No, I wouldn’t let her leave like this.

Kallie’s feet were still making tracks in the dirt on the way to my truck when I caught up to her and with one hand on her waist, spun her, turning her to face me.

“You can see it?” I asked her, pointing to the scale on my face, on my neck right below my ear.

Still in shock, she choked on her words. “Thought it was an earring or a piercing or one of those dermal piercings-something. Yeah, I can see it.”

Both of my hands were kneading her waist through her shirt. It was uncontrollable, the sheer need to get through the fabric to touch her skin just once.

“No one can see those. No one.”

Her eyes narrowed, but never left the gaze with mine. “I see them. I see you.”

She didn’t know the full impact of those words.

“You told me to leave,” she said with a tear brimming at the corner of her eye. With some force, she blinked it back, determined to turn her back on it altogether.

“I did. I still want you to leave, but not empty-handed, not like this.”

She tried for an instant to wriggle free. It was haphazard at best.

“I’m not sure you can get rid of me now, female.” I leaned down, feeling her breasts brush against my chest and I got so close I could whisper in her ear.

I didn’t hold her tight. She had every opportunity to free herself from me with one tug. “I can do what I want, when I want,” she breathed.

“That’s what I like about you. You won’t be tamed. Instead, maybe you can tame me.”

She backed away then, just enough that her eyes were connected with mine again, but not so much to free herself from my hands fisting the sides of her shirt. Her chin, with the tiniest dent in the middle quivered for a second while the redness in her cheeks returned. She was pissed, and I wasn’t going to stand for it—for very long.

I did the only thing I thought could possibly shut her up. Before one syllable could exit her mouth, I bent down, just the slightest and with as much restrain as I could, pressed my mouth against hers in a release of pent up want and passion. Her lips were rigid against mine for a few seconds before, with a sigh, she relented to what we both wanted, and she moved with me. Her hands grabbed onto my back and pulled me closer as though even the small space between us was too much before trailing them up to the back of my neck, desperate for me to deepen what I’d started.

With a growl that was half human and half dragon, I slid my tongue into her mouth and just as I got lost in the taste of her, the sounds from her, the way she melded into my body, it was over. With one shove of her hands on my chest, she tore me out of the bliss and back to Earth.

“What are you doing?” That was the first question that came to my mind.

“I’m doing what you said, remember? Go. Now.” She mocked me with a tone that wasn’t too far from the truth and began a slow and smoldering walk to the truck. I should’ve caught her and asked her not to go.

Instead I stood in shock at the pure and unadulterated knowledge of what I thought I’d known all along.

Kallie was my mate.

She saw my scales and kissed me like she and I were both about to die in a fiery apocalypse.

Now I had to tell her that she was the mate to a man, and a beast.

As soon as my truck was out of sight and I could no longer hear her heartbeat between my temples, I pulled off my shirt, closed the door that she’d left open in complete anger, and hauled ass out the back door toward the mountains. The trees that so well hid my house passed through my vision. I allowed my dragon to take center stage in my consciousness so I speak to my brother. There was only one person in the world that I could talk to about the shit storm that Kallie had brought into my life.

Best shit storm I ever got into.

Samson, meet me at the mountain. Now.

It took him a minute to answer me which was odd. Usually, even if he was still in human form, he answered immediately. That’s why he was the beta—he was to be available to the clan at all times.

Yep. Give me ten.

Ten? Ten! I was an asshole. He had a mate and a child on the way. If he needed ten minutes to meet me then it must be for a good reason.

I stuck my clothes into a hole in the last tree before the cliff. I’d dug out that hole with my father because after my first spontaneous change, I’d come home naked and ravenous.

After a while, I had learned to have some control over my change, until last summer, when Kallie had visited. The pieces didn’t come together in my mind until a few days ago. It was her—it was all her—the way it was supposed to be when a dragon found his female—his eternal dragon mate.

And there laid the problem. The woman I was sure was my mate, down to the throbbing of my scales, was a human.

Fuck me sideways and call me Sally.

I stood at the edge of the cliff a little too long for my dragon’s liking. He pushed through, taking advantage of the scales that wouldn’t quite go away and expounded on their presence. Skin turned to scale, hardening while taking on a glimmer of teal and red, the colors of an Alpha dragon. My toes and fingers lengthened and became talons meant for tearing apart flesh and my jaw enlarged and became capable of crushing bone in one blow. In all my dragon’s beauty there was danger that lay just beneath the surface.

After a short flight in and between the puffy clouds that hugged the tops of the mountains, I landed next to my brother who had managed to get there before me despite his ten minute supposed delay.

“I’m just letting you know that I’m not doing that.”

I pulled on a pair of shorts and rolled my eyes. “What?”

“All that screwing you sideways, Sally.”

I’d forgotten that the channel to my brother was still open when I shot out that thought.

“Yeah, that wasn’t really to be taken literally.” I wrung my hands and stepped from foot to foot, waiting for him to stop being a dick and ask me why I wanted to meet him there.

“Okay. What was so important that I had to leave my Kærasta?”

Forcing out a weighted breath, I let it all out. “Because it’s true. You were right. I’ve found my Kærasta, since we’re on the subject.”

His smile said it all. My brother, on his mating day, wished that I would soon find my mate, but that was a few years back.

“Nice. Who is it?”

Now I was ready to choke him. “You know who! Kallie. The human girl. Which is the reason I needed to talk to you.”

“She’s human? You sure she’s not part dragon? Have you had Ramses do the tree?”

We had a clan member whose sole responsibility was to keep track of the dragon family tree, at least the ones that we knew of, where they came from and how they connected back to Mímir, the original dragon father.

“There’s no need, brother. She is not part dragon. I would be able to scent it on her.”

He looked to the skies. “There hasn’t been a dragon mated to a human since…”

“Since Grandmother. I know.”

Samson raised his eyebrow. “But she was fierce as a dragon. Fierce as our talons. Free as our wings. She wasn’t some nosey law student with a Sherlock Holmes complex.”

My entire hand was wrapped around his throat before my human side could even comprehend what he had just said.

My dragon knew exactly what the idiot said and wanted him to pay for it.

“Look at me, Knox. Slow down. It’s the Mate Craze talking. I was just joking. Calm the fuck down.”

His eyes had flashed dragon, gold and royal like his scales and indicative of his place in the clan. “Release me, brother. I can…”

He would’ve said ‘I can’t breathe’ if I hadn’t clinched down harder. His Adam’s apple began to move inward with the force of my hand. I had to stop before I crushed his larynx.

“Don’t you ever speak about Kallie in that manner again if you value your ability to breathe.”

My voice, mannerisms, and demeanor had phased to Alpha in a flat second. I could feel the power of my command flowing from me and infiltrating his consciousness. He had no choice but to obey.

“I understand. I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” I said, not only fully letting go of his throat, but stepping back to ensure I didn’t do it again, barely hanging onto the rage of my beast. “It’s not impossible. It’s not like we can’t mate with a human; it’s just rare.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” His back was to me now. I wasn’t the only one barely holding on to a shred of control.

“There’s some complications,” I said more to myself than him.

“You’ve got two choices here. One: You can tell her you’re a dragon first and she runs like hell until she remembers that she’s totally got the hots for you. Two: You make her fall for you first, then tell her you’re a dragon later. Then she feels betrayed and runs anyway. I don’t envy you, I can say that for sure.”

I didn’t envy me either. My dragon had a third plan, but it involved a lot of biting and commanding and holding her hostage in a cave until she relented to love us. I wasn’t sure if I had a dragon or a caveman inside me sometimes.

“Damn it. Neither one sounds good.”

“Well, if she is your mate, remember that it’s not just one-sided. She will feel the pull too. Eventually, she will come back. She won’t be able to deny it. Then again, humans are stubborn little beings. They have no animal-sense to fall back on.”

“Puny little humans,” I mocked him and quoted Hulk at the same time.

“Pathetic,” he joined in but his hesitance was palpable.

“I already love her, Samson. Two days and I swear I’d kill for her.”

The big brother, I’m proud of you, smile was back. “That’s how it goes. Attraction, protection, love—always in that order.”

“I have to tell her. I can imagine how that’s going to go down. She thinks our family murdered her grandfather.”

He walked to the edge of the cliff and sat, dangling his feet over the edge, fearless. Then again, if he fell, he’d just sprout wings and fly back up.

Perks of being a dragon.

“I’m probably supposed to give you some kind of advice, but I don’t have anything in me but sarcasm.”

Sitting beside him, the scales were painful now, already warning me of the pain I’d face if I denied my mate—as if I could deny her. “Hit me with it.”

“Well, now that I’m on the spot, I don’t have any. When you talk to her, do it without that Rhi person with her. She’s a little, I don’t’ know, she’s weird.”

“What does that mean?”

“I swear I saw her start a fire without wood and a couple of people in town say she talks to herself, and Dena, the maid at the hotel, said there was some candles and shit in her suitcase.”

“What was Dena doing looking in a guest’s suitcase?”

He shrugged. “Said it was open. Like she wasn’t trying to hide whatever it was.”

“Then maybe it’s nothing. She’s probably just one of those hippie types, candles and meditating or whatever.”

He bounced his shoulders again.

“When are you going to talk to her?”

“I’m going to fly around for a while, up high. Get some energy out. Then I’ll go home and shower, put some clothes on…”

“And procrastinate some more?”

“And that.”

He stood and shucked his pants. “I’m going back to my mate. Little one will be on his way soon. I don’t like to leave her alone for very long.”

I watched him fly off, headed for the edge behind his house, just across the mountain from my own home. Though my dragon scratched and gnawed at my insides to fly, I sat there for an eternity. Kallie wasn’t the type of female to take this well. Either she was going to think I was mental or a prick.

Maybe I was both.