I walked up to the house, the house of my cousin, with a pang of regret in my heart. She was about to have the family I’d never have. My job wouldn’t allow for the time it would take to find a husband, produce a child, and then get back to work. My job was so demanding I’d never see the baby anyway.

I glanced around the place, looking for threats, though I doubted there were any. It was a habit from my job, one I couldn’t stop, even when I was off duty. I had to put that part of me behind me for now though. Willow was in that house giving birth and Aleric was going to be there. He and his siblings had been given leave to visit their brother and his wife by their dickhead of a father.

Godwin, the man that plagued us all, for one reason or another. His time was coming though, I know that for a fact.

Aleric and I took every opportunity we could to see each other. I couldn’t resist the younger man, no matter how much I might try. There’d been no sex, or even real touches, but I knew it was in the cards. There was no turning down the mating call when it found you and he was my mate, I didn’t need him or anybody else to tell me that. I knew it like I knew my own name.

We’d have dinner together, or watch a movie, maybe go out for a drink, but we’d never had a moment alone, I made sure of that. Once we mated, the draw to always be together would be much stronger. I might want him, I might need him like I needed breath, but I had a job to do, and right now, that didn’t include being mated. First, I wanted to see this baby and find out what Willow had brought into the world.

I walked into the house when Rachel let me in and went up the stairs to where I could hear loud voices. Aleric was already there, I felt his eyes on me when I walked in but didn’t acknowledge he was there. Everything was done now, and the baby was in a bassinet by her mother’s bed.

“Marya is it?” I asked as a greeting to them all.

“That’s her name, yes. I’m glad you came, Edana. I’ve missed you.” Willow looked exhausted but happy. I suppose that’s how I’d look if I let Aleric take this as far as he wanted to.

He didn’t push for it though. He was a gentleman in every way, that man. I leaned over to look at the baby, pink and perfect and wonderful. Her little newborn blue eyes were gleaming up at me as I looked down at her, but I saw the flash of the dragon there. Interesting.

I was about to look away, to ask Willow how she was, but I saw something that stopped me. From the baby’s finger, a light pink spark had burned for just a second before it dimmed out. Had I imagined it? I watched but it didn’t happen again. Maybe it had all been a trick of the light.

“She’s amazing, Willow.” I didn’t know what else to say, I’ve never been to see a newborn or even to a baby shower.

Once I’d left my home at 18 I’d thrown myself into my training, and then into my job. There were no friends to go and visit, I didn’t live near any family, and after a while, I blocked the ones that remained from my mind. I had a very important job, and it didn’t involve cooing over babies and making new mothers feel proud. That had all changed when the dragons showed up and my family gave me the perfect cover to find out more about them.

I’d reconnected with the family when Willow wanted me to come to her wedding. Now, I had far more than I’d bargained for. I couldn’t tell any of them about my real job, or about what I did, or why I was even really there.

It wasn’t all the baby, or even about Aleric. It was to gather information about the dragons.

I made certain the mental steel trap I had around my brain was in place and watched those around me. All of my family that was left, and most of Henry’s family was there. Four magnificent dragons, all in one place. Five if you counted baby Galen. Six if Marya was indeed a dragon too.

Not a single full dragon in my entire career had been found, but now, now there were at least five of them within my sights. I’d have never dreamed it possible.

“Edana, care for a drink?” Aleric called out to me and I quickly agreed.

I followed him down the stairs and to the kitchen. I watched him as he moved. He was tall, well-muscled, and handsome. The Greek god Adonis in the flesh, if such a god had ever existed. If he had, he’d have looked just like the younger man in front of me.

He was a serious man, Aleric, but he could laugh too. So far, I’d learned he was intelligent, poetic, and passionate about life in general. His gaze on my body could set me on fire, an accidental touch could turn that fire into an uncontrolled blaze. I was made of stronger stuff than my cousin though, and with my training? Well, I’d be able to hold out for a while.

“I’d like you to come away with me this weekend,” he said as he poured two glasses of wine from the fridge. He knew I liked white and had chosen that from the bottles available.

“You know I can’t just disappear, Aleric. I have to be in contact.” I started but he didn’t let me finish.

“I know, I know, your work.” He sighed and pushed out of the back door. The air was cold at this time of year, and I snatched a shawl Willow had left on a hook at the door.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t like to spend more time with you, it’s just that my job is important. I can’t just abandon it.”

“I understand. I would like to spend more time with you though. I’d like to see the moonlight on your face as you sleep and the sunlight on your hair when you wake up.” He turned and his hand came up to touch my face, but I stepped back.

“Maybe one day, Aleric. I just...” I paused, how to put him off this time. “I don’t want to rush things.”

“Because you’re older? Is that the problem?” He looked down at me, an easy task for most men, but for him, it was a long way down.

“No, yes. I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about that aspect much.” I suppose it did bother me a little, but he was my mate, it would stop mattering the moment we had sex.

That was the real problem. I didn’t want to lose myself in anyone. Mates eventually became so entangled in their oneness that the rest of the world played second fiddle. That could be dangerous when your job was to protect others.

“Then why won’t you let me melt every bone in your body for you, Edana?” The way he said my name nearly made my knees melt, the fucker!

I looked at him with narrowed eyes. Had he done that on purpose, added that lilt to sound sexy?

All of the dragons had an accent, somewhere between Irish and English, and the way the vowels of my name rolled off his tongue was a drug on its own.

“I just need time, Aleric. I have to have things in place and to be ready for it.”

“Arista and Willow didn’t have that opportunity. Neither did Mal and Henry for that matter. Why should we?”

“Because we aren’t them, Aleric. You’re special to me, and I want what I know is coming, believe me I do.” I pulled the shawl tighter around my shoulders. The cold had suddenly penetrated much deeper than I thought it would. “I just need time, okay?”

He didn’t seem to like that idea, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Or so I thought. I thought that was the end of the conversation and turned to walk back into the house to get out of the cold. A whoosh and the sudden sensation of the world falling away was the only warning I had before the world really did fall away.

Then, I was in the sky, black claws more massive than anything I’d ever seen on a living animal grasped around me to cradle me to a black leather wall. Aleric had shifted! He’d also pulled me into the air with him.

“Aleric!” I screamed his name, but the wind tore the word from my lips before they even really made a sound.

We were high in the clouds, so far up I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to breathe, but something helped my lungs to remain functional. Maybe it was my own genes. I wasn’t sure, but I clung to his black claws in terror. My head told me he wouldn’t drop me, but my stomach said he might.

A knot of fear twisted there, and I closed my eyes to block it all out. I was afraid of heights on normal days. This was enough to make my brain go into overdrive. After another moment, it did, and the world went dark.

When the world came back into focus we were in a small cabin somewhere cold, really cold. A lantern chased shadows on the walls, and I saw no electric lights anywhere. In fact, there was no telephone, computer, or even an electric can opener in sight.

A fire burned in a fireplace across the room from me, and I sat up to find I was on a queen-sized bed. A threadbare quilt covered the mattress, and the furniture in the room looked as if it came out of a 1970s sitcom with garish taste. But then, wasn’t everything from the 70s garish?

“Aleric?” I called out, but there was no answer. I got out of the bed and pushed open the only door that didn’t look like it led outside. It opened into a small bathroom with a cast iron tub covered in white enamel, and a toilet that looked to be one of the first models introduced, and a utilitarian sink. What the hell was this place? A handyman’s fantasyland of secondhand shop heaven?

“Aleric?” I called out when I didn’t find him in there. I went to the door that led outside and looked out.

A frozen wasteland greeted me. Mountains and snow, that’s all I saw. Not even trees. Just mountains and snow.

“Where the hell have you brought me, dragon?” I wandered around until I felt the cold through the leather of my work shoes and went back to the porch. If you could call it a porch. It was little more than a wide space, three-foot-wide by four-foot-long.

“Aleric!” I called out his name loudly and I saw him come from the back of the cabin with a smile on his face. “You utter bastard! What have you done?!”

I launched myself at him. My hands came up to give him a punch that would knock him on his ass, but he deflected it easily, and dropped the load of wood in his arms to pull me tight to his body. I wasn’t sure if it was to stop my blows or to kiss me, maybe it had started out as a defense tactic, but before long, my struggles turned into fists curled into his coat to hold him against me, and I reached up on tiptoes to fuse my lips to his.

The world narrowed down to that point and even the bitter cold that bit into any skin that wasn’t covered disappeared. There was only Aleric and the sweet pull of his lips against mine.

“Edana...” He breathed my name against my cheek, when he slid his lips from mine. “Go in the house, it’s too cold out here.”

“I’m only obeying because you’re right, it’s fucking cold out here. Come inside.” He stomped in behind me to disburse the snow from his boots after he picked up the wood he’d dropped.

He set a few pieces on the fire before he turned back to me.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad, but I was out of ideas. This seemed, romantic. Fitting.” His eyes, an enchanting baby blue, held my gaze and I forgot the dirty names I wanted to call him. That kiss!

Damn him, that kiss might very well have broken me. At last.

“Where are we?” I demanded, adding an acid note of anger to my voice.

“Russia. Or Tibet. It might even be Canada. Or Norway. I have no idea, really. I’m not sure. I just kind of chose a place. This place was empty, and I couldn’t smell humans on it anymore, so I thought it would work. There’s a huge wood supply in the back, a cross that I think is your sign for graves in this world, and nothing else. I’ll have to fly down for more food at some point, but for now, what I found while you slept will work.”

“While I slept? How long was I asleep?” I looked outside. I’d thought the falling darkness was a sign of the time zone that we were in, but now I wasn’t sure.

“About 12 hours. I stayed with you for the first eight, but when you kept sleeping I went out for things we might need. Food, beverages, more blankets, toiletries. Things like that.”

“So let me get this right. You kidnapped me, first of all.” I glared at him, but he didn’t even pretend to be ashamed of himself. Instead, he gave me a very naughty grin. I squinted my eyes a little more. “Then you bring me to a cabin and you have no idea where we are. Then, then you tell me that we have supplies. Does that mean we’re going to be here for a while, young man?”

I broke out the old lady routine on him, but it only made that naughty grin tilt in an even saucier way.

“We can leave whenever you like, Edana. As long as you agree to spend more time with me.”

“I can’t believe this! Take me home!” I stood up from the bed again and glared down at him by his place near the fire.

“We’re mates, Edana. You are my mate, my dragon halfling. Why do you insist on fighting it?”

I stepped back as he revealed my own secret to the world by giving it a name. How much did he really know about me? If my blood wasn’t still hot from that kiss I might be worried. But that sensual grin only spread a little bit wider, and that made my blood heat up all over again. I was in so much trouble. So much fucking trouble!