THE next morning, Math had untangled himself from Bethany’s long, silky limbs and left her asleep in her bed, snagging a piece of cold pizza from one of the boxes on the coffee table as he let himself out. He puffed a wisp of dragonfire at the bottom of the slice to freshen it up and ate it on his way to his car.
The bubbling cheese seared the roof of his mouth, but he stuffed it in. He was starving for some reason, far more than usual, and was going to need the calories.
After parking his car on the roof of the casino’s structure, Math texted Bethany from it that he’d be back that night and to clear her schedule for the evening.
Then he ordered another two dozen roses to be delivered to her place right away, rush order.
Flowers weren’t enough.
He called a bakery in another of his company’s casinos, the Silver Horseshoe, and ordered a chocolate cake for delivery to Bethany’s place.
That seemed better.
Probably.
He tucked his cell phone into a special backpack with extra-long straps from the trunk of his car, packed with a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant. After a furtive glance around to make sure no one else was parking their car up there, he shucked his clothes from the night before—he hadn’t minded the walk of shame at all—and tossed them into his back seat before he locked the doors and dropped his car keys into the backpack.
The early morning sunlight warmed his dragon marking on his right side and ribs. The warmth felt good, like he could sun himself on a rock if he’d had time. Most dragons liked to bask, whether in human or dragon form, at least occasionally. That’s why Math had a bit of an all-over tan.
He looped the backpack around his bare arm and leaped for the sky. His golden dragon snapped into being, flying in the light of the morning sun. The backpack band fit snugly around his foreleg, and he stroked his wings in the air and flew.
He sailed for an hour or so to the hills above Los Angeles and alighted on the roof of an enormous house. A changing room held robes for dragons who hadn’t figured out the backpack trick yet. Math changed into his business suit from the backpack, which was a little wrinkled, and carried his laptop into the King and Queen’s abode for his scheduled meeting.
He paused on the way to call the Tiffany store in the Silver Horseshoe, ordering a platinum bracelet for Bethany. He stopped there only because he didn’t want her to have to tell him he was being creepy.
But he wanted to see something shiny on her.
His dragon rumbled, approving of shiny things on Bethany’s soft skin, before it coiled and slept again.
And now, on to the business meeting.
Forensic accounting had been one of Math’s specialties during his MBA. Other people hadn’t liked combing through spreadsheets and data to see how the thieving had happened, but Math walked the straight and narrow road for the businesses he managed.
He demanded that the dragon clan pay their contractors, vendors, and small businesspeople on time and in full. Those people had worked hard and fulfilled their ends of the deal. They deserved their money. Most of them were mom-and-pop outfits with just a couple or a dozen employees who also depended on those paychecks being cut on time and couldn’t wait a few more days for their money because the client hadn’t bothered to pay up yet.
That morning, he got to tell King Llywelyn that someone had been stealing from the dragon clan, which was why he’d flown back to the Californian dragon enclave to discuss the problem.
Bad news should be delivered in person.
They sat in King Llywelyn’s private office in the residence, a splendid space with sumptuous velvet curtains framing the wide wall of windows. The royal residence was built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and waves crashed on the boulders far below.
Math held his computer on his lap and told the old king, “Evidently, the Dragon’s Den Casino is in arrears with its vendors and contractors. They’re threatening to sue, and they would have an excellent case. Someone on the inside has been delaying payments to them, a tell-tale sign of malfeasance and unethical practices, and investing the capital that had been earmarked for those invoices. The invoices were paid months late, and the interest from the millions invested is simply missing.”
“That’s horrendous,” the king said, shaking his head and glaring at the paper in his large, weathered hands.
“I can’t believe it, either,” Math said. “I can’t believe we didn’t catch them sooner.”
“It’s insane.”
“We need to institute fail-safes to keep this kind of theft from happening again.”
“Mathonwy, look at me,” King Llywelyn said.
Math looked up, startled. “What?”
The king scrutinized Math’s face, even leaning across his desk to get a better view of him. “You’re falling into mating fever.”
“No, I’m not.” He returned to pondering his spreadsheet. “I’m too young.”
“Your eyes are turning gold.”
“Yeah, I’m getting a few gray hairs, too, though those are premature, like my father.”
“The eye change is not a factor of age, Mathonwy. It’s a sign of mating.”
“But I’m not mated.”
The king looked him over. “Not yet, but soon. Is your dragon growing?”
“It’s going to get bigger?”
“They always do, with mating. Just the dragon, though. Surely you’ve reached your mature height.” The king nodded at a tray of food Math had decimated during the meeting. “You’re eating like you’re growing.”
Math shook his head. This whole conversation was ridiculous. “I flew here. Flying requires calories. I would certainly know if I was on the cusp of mating with a woman.”
“But you’re seeing a girl?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you like this girl?”
“Her name is Bethany, Bethany Aura. She’s a witch.”
“A witch, interesting. So, do you like this ‘Bethany’ girl?”
“Yeah, I like her. She’s great.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on the wide, mahogany desk. “Tell me how great.”
“I don’t know. She’s great, just great. And she’s cute. And she’s helping me out with the casino. I needed someone to step up, and she has. She’s the only thing that’s working out in that damned casino. And she’s so sweet with her little birds and hamsters and other apparitions that clean the construction debris out of the casino. And she’s nice to people, you know?”
“And she’s nice to you,” the king said.
“Yeah, she’s nice to me. It’s great to talk with her, and she’s got a funny little sense of humor. And she’s cool. She gets me. And she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”
“And you like hanging around her,” the king said, leaning back and folding his hands on his stomach.
“Well, of course. She’s great.”
“To the point where you’re having problems making it to meetings with the accounting department.”
“I only skipped one meeting. Maybe two. And she’s a contractor. Someone has to oversee her. And it certainly wasn’t more than three meetings. Probably.”
Math could think of at least five meetings he hadn’t shown up for, and maybe one more.
“Been buying jewelry for her?” the king asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Dragons like sparkly rocks and shiny metals, and they like to heap them on their mates.”
“We—you know—made the dragon with two backs. Jewelry is customary.”
“How much jewelry?”
Just the bracelet. Maybe he’d opened a tab on his laptop when Llywelyn wasn’t looking and added a little something more to the virtual shopping cart. “Just what’s customary.”
“So, like you dipped her in a dragon’s hoard.”
“Just a little bauble or two.” It had only been fifteen hours. They’d been asleep or busy for most of that. He hadn’t had time to buy much.
“Any new markings?” the king asked.
“No. Why would I get a new marking?” Llywelyn meant the dragon tattoo that all mated dragons bore on either the front or back of their shoulder, which was different than the dragon marking on Math’s back and ribs that he had been born with, evidence that a dragon soul inhabited his body. “Isn’t that part of the wedding ceremony, getting the tattoos together?”
Llywelyn stared at him, the blue glitter of his eyes flowing slowly inward. “Do you know how mating works?”
“Of course. One of you proposes. You buy a ring. She buys a dress. There’s a party. Everybody eats and drinks too much.” He thought about it a second. “There’s cake.”
The king nodded, but Math got the feeling he was actually shaking his head no. “That’s how naturals get married, but that’s not how dragons mate.”
Math stared at his computer screen, but the numbers fuzzed and swam in his vision. “I am not talking to you about this.”
“You are Cedrych’s son, aren’t you?”
Cedrych was his father, dead for ten years now. “Obviously.”
“So, when you had sex with her—”
“Dude! Some privacy, you know?” Even though he’d already admitted it.
The king leaned forward. “How was it? Was it really great?”
“She’s a witch. I assume she cast some tantric magic or something.”
“Like firecrackers up your spine and that moment of unthinking bliss went on forever?”
Heat filled Math’s face. Fire wafted out of his nose. “I am not talking with you about this.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Yes!”
“You’re mating with her.”
“I am not!”
Math’s unease awoke his dragon, who growled somewhere near the back of his skull.
The king said, “Mathonwy, I would say you’re nearly at the stage of the mating frenzy.”
Math looked up at him aghast. “You’re the second person who’s said that.”
“Because it’s obvious. You need to prepare yourself and Bethany for it.”
“Prepare? What would I need to prepare us for?”
The king bit his lip, gathering himself, before he said, “The marking is burned into the mate’s skin with dragonfire.”
“What!” Math stood and paced, running his hands through his hair. “That’s barbaric! Who the hell thought that up?”
The king’s tone became rather dry. “No one thought it up, Mathonwy. It’s biology. That’s how mating works.”
“You—you burned a brand into Queen Bronwyn to mate with her?”
“She’s the dragon, but that’s how everyone does it.”
“Are you supposed to be in dragon form when you burn your mate alive?”
The king laughed. “No, I think the woman would probably explode or something. It might work if the woman was the dragon shifter, I suppose, but that’s still weird.”
“My father had to breathe fire onto my mother and burn her?”
King Llywelyn sat back in his chair. “You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.”
“Burning people is bad! Didn’t they teach Bronwyn that when she was a dragonling?”
“It’s not like that.”
“You’re a mage! How did you even survive?”
“It’s not that bad. As a matter of fact, it’s not bad at all.”
“When Cai and I were in kindergarten, we got into a fight, and I scorched him a little. I got in so much trouble, and he was hurt pretty badly. He handled it well after his mother got there. He’s tough.” His dragon shrank at the memory, ashamed of his childish rage. “I can’t do that to a woman I love, not that I’m in love with Bethany Aura.”
King Llywelyn regarded him, his head tilted to the side. “Aren’t you?”
“No!”
“I’d say you’re about three-quarters of the way to the mating frenzy, Mathonwy. It’s not up to you anymore.”
He flipped his hand in the air, dismissing the superstition. “Oh, so it’s that whole fated mate thing, again. I don’t believe in fated mates.”
The king stared at him. One of his gray eyebrows drifted up. “Dragons have fated mates, Math.”
“We aren’t animals controlled by our biology or magic or whatever. We have free will.”
“All that is debatable, but what’s not up for debate is that a dragon soul resides inside us. Our supernatural nature makes us very different than the naturals and even the non-shifter supernaturals. They can choose their mates, and they can divorce. They can fall out of love. When our dragon finds a person who resonates with them—whether that person is a natural human or another dragon or a witch—the dragon creates a magical, unbreakable bond. It changes both the dragon shifter and the dragonmate in profound and fundamental ways so that our dragons can produce a new dragon soul for children.”
“So, love has nothing to do with it.”
“That’s not true. Most dragon shifters are so in love with their mates before the fever hits that sometimes, they don’t even notice. Like you, someone has to tell them what it means. Dragons feel things deeply, Mathonwy. Dragons love deeply. It’s not surprising that there’s a magical component to it, too.”
Math stared at King Llywelyn, horrified. “So, I have no choice in this?”
“Well, you do, but it’s not a good choice. If you stop seeing her, or if you try to mate and she refuses you or won’t surrender to the mating—”
There it was again, to surrender to the mating. Math didn’t like that wording, and he suspected Bethany would loathe it.
“—then you will become senescent,” the king finished.
This just kept getting worse. His dragon uncoiled, agitated. “What the hell is senescent?”
King Llywelyn said, “You grieve the loss of your mate, essentially, even though the mating never occurred. You’ll lose the distinctive eye characteristic of the mated dragon. Your dragon’s color will dim. Your energy will plummet, and you’ll become quite feeble for a time. Your mind wanders, and it will be hard to concentrate on anything earthly. Eventually, you’ll regain your strength and be able to look for a mate again.”
That sounded horrible. “Does that last, like, a couple of weeks?”
“Usually thirty years or so.”
“Are you kidding me?” Fire shot from Math’s mouth and singed the carpet in the king’s office. The rug was highly flame resistant, of course, like everything in the den development.
The king lowered an eyebrow and stared at the charred spot on his carpet. “Not in the slightest. Mating isn’t a joke.”
“Do dragons go through decades of senescence if their mate dies?”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, that’s good,” Math muttered.
“Dragons don’t usually survive the loss of a mate. They usually die of a broken heart within days.”
Math stared at the king. “I have to admit, death sounds better than thirty years of abject misery.”
“It’s why you don’t see many dragon widows or widowers.”
Now that the king mentioned it, that was true. Math didn’t know anyone who had survived the death of a spouse. His parents had died within five days of each other.
He sat and held his head in his hands. His dragon paced inside him. “This is all a lot to take in.”
“Didn’t your father take you aside and tell you this when you were a teenager?”
At that, Math laughed. “Did you meet my father?”
It was a rhetorical question, of course. The king had worked with the previous Duke of Draco on many occasions.
The king bobbled his head from side to side. “Okay, I can see where Cedrych may not have been forthcoming with details. I can’t believe you got to forty-two years old without knowing about the birds and the dragonflies.”
“They should have taught us about mating frenzies and senescence in school,” Math said. “This is definitely an appropriate subject for Supernatural Sciences.”
The king bobbled his head again. “They’ve had a new curriculum for the last decade or so. Back when you were in school, King Ianto was very conservative and believed that such things should only be discussed in private. You guys got abstinence-only magical sex ed.”
Math scowled. “I really wish someone had told me that I would have to choose between burning a woman I love alive or walking around like a zombie for thirty years. That’s something I would have liked to have been prepared for.”