Chapter Fourteen
The sun streamed through the window, higher than Betsy thought it should be. She looked around and realized that it was later than she thought. The clock on the side of the bed said it was nearly nine, and for just a moment, she panicked thinking she had to work in a few minutes.
She calmed down when she remembered it was Wednesday morning, and she didn’t have to be in until nearly two in the afternoon.
Sitting up, holding the sheet to herself, she looked around the room. Niko’s bedroom was gorgeous. Not a half-assed conglomeration of curtains and sheets that didn’t match, it was expertly put together with a white washed beech four-poster bed, pale gray sheets and comforter. The decorative pillows Niko had spilled on the side of the bed, save the two they had fallen asleep on, were all matching and complementary. The windows were well dressed, with bleached beech wood blinds and the same grey and blue and green colors shooting through them to coordinate. The best part was that despite all the coordination and decoration, the room felt comfortably masculine.
Slipping out of the unbelievably soft sheets, Betsy padded over to the chair where the clothes from the bathroom had been hung neatly. She considered putting on her clothes, but then caught sight of Niko’s shirt.
She’d never worn a man’s shirt the morning after. Tugging on her panties, she slipped the pale shirt on and buttoned it. It fell better than midway down her legs, just reminding her how tall Niko was.
How big he was.
She smirked.
Then the wave of guilt hit her. She was still lying to him about who she really was. Nothing better than a common thief. Someone he shouldn’t trust alone in his bedroom because, if she were to go with the instincts Wyatt had been honing in her for years, she’d be riffling through his drawers, looking for money and valuables.
Glancing around the room, she realized she didn’t want that anymore. She didn’t want to be the petty thief, the robber, the felon. She never wanted to walk through a store and case it; she never wanted to walk into a house and size it up.
Betsy found herself craving what she saw around as more than just a potential grab and run. She found herself wanting to wake up in sheets as soft as clouds, to make bad dinners. She wanted to run the laundry and pay bills with money she had earned. She wanted honesty, trust, a life that wasn’t constantly on the run.
This. His bedroom. Comfort. Kindness. Love…
Love. What did she know of that anymore? What she and Niko had done the night before left her speechless. No words. There was sex, there was fucking. There was want and desire. There was need. It was filthy and fun. It was so much more than just him slamming home and spilling his cum in here. Fingers had reverently traced her skin, found dimples and mounds and sweet spots that she didn’t know were there—and made her scream in the most amazing ways.
He had been virgin their first time? She could hardly believe that with the way he played her body and made it sing, and made her beg.
Love. She didn’t deserve it. She had been traveling for years with someone who used her for money, for dirty fucking, and…
...probably would use her for scapegoat if anything went wrong.
Which it never did because she was fucking brilliant at what she did. And if it wasn’t for her, Wyatt wouldn’t have a shot at freedom to keep up his felonious ways.
Betsy stopped.
That’s the answer. She needed to get away from Wyatt and make sure he got caught. He’d killed people, and she was only reason he’d evaded capture. She’d kept him out of jail with her ability to avoid getting caught and planning perfect robberies. And it had to stop. She had walk away and stay away.
Not hard—she was sitting in the bed where, each night, her motivation slept.
She wanted this life. She wanted Niko.
No. No more wanting. I’m choosing this time.
She was choosing this life. From that moment forward, she was going to choose to be a good person, someone to be trusted. And maybe she’d earn Niko’s real trust someday.
Slipping on the socks she’d had on the day before—a little ‘ew’ but she didn’t want to go searching through his dresser for socks—she padded out of the room into the upstairs hallway.
There was nothing not gorgeous about Niko’s house. The hall was a colonial blue and had whitewashed wainscoting halfway up the walls. The floors were blond pine with a patterned white and colonial blue runner down the center. The stairs continued the patterns and colors as they wound down to the main hallway downstairs. The living room was straight ahead when Betsy reached the bottom, but she turned right and found her way to the kitchen.
Niko was standing at the stove, a pair of sweats hung low on his hips and ass, a cup of coffee in one hand and a spatula in the other. She walked over to the counter island that sat between them, and Niko looked up at the sound of the chair being moved.
“Good morning, sunshine.” He smiled and reached into one of the cabinets for a mug and offered it to her.
“Good morning, Nikomedes.” The smirk that crossed his face told her he remembered the exact same thing from the night before: her screaming his name at the very top of her lungs. “What time do you have to go to the store?”
“Two.” He flipped the bacon in the pan. “Aaron opens this morning. He likes to be out early on Thursday and Friday because he usually has the kids, so he takes open on Monday through Wednesday. We switched yesterday.”
“Well, that was nice of him.”
Niko grunted. “His agreement was contingent on me getting laid.”
Trying not to laugh, Betsy covered her mouth and finally answered, “Well, that you did. Well, and good, I hope.”
“Oh, very well and very good and I’m sore. Is that normal?”
This time, she didn’t try to hold back the laugh. “Very normal.”
“Is it wrong that I want to sling you over my shoulder, take you upstairs, and make us a little more sore?”
“Sex is fun, Niko. Being sore is a small price to pay for literal screaming orgasms. Sweet Jesus, man, I’m shocked I have a voice this morning.”
Pouring the coffee in her mug, the grin was unmistakable and adorable. “I’m shocked too.”
Deciding that she really was too sore to pursue more sex at the moment, Betsy changed the subject. “This house is beautiful, Niko.”
“Gothic Victorian. There are a bunch of them in the Valley. They’re all maintained by magical families, most of them passed down through those families. My dad had this built in 1869, for his first wife.”
“This is your parents’ house?”
“It’s my house, but parents used to own it.”
She poured some milk in the coffee. “Was it weird sleeping in their room?”
“That’s not their bedroom.” He sighed and stared at the bacon in the pan for a moment. “I refused to sleep in there after my father died. It never felt like mine. Raissa, our fire dragon, convinced me that it was now my house and I couldn’t stay in my childhood bedroom forever, even if it was decorated like a grown up. She was right.” He looked over at her. “Raissa and I dated my senior year in college. We were a good couple, but we weren’t the right couple. Neither of us wanted more than a comfortable relationship. She’s probably most of the reason I didn’t sleep with anyone. Until now.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s brutally honest. She knew what she wanted out of a guy, and she wasn’t going to waste time waiting for a guy to figure it out. We broke up over the bedrooms upstairs. I wasn’t ready to be a man, and she wasn’t waiting for me. I’m eternally grateful for that last fight we had. The one where she broke up with me and told me I was a coward. I was. And I like to think that I’ve grown from there.”
“You’re not a coward.” Betsy whispered the words. They echoed in her heart, hurting. “If anyone is coward…”
“I was a coward,” Niko said, not seeming to realize what she had said. “I was. I didn’t want to face life without my parents. I didn’t want to grow up, face that I was an adult and that my life was going to march on whether I wanted it to or not.” He shook his head. “You have never seen a fight until you have seen two dragons in a screaming match. I had to call in Sia and Poppy to ask for their help containing the damage we did.”
Betsy’s eyes went wide. “Damage?”
“We broke up in public. In the Garden of Silver, in the state park. We were there for a romantic picnic that just went south, fast. People heard and saw us screaming at each other and… well. There might have been some magic thrown around.” Pausing, he cracked an egg into the other pan. “Okay, so the trees kind of caught fire and withered where non-magicals could catch sight of it.”
At first, Betsy wanted to be offended by his frank honesty about Raissa so soon after they had just spent the night together, but it was clear that he was not interested in the female dragon anymore. But when he got to the flaming trees part of the story, she started giggling. “You set trees on fire?”
“Magically, yes. It was a bad fight.”
“When you cause a forest fire because you’re mad, yes, I would say so.”
Cracking the other egg into the pan, Niko chuckled. “We had to do community service in the forest and help plant trees with the kids from the City Camp. We deserved worse. However, she made me realize I did have to grow up. I had a degree in art and master’s in metallurgy and I was moping around living off the retirement funds my parents had left me. It was time to grow up.
“I had a contractor in about a week later and completely replanned the upstairs. My bedroom and the office and bath next to it became the master suite and my parents’ room was turned into two bedrooms and an extra bathroom. I was going to have a decorator come in and outfit the place, but I realized that in all likelihood, that would result in flowers and frilly damn curtains. I had a degree in art, so I did it. Me and the contractor. I had Max and Dracen come over and help me install everything, like the railings and rugs and wainscoting. I picked out all the furniture and art. I had damn good time doing it. I didn’t want the house to look like a man cave or a bachelor pad, but I didn’t want it to look like Victoria Regina herself had puked up in living room.”
“You did an amazing job,” Betsy said. “I’m impressed. This is the kind of house I always dreamed my family could live in. But Mom and Dad had an affinity for things from the seventies. Polyester and plastic.”
Niko tutted. “There’s nothing worse than a plastic chair in summer.”
“Right? But that’s what Mom liked. I think it reminded her of her grandmother. She was raised by her grandma. Her mom disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
Betsy wanted to kick herself for bringing it up. “Yeah. Went to work one day and never came home. My grandfather never found her. They don’t think she was killed. Dad sometimes hinted that her green eyes had her stolen and sold as sex worker somewhere else. I never got the whole story, but Grandma went missing and my mother just turned on her. As if there was nothing that could ever convince her to take her mother back into her life.”
Niko flipped the first egg. “What do you think?”
“I think that Grandma fell out of love with my grandfather and that she needed to escape in a world that didn’t allow it. Grandpa was a cold fish, at best, and an asshole on bad days. One of those men you see and think, ‘he’s not only going to die alone, but we’re all better off for it’.”
“And your mom’s okay?”
Betsy took a drink of the coffee to delay her answer, but he watched with those electric blue eyes and she couldn’t avoid the question. “As far as moms go, yes. I hated her most of my life. She really had problems with Dad’s profession, even though she knew he was a pro bono lawyer and that was what he wanted to do while they were dating.”
“So he wasn’t a rich lawyer.”
Betsy took a quick swallow of the coffee. “No. They’re rich. His family has money. He just lived modestly and didn’t cover her in furs and pearls like she thought he should. She was what people call a princess today. But Dad’s altruistic and likes simple.”
“Your parents are still alive.”
Betsy grimaced. “Yes. They are. But I haven’t spoken to them in years. I don’t know that they want to hear from me ever again. I… um… kinda screwed the pooch when I left.”
Hoping he was buying most of her story—it was, after all, mostly true—Betsy considered the coffee in her mug and took another swallow. The silence went on for a moment in the kitchen, before Niko interrupted it with the click of a plate on the counter. Looking up, Betsy found him directly in front of her.
“I don’t know why you think you can’t talk to them, Bets, but from someone who can’t ever talk to his parents again, I would tell you to try and find out for sure.” He nodded at the plate. “I hope you like bacon.”
She fluttered her eyes at him. “I was hoping for a little sausage.”
Niko raised an eyebrow. “There’s no little sausage available. Just the big one you were sucking on last night.”
Laughing, Betsy leaned up and kissed him. “Shit, I’m corrupting you.”
“You are, and I like it.”
“You’re too good for me.”
Niko’s smirk made her insides melt. “Nope. Eat breakfast. You need some nourishment after last night. When do you go to work?”
“Two, like you.”
“Good.” He turned back to the stove to fix his own plate. “I want to show you something.”
“I thought I saw everything last night.”
The smirk left her quivering again. “This is a little different than just shagging each other stupid. It’s… well, it’s important to me.”
“Is it a shifty thing?”
Niko laughed at her choice of words. “Partly shifty, yes, but a lot of dragon shifter. You don’t know much about the magical world, do you?”
“Considering until I saw you in the pond I had no idea there was a magical world? I’m learning as I go.”
“Right.” He nodded and put his plate of food next to her. “We’ll learn as we go.”
* * *
Aaron yanked him back just before he opened the door to the basement.
“A moment, please, Nikomedes.”
He’d known this ‘moment’ was coming as soon as he’d decided to show Betsy everything. Even before Aaron had called at nine to say the diamond had arrived at the store.
He’d made his decision last night, buried deep inside Betsy as his soul sang in the same rhythm they rocked against each other. There, as he held himself above her in sexual bliss, in communion like he’d never dreamed of, he knew the mating stone was right. He knew that this woman below him, clinging to him, calling on his name and God’s, was his mate.
Feeling her warm in his arms all night, running his finger through her hair, he started to be disinterested in a life without her there in his bed. This wasn’t lust and desire alone anymore. This was so much more. Shifters, once they found their mate, fell in love hard and fast. He knew, listening to the beat of her heart, she was his and he would do what he had to, to keep her.
She’d come down as a new woman that morning. There was something amazingly resolute about her, a solid whole person. Niko sensed she didn’t want to hide or run anymore. Several times he thought that she was on the verge of telling him the truth, but she shied away.
There was something. She knew something else. A dangerous secret that she held close to her chest—and Niko had to brace himself for anything at that point. Still, he knew he had to let her in all the way on his side so she could make her decision honestly. That meant showing her not only the diamond, but the hoard. Which would piss off the other three dragons and all the leprechauns.
But, it was her choice.
She would either accept this as it was, or she would destroy his heart. He wanted to believe she’d changed. And if she didn’t accept it, and chose to go back to robbery and burglary—well.
There were four dragons, versus one human. It wasn’t even a guess who would win that fight. It wasn’t even a fight.
Aaron’s eyes flashed angry gold as they stepped out of view of Betsy. “Are you fucking insane, man? You’re going to show her the fucking gold?”
“You need to back your leprechaun down and realize that I have more in my hoard down there than all of you and your mother’s family combined. If anyone has a right to get pissed at me it’s Henry and the others.”
“And did you tell them what utterly fucking boneheaded move you’re about to make?”
“Fuck no. I’m crazy, not stupid.”
Aaron grabbed his arm. “Why? Why are you taking her down there? Of all places?”
“She needs to know everything. Everything, if I have any chance of keeping her.”
“Dude, she’s a thief.”
Niko bared his teeth and growled low. “She’s my mate. What the fuck do you think this is?” He shoved the package in Aaron’s face. “Hint, it’s not soap.”
“I don’t know what the hell that is. It looks like every other goddamn package you order!”
“This is a two-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond. A singing stone. My fucking mating stone—no, our mating stone. I spent more than any good, sane man should ever spend on a fucking rock. But because this one talks to dragons and told one that it belonged to me, here I am standing with it, about to show that woman the whole truth about who I am and what I am. So fuck your petty little pot of gold, I’ll use it for a pissoir if I feel like it.”
Aaron put his hands up and stepped back. “Jesus Christ, man. Fine. It’s on your head if this whole thing goes south.”
“Yes. It is. And don’t think I don’t know that. Not for one goddamned second.”
Niko turned and headed back to where Betsy stood waiting. He was so mad he could feel his dragon stirring and wanting action. It was going to mean a visit to the pond, and he desperately reined in the need to snap someone or something’s head off.
Sheepishly, Betsy looked at him. “Is this really something we have to do? Aaron looked really angry and I—”
“Aaron can piss off.”
Betsy took a giant step back. “You warned me about your temper. If this isn’t a good time—”
Niko realized just how angry he was if she was stepping back, and took a deep breath. “No, no. I’m sorry. Hold on. Let me just take a moment to collect myself here, so I don’t get the whole town riled.”
Laying a hand on his arm, Betsy said something, but he didn’t hear it. The moment her hand touched him, the dragon instantly settled and relaxed. He looked at her, eyes wide, and the words he didn’t hear froze in her throat.
“What’s wrong? What did I do?” She looked terrified.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing.” He wrapped his hand over hers on his arm. “You did something amazing. It just proves this is right and needs to happen.”
“What? Niko, if this is going to make people mad, maybe we can wait. It’s—”
“It’s not going to wait, agapité éna. I don’t want it to. We don’t…” He stopped himself. They probably didn’t have a lot of time before the creature she had rolled into town with returned. But this was not the time to tell her he knew. She’d find out in just a few short minutes. “I need to talk to you. And it needs to happen now.”
Pulling out his keys, he unlocked and unbolted the door. The stairs beyond were illuminated with the flick of a switch, and they led down into a laminated floor basement area. Niko motioned to Betsy to head down and pulled the door closed behind them.
The hideous green and white floor was harshly illuminated by the tubes of fluorescent lights above. There wasn’t much down here. A few spare jewel cases, some extra display pillows and cases, and an extra bath. What a person wasn’t able to see from the door was the other door beyond the spare bath.
That was where Niko headed, motioning Betsy to follow him. She gasped when she saw the door and watched as Niko unlocked this door with two keys and a hand print.
“More security here than in the front door?”
“Very few people know about this door, and fewer people have access.” Niko flipped on another light. This stairwell was not as elegant as even the green linoleum. It was rough-hewn from the granite that was plentiful in that part of Minnesota. It was worn and damp, but it was familiar and comfortable to Niko. He held his hand out for Betsy to take, and he led her down the stairs in the semi-dark.
At the bottom was an old spin-handled safe, with a massive fifteen-foot diameter steel door. The combination had long since been drilled out and replaced with a hand scanner like the one above. He slid his hand over it and the locks disengaged, allowing Niko to spin the handle and pull the door open. Even with his shifter strength, the door was a monstrosity.
Beyond the door was a very long corridor, lit by a row of fluorescent lights. They hummed unpleasantly, and he made a mental note to look into replacing them with LEDs, or something less awful. Betsy followed him into the passage and looked around. At that moment he couldn’t read her, but she seemed intensely curious.
To the right was another vault door, but not nearly as large as the one they had just walked through.
“If you ever come down here under my direction,” Niko began, “you must never touch another one of these doors beyond the main one. That door is the Leprechauns’ corridor. No one except them have been down there since my grandfather helped build and organize it. The opposite side is in case they grow beyond their storage. Do not touch the door. It keeps the peace. We like it that way. It’s better for everyone. These other doors belong to the dragons.”
Leading her into what was basically a cul-de-sac hewn into the rock, there were four enormous doors.
“Our doors.” Niko spread his arms, encompassing the cavern. He pointed to each of them. “Earth, Henry Chang. Water, me: Nikomedes Tavoularis. Fire, Raissa Galaradsky. And wind, Maximillian Czerkenowicz.” The doors had colors: earth was green; fire, red; water, dark blue; and air pale blue, nearly white.
“God, what is this place?” Betsy turned and looked at each of the doors, and glanced back the way they came.
“These are our hoards. This is where we dragons store our gems and jewels and precious things.” Niko walked toward his own and placed a hand on the knob. “And yes, it can be just as insane as Smeagol and Gollum. My uncle ate a man who dared to touch the door of his hoard. Ate him. Granted the guy was horrible, and evil, but…”
“You eat people?” Betty took two huge strides back and that put her way too close to Raissa’s door for Niko’s comfort. He strode forward and pulled her close to him and away from the other dragon’s hoard. She fought him, struggling to step away.
“Stop, Betsy! You got too close!”
“You’re gonna eat me?”
“I didn’t hear you complaining last night.” He raised an eyebrow. “We don’t, now. Not anymore. It’s forbidden. You’re executed for it now. But a thousand years ago, things were not as they are now.”
Relaxing a bit, Betty let him hold on to her. “You have to be careful. You have to be. If you touch one of the other doors, you will summon them here. You saw what happened upstairs when I lost my cool. Touch the hoard, and it’s a whole other ballgame. I’m trying to warn you, not scare you. Uncle Tiresias was punished too… you can’t eat a man and shift. A dragon’s metabolism is slow. He was stuck as a dragon for six months, and had to pay the family back from his hoard and his hide.”
“His hide?”
“Scales. He had to have two removed from his under belly. They were given to his two children as compensation—he was made vulnerable by removing them. His skin is exposed there, and someone could grievously injure him.”
“This magic shit is brutal.”
Nodding, he moved the two of them to the door of his own hoard. “Please, Betsy. If you’re ever down here, don’t touch the other doors. Ever. They can’t eat you, but a dragon that feels threatened is not one you want to deal with.”
Betsy nodded and relaxed a little more. Niko swiped his hand over the handle and it clicked open.
His dragon was up again, sniffing the precious metals and jewels beyond. But instead of demanding they enter, it urged and asked permission. Niko glanced at the woman tucked in his side. She was doing that—taming the beast.
Sweet Zeus, let this all work out. He loved being in control of the dragon. Having it obey him and ask permission was amazing.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled the door open and motioned Betsy to go ahead of him. He really didn’t know what was going to happen—he had never ever brought anyone down to the Tavoularis Pine Valley Hoard. There were others, but this one was his father’s and mother’s. And now his.
The massive cavern was well lit and as they walked in, the LED lights he’d installed kicked on as they detected their motion. The Louis XIV gold-leaf desk was the first thing the light illuminated. The next thing that appeared was the blue silk dupioni Victorian settee, and the Louix XIV chair that matched the desk.
Betsy’s jaw dropped and she walked over and ran a hand over the glass on the top. “Is this real?”
“Everything in here is real.”
“Everything…?”
Niko leaned over and pressed a few buttons on the computer on the desk. The lights started to turn on in sequence from the front to the back of the cavern. He was proud of his organization. He didn’t know what the other dragon’s caverns looked like, but his was meticulously organized, shelved, numbered, and cataloged.
“Holy ever motherfucking love of God.”
* * *
Betsy took a step forward.
Hoard.
Shit.
He had a goddamn hoard.
The cavern lit up and she was completely overwhelmed by what the lights revealed beyond. Shelves, cases, boxes, glass displays, all filled—filled to the absolute fucking brim—with gold. Silver. Platinum. Gems. Jewels. Furniture. Weapons.
Until that moment, the full impact of the idea of a dragon’s hoard had never crossed her mind. Niko spoke of the dragon getting mad, being protective, but she didn’t know. She really didn’t know.
Her jaw was unhinged and she couldn’t find words. She just stared. There were millions upon million upon millions of dollars of precious objects in this cavern. Taking a few steps forward, she couldn’t even imagine a place to start looking at all this.
Wyatt would be in hog heaven.
She slapped a hand over her mouth. Why was he showing her this? Why would he let her know that all of this was hidden down here—and that there were three more caverns just like this? Was he insane? If someone like her told someone that it was hidden down here…
Fuck. Fuck. The answer was so easy.
He trusted her. He didn’t know her, he didn’t know what she was, but he trusted her.
Niko slowly walked around the settee to take her hand. “What do you think?”
“I think… I don’t know what I think. This is…”
“A lot. Mine. My family’s. Dragons do this. This is our driving force. We find gold, silver, things that have value and hoard them. A dragon without a hoard is a frightful creature. Most parents gift their children with enough to keep them calm. I inherited my father’s whole hoard.”
There was just simply no getting her mind around this.
He held up their entwined hands. “May I show you some of my favorite things? All of this is important, but there are pieces that have more meaning personally to me.”
Nodding, Betsy let him lead her into the cavern of many shiny objects. Desperately, she tried to get her mind working. There was more in this cavern than some museums had in their whole collections. On top of the insane amount of money that was tucked away in here, it was organized. He had organized it. Walls of cubbies with gold and silver ingots stacked neatly. Steel bars that held necklaces and rings and bracelets. Black velvet cushions that held sparkling gems and jewels, sorted by composition, color, and size. Goblets, tiaras, scepters. Silk wall hangings, tapestries…
“It’s a fucking museum,” she mumbled.
“Sometimes, it is.” Niko smiled at her and led her to the side. “Here. This is one of my favorites. It’s not worth a lot, but the play of colors inside it is gorgeous.”
There on the velvet inside a glass case was a very large fire opal. It looked like the clouds at sunset—or what she imagined they looked like over the great desert that was the Outback. They seemed to roil and boil inside the stone.
“That’s not worth much? It’s the side of a jumbo egg.”
“Opals aren’t worth much. They’re a relatively common stone in Australia.” Tugging on her hand, he pulled her along to a section of furniture and pointed to a wood chair with a thin silk cushion on it. “This is another favorite. While it doesn’t look like much, it’s a burl ash chair that one of the Maharajas of India sat on.”
“Niko, this place is crazy. How…”
“Years and years of collecting. It’s a compulsion to always seek out the best and most unique objects. The precious things. It’s part of being a dragon. And that’s why I brought you down here. Do you want to look around, or…”
“Or what?” Betsy stared at him.
“Or would you like to have the talk that needs to happen?”
The pit of her stomach fell out. “What do you mean?” The gold and platinum behind her was suddenly gone from her mind.
“I brought you here for a reason,” Niko said. He motioned to the desk and settee at the entrance. “Come on. Let’s talk. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”
Betsy folded her hands in front of her and followed him back to the desk. He sat in the chair, looking like he belonged there. He sat straight and tall, and there was something achingly honest about him. She took a seat on the settee and placed her hands in her lap.
For just a moment he looked hopeless, sad, but it disappeared as he started to talk. “I brought you down here as a sign of trust. Something happened about a week ago that I have to tell you about, but I had to show you this before I talked to you. There’s a lot to this magic stuff and I have to explain it.
“You already know I’m a dragon shifter with the element of water, but it’s more than that. It’s all the trappings that go along with being a shifter, and particularly a dragon. Betsy, since I’ve met you, things have been happening. Good things. My dragon has decide to behave. I have control over him and we’re getting to know each other instead of him just taking over my consciousness and diving me into the water once a month to be sated. It’s new, and different, and I like it.
“There’s more and some of this is going to sound strange. I’m a dragon. I have a compulsion to collect and I need to swim. I also need to… well. Fuck and mate, I guess. Not just fuck, but that’s the beast. It needs that. And he needs a mate. Someone to calm the rage, to tame his personality.
“But the dragon isn’t all just filthy lust. There’s some interesting stuff he can do that people and other supernaturals can’t. We can hear the earth. It speaks to us in ways I can’t quite put into words. And one of the things we are really good at is hearing stones. Uncut, unpolished gems. They speak to us. It’s a common enough occurrence that we call these Speaking Stone. Somehow, we understand what they want to be made into, how to cut and polish them, how to make them glow and glint in ways that a regular jeweler can’t.
“And some of us hear them better than others. Which is why I’m a gemologist. Why I learned how to make jewelry. My father was good, my grandfather was excellent. But there is one person who was better than all of us, and his name is James Winterthur.
“Last week he called me and told me he had a Speaking Stone that had a story and a purpose. He was able to carve out the story and make it shine to be the best stone it could be.”
Niko handed her the little package he had brought with them to the cavern and motioned her to open it. Betsy’s hands were trembling as she opened the package and as Niko continued his story.
“The Speaking Stone wasn’t done yet. It had a place it needed to be, a person it needed to be with. There are different names for different stones that show up at different parts of our lives. There are Birthing Stone, Dying Stone. And there’s this stone.”
“You’re scaring me.” Betsy wasn’t about to dance around what she was feeling. But her fingers freed the small package in her hands and she trembled while trying to hold it steady. “What is this, Niko? What’s going on?”
“Open it.”
Slowly, Betsy turned the box around in her hand, studying it. The words “Conflict Free” were pressed into the bottom and on the top was the word “Canadian” with a little maple leaf surrounding the world, all with gold leaf. There was, without a doubt, a diamond inside. With all the guts she could muster, she slowly raised the lid.
There in the center, held on its cushion by the thinnest wire she’d ever seen, was a massive, unset diamond. Emerald-cut and perfect, it caught and reflected the light, retaining its full white spectrum in the way a good diamond will.
Saying this was a good diamond was like calling the Eiffel Tower a little building. She could see this was beyond an excellent diamond. Perfect was closer toward it.
Niko spoke as she stared at it. “This is a Mating Stone. It is meant for you. That’s what Winterthur said when he called me about it. I bought it so that it would be here with you.”
“A Mating Stone?” She couldn’t take her eyes off such a gorgeous jewel.
“Yes. A Mating Stone. Dragons mate only once, and for life. There might be others we like and even love, but there is only one true mate for us out there. And this Speaking Stone told James that it is yours. From me.”
“Is this… an engagement diamond?”
“No. Mating doesn’t work like that. Mating is private, though everyone knows that you are mated. It’s a bond like nothing any ceremony can create or justify. It’s a bonding of souls. With dragons, we want our mates to be bedecked with precious things. You can tell that I’m an understated dragon, due to my mother’s human blood. Raissa is full dragon and when you meet her you’ll see that she’s a lot more outgoing with her choice of jewels.
“If you were to mate with me, this would be my first gift to you, to make my dragon happy and keep you bedecked.”
Betty raised her eyes to his. “Mate with you…”
“Since you showed up at the pond, that first night, I have started to reap all the benefits a mate lends to their shifter. Stability. Control. Contentment. The juvenile constraints that we are saddled with until our mating have been falling away. I’ve suspected since our second night on the rocks that you were more than just a good lay.” He smirked. “And when Winterthur called me with this and told me it was meant to be my Mating Stone, everything fell into place.”
Her heart was beating a thousand miles an hour. She was supposed to wear this after Niko mated with her. This was for her.
“What does mating involve?”
Betsy close the lid. It was distracting in its beauty and she needed to be completely present for his answer.
“You and me. Forever.”
She waited. “There has to be more.”
“Eternity, Betsy. Dragons are immortal. We are born, and we can be killed, but we don’t die. We have only one mate. And that mate is tied to us, our power, for eternity.”
“But I’m human.”
“You would be a dragon mate, and all the perks and pitfalls that go with that. Immortality. Telepathy. My power through me, weak at first and then eventually as strong as I am. The pull of the moon, the pull of my element. The ability to go where I can and do without repercussions.”
Pursing her lips, she stared at the box with the diamond in it. “We don’t really know each other.”
A small laugh escaped him. “We have time to learn.”
“How do you mate? What is that like?”
“Sharing of blood.”
“Like a vampire?”
“No, we don’t need to suck on each other’s throats. A simple bite that breaks the skin, an intentional, mutual taste of blood. Nothing more. It’s usually done during sex.”
“It is?”
“Doesn’t have to be, but usually that’s when it happens. It just has to be intentional, mutual, and consensual.”
Once again, words started to slip away from her. “There’s a lot to think about here, Niko. I don’t…”
“You don’t have to decide right this instant. Forever is a long time.” He flipped the lid open on the box. “This is yours, through me.
“But whether you accept it as a Mating Stone or steal it as something to hock for cash is up to you.”
Betty almost vomited.