Saina let the words and the magic with them fade away in the low-lit bar. She gestured for the audience to join her in the final refrain, and they did so eagerly, needing only the tiniest thread of encouragement from her magic. She convinced them that they each sounded amazing.

Saina stepped off the little stage to a round of gleeful applause and a chorus of requests.

“Fight Song!” someone yelled.

“Take Me Down!” someone countered.

“Part of Your World!” Breck hollered down from the restaurant deck above.

There was scattered laughter from the audience members who got the joke. Sania flipped the bird in Breck’s direction and gave the rest of the audience a more decorous wave.

They returned to their chatter and drinks cheerfully.

“We might have to get Wrench to provide nightly concert security,” Tex joked. “They adore you.”

Bastian met her at the bar with a kiss. “They’d let you sing until tomorrow morning,” he observed.

“I’m on the schedule for tomorrow at dawn to do a morning meditation,” Saina said. “Lydia’s doing some kind of certification or training until next week, and Scarlet thought I could probably fill the gap with a morning song-and-stretch sort of thing. If I don’t cut them off now, I won’t get any sleep first.”

“Sleep is overrated,” Laura said, from the far side of the bar where she was helping Tex fill drink orders. “And just try to convince me that you’ll be getting any tonight. You’re just looking for an excuse to head back to your room.”

Saina grinned at her, aware of Bastian’s arm, which was still around her waist possessively. She was wearing the evening dress that had been salvaged from her sodden suitcase, washed thoroughly clean of the last traces of goldshot.

“I am so glad you’re taking over the dawn class,” Jenny said, putting a tray of empty glasses down on the bar. “I am incapable of doing yoga at that hour. We spent ten minutes in the child pose this morning before I could even think of anything else to do.”

Saina fabricated a yawn. “I may not do much better,” she joked. “My only hope is that I won’t accidentally sing a lullaby and put us all back to sleep.”

She took Bastian’s hand and left the cheerfully lit bar behind them as they crossed the bar deck to the staff gate.

The white gravel path past the staff gate was a ribbon ahead of them as they walked, hand-in-hand. The staff house ahead of them, aglow from within, was the home that Saina had never had, that she’d never known she wanted. She could feel the safety and harmony of Bastian’s hoard from the doorstep.

The sign on the door had a dozen names crossed out, and Saina read them curiously, then left a puzzled Bastian at the edge of the kitchen to get a pen from the cup on the fridge.

She returned to the front door and in the final space at the bottom of the page, wrote, “The Den.”

Bastian, watching over her shoulder, laughed. “It’s perfect.”

Saina returned the pen to the cup. “It is,” she agreed contentedly, and she meant all of it. The name, the house, the resort, the island with its mysterious pool of magic, and most of all, the man beside her.

She turned to take his hand, and could not resist standing up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “Let’s go to bed,” she said.

“Bed sounds great,” Bastian agreed.

Neither of them mentioned sleep, and by the time Bastian had unlocked the door to his hoard, most of their clothing had been already peeled off of each other.

Saina led him by the half unbuttoned shorts to the bed and pulled him into it over her. “My dragon,” she breathed. “My mate.”

Bastian managed some sort of acrobatics to remove his shorts without losing any skin contact, and was strong and firm along her as he pushed her hair back and kissed her neck. “My fish,” he teased in her ear.

“Reptile,” Saina countered, drawing gentle nails along his erect member.

Bastian flickered his tongue out at her, and she laughed until he kissed her again, drawing her close.

When he entered her, she knew she’d been wrong. This was home, not knowing where he ended and she began. This was home, being held in his strong arms. This was home, his kisses hot on her neck and his breath ragged in her ear as she arched against him. This was home with her mate.