Lorne blinked his eyes as they adjusted to the change in lighting from the bright fluorescent bulbs in the hall and the rest of the castle when he entered the throne room. Over the centuries Tatenen became his second home as first maáhes to Legette. He watched the castle transform from outhouses and candles to indoor plumbing and electricity. Khoth has a computer system that operated similar to the World Wide Web on Earth, and every room save the one he was entering was connected in the castle, even the bathrooms.

Lorne wanted to hang his head in shame as he approached the gathered group. Cambree’s angry voice was justified. He never took his assignment to her seriously, and she suffered because of his negligence.

The image of her tear stained face and frantic pleas as the male hovered over her ready to take her body by force would never leave his mind. It would spotlight in his nightmares for decades to come. There was no worse offense in his mind than raping a female.

As one of the head enforcers in the Cuelebre’s home realm of Khoth, Lorne dealt with all manner of crimes. Maáhes dealt mostly with the Unseelie Fae bastards and their destruction of the planet, but crimes were committed by the rest of the population, as well, and crimes against females were the worst.

They’d gone centuries without the Civappu ceremony, so there was

no Tuya to worry about. Forcing a female into mating and producing an heir seemed unlikely until he failed Cambree.

Angus stood on the dais looking more potent than ever, and Lorne worried he’d unleash his power on him as punishment. When Angus had returned after his long absence, the male was reduced in size and stature from his millennia-long absence from Khoth. As the king of the Cuelebre, Angus was tied intricately to Gaia and the power she offered their kind. No one realized how much being away affected him until he regained his musculature and grew four inches.

His towering bulk softened when he bent to pick up his son, Blaze. The green haired toddler was the perfect mix of his mother and father, and there was no doubting the mark of the mantle on his soul. Even perched on his father’s hip, he looked regal and ready to take on the issues in his father’s place.

Lorne stopped outside the circle that included Cambree and her parents, as well as Legette. Cambree’s eyes landed on him a second later. The dark circles looked like bruises on her soul. Her head snapped away as if she’d been slapped.

Lorne winced and regretted his inaction more than three seconds ago when it was eating a hole in his gut. “Sire. You summoned me,” Lorne murmured with a bow.

“I want a full report on what happened. I assigned you to Cambree, so this shite wouldna occur. What does it say aboot, my knights, if no one fears them? This male took a female right oot from under your nose,” Angus said in a low voice. His tone was worse than if he’d roared at Lorne and brought Lorne back to his childhood when his father would express his disappointment in some behavior or other.

“She was in the dressing room, Sire. There is nothing I can say to excuse my failure. I am sorry, Cambree,” Lorne replied.

“I don’t want your apologies. I don’t ever want to see you again. I want a new guard,” Cambree said as she clasped her hands in front of her and twisted her fingers together.

An aroma tickled Lorne’s nostrils and made his eyes roll back in his head. Next to him, Legette inhaled sharply. Angus said something, but Lorne didn’t catch it as he tried to locate the source of the heavenly scent.

His groin jumped on the train and went stiff as a board in his pants in the next second. It was a struggle to pay attention to the discussion at hand. Cambree’s parents were complaining about their daughter’s safety and the ineptitude of his maáhes.

Lorne shook his head and addressed the couple. “It is no one’s fault but my own,” Lorne admitted.

“You’ve got that right. If you could be bothered to actually pay attention to our daughter wouldn’t be terrified to step outside right now,” Cambree’s father interrupted.

“I was respecting her privacy. A female changing room is not the place for a maáhes to hang out,” Lorne justified, his mind still spinning from the delicious scent filling the room.

“You weren’t asked to respect her privacy,” her mother countered as she thrust her finger into his chest. “Our daughter could have been ruined by that male if he succeeded. I want his head on a pike for this.”

Her mother’s impassioned demand set Keira into motion, and the queen descended the dais and wrapped her arm around the distraught mother. “We don’t put heads on pikes anymore, as my mate reminded me,” Keira said and shared a look with Angus. Lorne knew the queen wanted Cyril’s head on a pike more than anything else not for the time she suffered in his spell for a thousand years but for the risk he posed to her son and the planet that was tied to his blood. “But, he will not get away with this. That I promise you.”

“What will happen to him?” Cambree asked. Her soft voice and the way her body shook as she spoke made Lorne want to wrap her in his arms and comfort her. He owed her more than he could ever give her. Her vulnerability struck him at that moment.

“Oh, Gods!” Keira blurted suddenly pulling Cambree closer to her side. It was then that Lorne realized he and Legette had taken steps closer to the pair. Lorne was close enough to pick up flowery notes in Cambree’s scent.

Flushing, Lorne lowered his head. From the corner of his eye he noticed that the male staff members had started gathering closer to Cambree, as well. “What’s going on?” Lorne asked. His skin prickled and the hair on his arms stood on end. Something was going on, but Lorne had no idea what it was. He didn’t sense magic in play but sensed it was something significant.

“She’s in heat,” Keira blurted. Angus was at his mate’s side in a heartbeat, his son still set down by Keira and Cambree. Confusion struck Lorne as Angus stood in front of Cambree and not his mate.

“She’s in what?” Godrick, her father asked while her mother gasped. Trina shook her head sending her blonde curls bouncing around her shoulders. Cambree was nearly the exact opposite of her mother with straight black hair and brown eyes.

“I should have known,” Trina muttered. “This is so much worse than we thought. What do we do?”

“What are you talking about? Does it have something to do with these hot flashes?” Cambree inquired. Her cheeks were tinged pink, and her skin glowed with life and vibrancy. It called to him and made him forget who he was, as well as, the audience that surrounded them. His baser urges rose to the surface and took the wheel of his higher functioning.

Angus growled loud enough to shake the walls, but Lorne barely registered his King’s warning. The steps separating him from Cambree were too vast. He needed to get closer to her.

Smoke filled Lorne’s vision and wrapped around his body before he made it two steps. It didn’t register in his mind that the smoke was the color of Angus’s dragon and a signal of his power as the Cuelebre King. Lorne moved his arms and tried to take a step, but he wasn’t able to move a muscle. His heart raced as adrenaline flooded his system.

Lorne looked up and met the light green eyes of his ruler. “Why? I have done nothing,” Lorne complained and glanced around the room. Cambree stood behind Angus with wide eyes and one hand over her mouth. Keira stood next to her and Legette, and the other males were encased in the same dragon smoke as Lorne.

With the magic of his people surrounding him, Lorne’s mind cleared and everything that was revealed sank into his brain. Cambree was in heat, and that was causing him and every other unmated males in the room to react. Female dragons only experienced heat if they’ve been identified as a Tuya and because there hadn’t been any identified for over a thousand years he missed the signs.

“Fuck,” Lorne muttered as the implications sank in fully.

Cambree was in for a difficult time. When a female entered her fertile cycle she pulsed with arousal and need constantly until her primal need to be filled with a dragon’s seed was sated. That most often meant days of constant sex with her mate until his seed took root in her womb.

Lorne recalled the stories about what a female was like during her cycle. She became a wild creature that demanded sex and took what she needed. Old stories talked about males being tied to the bed while their females mounted them. Lorne would not object if he had a mate that wanted to tie him up and fuck him for days.

Although, he recalled his father telling him how he barely made it out of the house alive after his mother’s first heat. There have even been stories of a female’s need being so extreme another male was needed to join the couple to sate her needs fully.

“What are we going to do?” Keira asked. As a sea dragon or Stoorworm, the queen was able to use water to help her cycle when it occurred. He recalled standing guard while she and Angus spent days in the cove near the castle. With Cyril still out there no one was taking chances with the royal couple. Usually, Lorne would have been the first to object to being that close while they were intimate, but circumstances had necessitated their presence. In the end, the couple spent more time fucking underwater than they did above, so it wasn’t as uncomfortable as anticipated.

“She will be staying in the castle where I can be on hand to help protect her,” Angus announced.

“What about her physical discomfort?” Trina interjected. Cambree gasped and looked down at her mother with her mouth hanging open. Her pinks had gone red now, but Lorne saw a sheen of sweat dotting her forehead.

“I will not have sex with some random male, mother,” Cambree insisted.

“Careful, daughter. You can only deny your nature for so long,” her mother replied and ran a hand over Cambree’s forearm in a comforting caress. “You will drive yourself to a state where you will beg anything male to have sex with you and won’t care who he is or if you love him. Once you conceive a child together, you are bound to him for eternity. I don’t want that for you. There are ways a male of your choice can ease your pain without risk of pregnancy.”

“I don’t wanna hear this,” Cambree moaned. “I never asked for this.”

Lorne considered her mother’s words and had to admit his cock pulsed with the desire to be the male to ease her through her heat. It was a biological reaction to the pheromones she gave off, even if it meant using his tongue and fingers to satisfy Cambree rather than his raging erection.

If Lorne recalled correctly, males could sate heat with their mouth and hands as long as the pleasure and climax were mutual. It was the female’s proximity to the energy males gave off that tricked her body into believing they tried. Not every coupling ended in conception, and they could convince her body they’d given it their best attempt. And, fuck it all if his body was entirely on board with that idea. Too bad she hated him after his fuck up.

“You might not have asked for it, but you have been blessed and should never reject that blessing,” Legette muttered, surprising them all.

Lorne knew the male had sacrificed everything for Khoth, and he had hope that the female he’d mated would be chosen as a Tuya, but she wasn’t selected at the last Civappu. Until Keira, no female had ever been identified as a Tuya after they were denied. The fact that the queen was rejected and later blessed gave some hope.

Lorne didn’t believe it would happen for anyone else. The only reason Angus and Keira were given a different blessing the second time around was because they’d sacrificed for a thousand years.

Keira spent a millennium under Cyril’s spell and away from everything that made her a Stoorworm while Angus was kept from Khoth and forced to live in a weakened state for the same amount of time. Their sacrifice for love touched the Gods and changed their minds.

Lorne often wondered what made the Gods select one female over another. Did it mean they were destined for a greater future or that they were better individuals? Lorne didn’t believe the later. Legette’s mate was one of the kindest females on Khoth and she was not chosen.

“I’m not rejecting the blessing, but I can’t allow just any male to have my body,” Cambree replied with a lowered head.

“We will not force you to do anything, Cambree, but understand without this you will be trapped in the castle for an indeterminate amount of time,” Keira explained.

“I don’t want to be forced to choose a male. If I change my mind later, all I ask is that you ensure the male is honorable so as not to trick and trap me,” Cambree requested.

“You have my word,” Angus assured her. “The problem for the moment is who we will have guarding your room. We canna simply put you in a room withoot some kind of protection in place.”

“There are no unmated males in the maáhes ranks,” Legette relayed.

“And the females aren’t done training yet,” Keira added. Keira had changed the face of their system since her arrival. Females used to be cloistered and protected and not allowed to become a maáhes knight. When she arrived, she pointed out how they’d done their females a disservice. Cambree herself was a perfect example of how they failed their females. She didn’t possess any skills to defend herself or fight off her attacker and would have fallen victim to him if Lorne hadn’t been close.

“How are they coming in their training?” Angus asked.

“They’ve made great strides. Some show great promise, but most have no desire to become knights,” Lorne shared. Before being assigned to Cambree, he’d been the primary one in charge of training.

“Are there any capable of fending off males if need be?” Angus asked.

“There are a few that could fend off males that work here, but none could stop a trained knight,” Lorne replied. “You will need to close off her wing.”

“Closing off the west wing will be simple, as will assigning only females to that area. Declan. Let the staff know as soon as I release you,” Angus ordered his personal assistant.

“Yes, sire,” Declan murmured. “And might I suggest using your breath to reinforce the barrier keeping her safe?”

“Aye. I had planned on adding a rune set with my breath to the emergency doors,” Angus explained referring to the massive metal doors at the ends of each corridor in the castle. Those doors weren’t installed to prevent males from getting to an unmated Tuya in heat, but to keep the royal family safe if the grounds came under attack. Angus’s approach was risky, but the only option to keep Cambree safe.

If Cambree went home, she would be attacked without question. There wasn’t a way they could keep her safe outside Tatenen’s walls. The obvious choice would be to keep males away from the grounds until Cambree’s time had passed, but that would leave the royal family at risk. No one was worth risking the safety of Angus, Keira, and Blaze. The Cuelebre’s survival depended on them.

Lorne wished there was a way to speed the process or anticipate how quickly it would pass, but there was no pattern to a Tuya’s heat cycle, not even when or how often they would occur. It would have been so much simpler for them to deal with if there was a distinct pattern.

“Cambree is the first in this situation, but she won’t be the last,” Lorne said, bringing up a larger issue that needed to be discussed. “We need to have a system already in place before the next Civappu to ensure no other females suffer the same trauma as Cambree. No one deserves to go through what she has.”

“Och,” Angus muttered. “You’re right, but the next ceremony is a week away, and we canna delay. The realm needs it to occur as scheduled.”

“For the foreseeable future, we will use the west wing for female as needed. There are three chambers there, and the doors will be a suitable barrier,” Keira interjected. “We need to start recruiting females from training for guardian positions. We will need more than one capable of defending those in need.”

“I will put out a call to action as soon as this meeting is over and I am released,” Lorne assured the queen before he turned to Cambree. “No apology is suitable for how I failed you, but please know that I am sorry to the depths of my soul. If I could change those unfortunate events and take away your fear, I would. I hope someday you won’t wish me dead on site.”

“I don’t know if that will ever happen,” Cambree told him shoving a metaphorical blade through his heart. He made a vow then and there to show her he wasn’t the useless asshole that shirked his duties.