” His fingers came up idly to play connect-the-dots with the freckles scattered over my chest.

“So your panic attacks aren’t from being taken and held by the hunters? I wasn’t sure.”

“N-no. I mean, that didn’t help… but no. I’ve always been a little nervous.” His voice was soft, as though he wanted to tell me more, but couldn’t find the words. I quickly decided to drag them out of him.

“What make you nervous, Nathan? Let’s start there.” I spoke softly, keeping my voice low and steady while I ran my fingertips over the bumps of his spine.

“Noise. Life is loud, and I hear everything. If I focused right now, I could probably tell you what they’re talking about in another part of the house, but I’ve learned to rein it in and confine my hearing to a limited area. It gets too overwhelming when I let all the barriers down.”

He sat up a little straighter and tilted his head just enough that he could gaze at me from the corner of his eye without being obvious.

Oh, my precious little dove.

I leaned my head back against the headboard and made myself look as though I weren’t hanging on his every word. I would do anything to make my dove feel safe with me.

“How good is your hearing, little one? Tell me the strangest thing you’ve ever heard. Or the funniest? Anything you’d like… just give me an example. How about this, what’s one sound that you love to hear?”

Nathaniel snorted with a half giggle. “Other than your heartsong? Hmm… the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings just before it lifts up into flight. It’s this slow flap-flap, then a faster flappity-flap-flap, and then once it’s airborne, it’s a nice slow flap-flap-flappity, you know?”

I really didn’t, but I loved the imagery he was painting for me. “I’d never given thought to something like the sound of a butterfly’s wings. Tell me something else.”

“When a spring breeze ripples through the petals of flowers, it’s like a soft sigh. It makes me think that Mother Nature is showing pleasure in her own beauty.” He frowned and looked up at me from the side again. “That’s weird, right?”

“No, Nathan. That’s poetry. Now tell me something else. Give me more of these things to think about.” I loved how confident he sounded when he shared these amazing things with me. Who the hell would have thought that things like what he described had sounds, or that anyone would be capable of hearing them?

“I went to the beach a lot with my family one summer. The kids would all build sand castles or play in the waves. Not me. I couldn’t handle the loud roar of the surf. Instead, I’d fill a cup with sand, enjoying the crunch it made as I scooped it up. Then, when I slowly poured it out, the sand sounded like what I’d imagine rain on a tin roof sounds like to people with normal hearing—to me, it makes me want to plug my ears and cry. Every day, I’d sit there, scooping and pouring, over and over. My family teased me, and some of the kids called me simple, but I was fascinated.”

“Surely there was nothing odd about a child playing with sand like that, Nathan,” I was quick to reassure him.

“A child? Maybe not. But I was fourteen, and new to my family. That was the summer that my powers had just started to develop, and the year I discovered that I was a dragon. My foster parents guided me through it. The moment Mama Vee found out that I was a dragon, she decided to keep me so that no humans would find out.”

“Foster parents? What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“My parents died or something, I don’t know. But I grew up in foster care, where other people get paid by the government to take care of kids who don’t have anyone. The big goal is to get adopted, but I never did. I was always twitchy, and had the extra hearing, just not as strong as when I hit my early teens. I eventually ended up with Mama Vee, and she decided to keep me, even though I’m a ‘silly dragon,’ as she puts it.”

My heart ached at what he was telling me, and even more at what he wasn’t. The idea that my heartsong had spent his childhood without a family to adore him made me want to wrap my arms even tighter around him and never let go.

Then a thought occurred to me. “Wait. How does this Mama Vee know about dragons? In this time, we’re considered nothing more than legend.”

Braver now, Nathan turned and put his hands on my shoulders, then shifted and adjusted his legs to straddle my lap. I nearly groaned as he innocently wiggled about until he was finally comfortable. The fact that he did this while we were both nude told me that he’d never been bred. The boy had no idea what he was doing to me.

Settled now, Nathan grinned at me. For the first time, I was able to see past his shields and admire the beautiful smile that spread over his face, his breathtaking green eyes sparkling with repressed mirth.

“I’ll tell you about Mama Vee and the gang another time… preferably much later. My family has to be seen to be believed, and you’d never believe what they are if I told you. But let’s just say they have family lore about dragons, and firmly believe them all to be hoity-toity snobs with sticks up their asses who think their shit don’t stink.”

He stopped to giggle. My breath caught as his head went back and showed off his slender throat.

“Tell me they don’t think that of you, though,” I said. “Surely, you’ve shown them that this is a falsehood, spread by what must certainly have been prejudicial ancestors?”

After he caught his breath, Nathan looked back into my eyes with a smile that matched his sunshine hair. “Mama Vee says that her influence saved me from my natural draconian snottiness. She’s determined that with a proper upbringing, all dragons could be good people, just like she raised me to be.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. After all, this assuredly deranged woman had been the only one to open her heart to my boy. That alone would make me love her, no matter what her lying forefathers had mistakenly led her to believe about dragons.

“What are her kind? You say they have to be seen to be believed, but try me. You’d be surprised at how much I would believe. Hell, I’ve probably hobnobbed with whatever her kind is at some point or other.”

“Uh-uh. That’s a nope from me. I want you to get the full Mama Vee and the gang experience when you meet them someday soon. You’ll never believe that my colorful family would be such regal creatures. Truly, it has to be seen to be believed.”

My mind raced as I fought to place what they could be. What would have survived in a world where dragons so clearly hadn’t? At least, we hadn’t openly survived. This modern batch of draconian blood, while diluted and untrained, showed that we hadn’t been completely eradicated after all.

Hmm. It couldn’t the minotaur—those wouldn’t be considered regal, and they’d already been just about extinct by the start of our civil war. Griffons, maybe? Doubtful. Their tempers would never have allowed them to remain hidden for long. Pegasi? No. There was a reason why pegasus couldn’t be spelled without “gas.” Those fuckers were too closely related to those blasted unicorns.

I was torn from my musings when I realized that I was being watched by my boy. “Yes, heartsong? Tell me what you need; I will do whatever you ask of me.”

He shook his head reluctantly. “That’s just it—I don’t know how to ask or what to do. I need…” He trailed off mid-thought, biting his lip and looking away for a second. Then he seemed to gather courage as he took a deep breath and looked at me.

“I need you to tell me what to do. I don’t want to think or worry anymore about how many bites to take, what clothes to wear—speaking of which, why don’t I have clothes?—but, yeah. I want someone to take that stress away and let me be free to breathe. I can trust you—the heartsong tells me that. Can I let you do the thinking, and just do what you tell me?”

His hesitant voice broke through my crumbling reserves. Talking was good, despite what my lower brain might think. My cock jumped between us as it plumped and began to harden, and I felt Nathan automatically respond, his length hardening against my own.

The breath caught in the back of my throat, and I wanted nothing more than to pin him to the mattress and take his heat, but I resisted the urge to act on my impulses. I wouldn’t rush things. Not yet.

“What are you saying, Nathan? I’m not your father—I can’t tell you what to do, as tempting as that obviously is to me.”

His pupils dilated and his nostrils flared at my not-so-oblique reference to my arousal. With an almost coy smile, Nathan tilted his head. He gazed up at me and said the seven hottest words I’d ever heard strung together.

“No, but you could be my Daddy.”

My hand moved of its own accord to the back of his skull, cradling it in my hand as his soft curls spilled through my fingers. Without forethought, I pulled him forward even as I bent to meet him halfway.

“You really want this, Nathan? One hundred percent?” I growled in a hoarse, guttural voice. “Do you want me to claim you, to make you my mate? Because that’s the only way that I will agree to have that type of relationship with you. The mating will blend our heartsong and show you that you will never have anything to fear from me. I never want you to think that I’m taking advantage of you. I want you to know that I will always stay.”

“Yes,” he whispered against my lips, now hovering a few scant millimeters from his own. “That’s exactly what I need—what I crave. And I don’t need the mating mark to know that I have nothing to fear from you. The heartsong tells me that; our mating will just be a bonus.”

With that, I closed the gap and kissed him. I forced my beast back into submission, not wanting my sweet boy to feel afraid of my overly possessive dragon. My shoulders began to tingle, so I scooted forward a bit and let my wings spring free with a soft snap. Nathan gasped against my lips and stiffened his posture, then pulled away and looked around to see what had happened.

“I think you heard my wings, dear boy. My dragon needed a piece of himself to come forward.” I smiled gently, hoping to calm him. I needn’t have worried, though—in the next second, I felt the skin near his shoulder blades begin to move.

I pulled my hands away just in time to see a perfect pair of gossamer wings spring free, their pristine white color perfectly matching my angel. Yeah, he wasn’t a dove—he was too pure and sweet. My boy was an angel, and had been since birth. His wings proved it.

The memories all rushed back at once. I’d felt a pull toward him all the way back in the Alpine Compound, right before I’d been knocked into stasis. I still didn’t remember much of that night, but the pieces were coming back together as my body, my mind, and my dragon learned him all over again.

I reached out a trembling hand and carefully stroked his wing, taking care not to hurt the delicate membranes. Truly, they looked like finely crafted lace. Even the tips where the webbing and fine veins went from one lethally sharp point to the next still managed to look ethereal.

His wings, combined with his golden blond ringlets, bright green eyes, and peach-toned skin, all gave him an overall angelic effect. His outside matched his inside—he was every bit the angel I already believed him to be.

The feel of his hands cupping my face pulled me from my trance. He gazed at me with the same wonder that I was feeling for him. Fuck. If I would have known that this was what it felt like to be with my fated heartsong partner, I’d never have been able to sleep a night while waiting for him to come into my life. My history immediately became sectioned into two parts: BN and AN—Before Nathan and After Nathan.

Our lips met at the halfway point as we leaned into each other again, and this time when he gasped against my lips, my tongue licked its way into his mouth, and I got my first taste of him. With one arm cradled around his slim waist and the other hand gripping the back of his head, I committed him to memory.

When at last we broke apart, Nathan lifted his head to the side, unconsciously baring himself for my mark. Hungrily, I kissed and nipped along his jawline, making my way down his long, slender neck until I reached the place where his heartsong throbbed loudest.

Placing a proprietary kiss there, I took one last look into his sweet face to ensure that this was what he wanted—no, what he needed from me.

Nodding desperately, my angel boy whimpered, “Daddy, please, claim me! I’ve wanted this my whole life.”

That was all I needed to hear. I moved back to that magnetic spot and gently broke his skin, placing my mark on him as the coppery taste of his blood filled my mouth.

A feeling of euphoria came over me, and his heartsong pounded in my ears louder and truer than it had before. In an uncharacteristic display of dominance, Nathan pushed back on my shoulders and dove straight for my heart.

Whether he’d known to do this from tutelage, or if it was his dragon driving him, mattered little in this moment. I merely leaned back and allowed my mate to bite the space over my heart, placing his answering bite forever onto my skin.

I felt the link between us lock into place even while he was still licking the area clean. Our arousal ratcheted higher as his slick coated my lap, the strong scent of it in the air.

Our cocks rubbed together with every move he made, a fact that I became acutely aware of when he began to grind his hips against me, seeking friction.

I let out a breath I’d been holding and filled my lungs with fresh air only to find it had arrived—his heat had taken him, undoubtedly brought to a head by our claiming.

Moving my hand from his waist, I reached between us and gripped our cocks, holding them tightly in my grasp so that with each rock of his hips, we rubbed flesh to flesh within my fist.

Nathan gasped and looked up into my eyes, his pupils blown wide with need, and made a soft keening cry in his throat that all but begged me take him… to breed him.

And so I would. I would always take care of my boy.

Always.