It was hard to believe. All of us, sitting together at one, long table. The way we’d been for months, ever since Gate and I returned from St. Lucia.

The conversation never lagged, not once, voices overlapping again and again until it was nearly impossible to follow the thread.

I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Life had changed completely, and in less than a year. I would never have imagined it.

Sitting with the girls, with Tommy, feeling as though they’d always been part of us. How did we get along with them? How did I get along without the woman seated beside me?

“Do you need to put your feet up?” Smoke asked Alina. Again.

“I’m fine,” she chuckled, patting his hand with one of hers while using the other to pat her growing belly.

“Imagine how he’ll be by the end of it,” Pierce laughed. “Only four months along.”

“Wait until your turn comes,” Smoke warned. “We’ll see how you handle it. Remind me to be as kind to you.”

“Now, now,” Alina crooned, but not without a wink Pierce’s way.

“I can’t wait until I’m not the youngest anymore,” Tommy declared, making us all laugh. “It’ll be like havin’ a brother, finally.”

“What if the baby is a girl?” Carissa asked.

His eyes widened as though he had never considered this before, and we all laughed again.

“You’ll be all right,” Martina assured him. “Didn’t we already talk about how tough girls are? Maybe she won’t want to play with dolls. Maybe you can teach her how to fight.”

“When she’s old enough,” Smoke added, sounding anxious.

“How are they doing back home, with the antidote?” I asked Carissa, changing the subject.

“Wonderfully. Their latest tests were successful. It’s just a matter of waiting to be sure the effects last the full month, and they’ll have the green light to produce as much as they need.”

“I wonder if there are others, elsewhere, who could use it,” Ciera pondered. “There are legends all over the world not unlike the ones I heard when I was a little girl. There seems to be a common thread running through all of them, too strong a thread to chalk it up to coincidence.”

“Maybe this one will explore those legends one day,” Alina suggested, rubbing her belly again.

“Or me!” Tommy announced.

Funny, how I’d forgotten about the wide world around us.

The world had shrunk over a thousand years, until only the cave and the homeland existed no matter how the media I’d consumed told me otherwise. We’d expanded our world along with our family. How remarkable.

When the meal ended, and the cleanup was complete, Savannah tugged my sleeve outside the notice of the others. She had been ominously quiet throughout dinner, very much unlike her.

“What is it?” I asked.

She only crooked her finger, beckoning me.

The dragon opened an eye, vaguely curious at the potential direction this would go in. When she led me to her office, however, he went back to resting. Not that we hadn’t broken in the sofa, the chair, even the floor of the office. But the spark of desire wasn’t in her eyes when she turned to look at me, once we were alone. All I saw was apprehension.

“I wanted to talk about this at dinner, but I don’t know how everybody will feel about it and didn’t want to put them on the spot.”

“What’s it all about?” I hadn’t seen her so worked up since bringing her home with me.

She motioned for me to join her behind the desk, where her laptop sat. “I’ve been working on it since we first got here.”

“Oh! You’ll finally show me what you’ve been pouring all your energy into, then?” I’d only asked a few times a week for three months.

“It’s very personal,” she reminded me, as always. “I wanted to finish the first draft before telling you about it, so you could see the entire thing as a whole.”

“What entire thing?”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve been writing about us. Or, rather, you all. The dragons.”

I gaped at her. Just when I thought she couldn’t surprise me anymore. “What did you write, exactly?”

“Don’t worry!” she was quick to urge. “I changed all the details and added a lot of things, until there’s no way to know I’m writing about you guys. I promise. You can read it and see for yourself.”

“You wrote about us.” I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “I guess I’ve never considered us worth writing about—or reading about.”

“It’s never easy to see oneself as being interesting. Trust me, you are. And I’m sure there are so many more stories to tell. I mean, what was it like, living here for so many centuries? What sort of changes did you see? Have things changed for the better, or for the worse? Would you go back and redo anything?”

“Hang on, hang on,” I chuckled.

Every question she asked seemed to excite her more, to the point where her fingers fairly twitched with the urge to start writing again.

“I would love to tell you all of it, and I can’t wait to read what you’ve written so far. You know I’ve been dying to get a look.”

“I know you have,” she smirked. “And I know you’ve been trying to sneak a look when you thought I didn’t know.”

I grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Anyway,” she continued with a roll of her eyes, “I thought this was a good start. Under an assumed name if I ever decide to publish, of course.”

A book about us. Maybe more than one book. Even if she never published, it was almost comforting to think of our story being recorded somewhere. We would live on.

“I love you,” I reminded her as I sat down to start reading. Those three words didn’t seem enough. They never would. But I wasn’t the wordsmith she was.

She ran a tender hand over my head, flashing me a wry grin. “We’ll see how you feel when you’ve finished reading.”

Footsteps approached.

Pierce popped his head in. “Mary’s on the phone.”

Savannah raised her brows.

“This is how it usually starts,” Pierce told her with a smile.

“Let’s see what’s on Mary’s mind.” I took Savannah’s hand in mine.

“There’s plenty of time for reading later,” Savannah assured me, a wicked gleam in her eye.

Looked like I was with the right woman.

The dragon roared in agreement.