Drenched, tired, and hungry, Dragon finally saw the tail end of his convoy.

As expected, Valerian was flying ahead of the storm. His lieutenant would have never put his precious cargo in any danger. He must have been looking for any sign of Dragon, though, because as soon as Carellian flew under the wind, Valerian turned.

Dragon flattened his hand against his prisoner’s stomach. During the storm, he had inched his fingers under the leather vest and splayed them against her skin. She had stiffened at first, but when the squalls slapped them every which way, her stance softened until she leaned against him. He encircled her waist and anchored her slender body to his.

He left the reins for a moment to raise his hand. Valerian reciprocated the greeting and steered Contessa, his volatile draglet, toward Carellian.

“Easy, boy,” Dragon warned his steed, who huffed in annoyance.

Carellian couldn’t help himself when he was in the presence of the she-draglet, always trying to impress the female with daring aerobatics. Contessa, on the other hand, never seemed to appreciate her suitor’s efforts.

“And you, too, behave.” Dragon pressed his hand over the woman’s skin in warning.

With a few powerful thrusts of Contessa’s long wings, Valerian gained speed and was at Dragon’s side in moments. Well before Contessa stopped abreast of Carellian, his lieutenant gave Dragon and the woman in his lap a good look. The dark expression etched on his face soon transformed from worry to relief, and finally to surprise.

“Is it ‘falling women’ season, High Lord?” Valerian didn’t remove his eyes from the assassin.

“It would seem so.” Dragon placed his free hand on the mercenary’s shoulder.

Valerian studied the gesture with his black eyes. “Did you enjoy your meditation?”

“That’s what you said to the princesses?” Dragon pointed his chin at the royal palanquin flanked by his personal guards.

There seemed to be a commotion all around the luxurious winged wagon, and his men appeared harassed as they kept looking over their shoulders at him.

Valerian nodded. “Their Royal Graces went into a feat of panic when you disappeared earlier in the day and demanded we go back to King’s Ridge.”

“Thank you for keeping a lid on things. My betrotheds scare easily,” Dragon said.

That was a euphemism if there ever was one.

The truth was that Lauren and Gilda, the princesses he was about to marry in less than a fortnight, were two young women raised in a golden cage and knew nothing of the outside world. Since Dragon, and a team of the brightest and deadliest guards of the Solarian Army, had traveled to King’s Ridge to escort the wedding party to Sol Palace, he and Valerian did nothing else but reassure the princesses.

Their sometimes-annoying attitude was to be expected though, given their upbringing. Called princesses as a courtesy title, Lauren and Gilda had been genetically engineered especially for him. As any other shifter in the Fifth Moon System, Dragon couldn’t procreate and needed the help of a group of elite scientists to propagate his race. Fortunately, a dragon shifter physiology was different from werewolves’, and his wives wouldn’t suffer damage from giving birth to dragon pups as Lupine’s blessed brides did. He would never go through the pain his friend Valentine experienced when Mirella was pregnant with their first child, and for that, Dragon was extremely grateful and would be patient with his young brides.

“I’m glad to see you enjoyed your ride.” Valerian’s eyes pointedly studied the mercenary.

“It was quite an adventure.” Dragon appreciated that his friend wouldn’t say a word more than necessary, but still found a way to reassure Dragon with his roundabout statements.

“I can only imagine,” Valerian said. “The princesses called a picnic. I’ll find an accommodation at the back of the convoy for your guest.”

The assassin trembled.

“I have other plans,” Dragon said. “Inform my betrotheds we won’t stop. We’re flying straight to the palace.”

Valerian’s eyebrows arched, and he stared at Dragon for a moment before tilting his chin toward the rest of the convoy that was now waiting, hovering several meters ahead of them. “As you wish.”

Reaching out, Dragon grabbed his friend’s elbow. “Come back right away.”

“Aye.” Valerian regaled him with a sardonic smile as his gaze traveled from Dragon to the stranger riding with him. He gave Contessa a pat between her shoulder, and his draglet elegantly floated away.

“What are you going to do with me?” his prisoner asked when they were alone.

“That’s an excellent question,” Dragon answered, feeling taken aback by his own decision.

Dragon’s brain told him to follow procedure and release the mercenary to the authorities, but he had been successfully ignoring it since that first time in the cave when he touched the assassin. And he had thought she was a man then. Still, his body and his dragon had reacted to her like oil on fire, creating an explosive mixture that was wreaking havoc on his senses and convinced him it was a good idea to challenge the rules.

He watched as his lieutenant approached the wedding party and stopped at the royal palanquin. Purple and gold draperies billowed in the wind as Valerian leaned closer and conveyed his message to Lauren and Gilda. That would likely go as well as a flash flood on Lupine. From his safe distance, he heard the arguing voices rising into the sky.

Valerian came back a moment later, a suffering expression on his face. “That went fine,” he said before shaking his head.

“Thank you, my friend.” Dragon would talk to his betrotheds later, when his own thoughts made sense to him, because now he sure didn’t know what he was doing, hiding the assassin from the authorities.

His expression neutral, he smiled at Valerian, keeping his hand pressed against the woman’s skin. “You’ll fly ahead with her, taking the canyons’ route. At the palace, enter my quarters from the balcony, and wait for me there.”

Valerian, who had kept his emotions in check until now, waved his hand in surprise. “Dragon—”

“I have my reasons,” he said, although couldn’t be sure of anything any longer. “Don’t let her escape.” And even though Valerian was his best man, Dragon felt compelled to add, “Be aware that she wore a white leather cloak with an embroidered letter A on her back.”

Valerian’s eyes widened and his face paled. “You brought back an assassin?” he hissed under his breath. “Why isn’t this woman dead already?”

And for the second time that day, Dragon didn’t have a satisfactory answer to a perfectly reasonable question.