BETHANY walked into Math’s penthouse suite. “What was so all-fired important that you blew up my phone with texts and I had to leave in the middle of cleaning and organizing the ballroom? The apparitional marmosets were pissed at me for cutting out early. They’re a little OCD.”
“They’re a little OCD?” Math asked, smiling at her, his golden eyes almost twinkling in amusement.
“Yes, and that ballroom has to be perfect when the angel investors get here. It’s, like, the centerpiece of everything. Except for the fountain. And I’ll totally fix that.”
Math closed his front door and locked it. His white shirt strained over his broad back like he was getting even more muscular. Bethany didn’t know when on Earth he would have had time to work out in the last few weeks, and the lean bricks of his abdominals were ripped as heck.
Two catering carts stood in the center of the living room. One had a few dirty dishes stacked on it, but the other’s plates were covered with steel warming lids.
When Math turned back to her, he had shoved both his hands in his pockets and was staring at the thick carpeting under their feet, not looking at her.
He sighed, and it was a heavy, regretful sound. His dark hair was mussed like he’d been running his hands through it or flying.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Oh, by all the gods of magic, he was breaking up with her.
She’d thought they’d hit it off. Every time she was around him, a spark and thrill ran through her that had everything and nothing to do with sex.
She’d thought he was special.
She’d thought she was special to him.
But his downcast eyes, his hunched shoulders, and his hands clenched into fists inside the pockets of his trousers spoke volumes.
Yeah, Math was breaking up with her.
Pain lanced through her chest.
Without looking up, he gestured to the living room furniture, not toward the bedroom door. “We need to talk.”
Bethany straightened her spine. “No, we don’t. I can see what’s going on. It’s over. You’re breaking up with me. We don’t need to talk at all. I’ll just do my job in the casino and get it ready for the angel investors in two weeks. I won’t be a problem.”
She barged past him, reaching for the doorknob.
Math caught her around her waist and set her in front of him. “Hear me out.”
“I don’t have to. You’re obviously preparing me for a break-up.”
“I don’t want to break up with you.”
“Then what? You look miserable. Are you miserable at not breaking up with me? Because if that’s the case, consider me gone.” Even though her heart was shattering.
“Let me talk, please? Let me try to explain?” he asked, his huge hands open and imploring.
She was beyond listening. A crevasse had swallowed her heart. “Oh, it’s one of those it’s-not-you-it’s-me things, right? Or it’s beyond your control? Or something else?”
“All of that. And something else.”
“Quit being so damned cryptic!”
His voice hitched in his throat as he said, “I love you.”
“And yet you look so miserable about it!”
Math took one of her hands in both of his and lowered himself to one knee in front of her. He looked her straight in her eyes. “Will you marry me?”
Bethany stumbled backward, yanking her hand out of his grasp. “What?”
“I asked—”
“I know what you asked. Are you insane? First a whole dang flower shop and then a bracelet and then diamonds and then this?”
“I’m sorry I went overboard. That I’m going overboard. That it’s too fast. I’m sorry about the cake, too.”
“Don’t to be sorry about the cake. You never have to be sorry about chocolate cake.”
“And I’m sorry this is so sudden, but I mean it. I want to marry you. Marry me?”
“We don’t have to get married just because we slept together! Is that a dragon thing? When you said your dragon culture was conservative—”
Math climbed to his feet and looked down at her. “Of course not. I’ve never proposed to anyone before, and I’ve slept with hundreds of women.”
“Hundreds?” she shrieked.
“Please, let’s not make this more complicated.”
“I didn’t know I was dating a dragon-whore. Explains why you were so good at it, though. Practice.”
“Bethany, please! Can we talk about this?”
“This is crazy. You’re crazy. I told you that I would tell you if you got stalker-ish, and so I’m telling you. We had one night together. One night! I mean, it was great.”
“It was great. It was really great,” Math said.
“And I don’t know what to do with that, now. I wasn’t that great. I mean, I wasn’t a noob at it, but I haven’t had nearly as much practice as you. But one night, even a great night, doesn’t mean we have to get married!”
“Before you answer—”
“Dude, I think I just did.”
“—I need to tell you more about mating with a dragon.”
“Wait, mating? You said I couldn’t get knocked up. That’s why we didn’t use a condom. Did you lie to me?”
“That’s not what I meant. You shouldn’t be pregnant after last night. We’re not mated, so I think you can’t become pregnant. Otherwise, I need to call some people.”
“I’m on the Pill, anyway. If I wasn’t on the Pill, I would have told you to flagon that dragon.”
“I’m questioning everything they taught me right now. I’m sorry to throw this at you with no warning.”
“It’s weird! Proposing after one date is weird!” Bethany shrieked.
“I know. I don’t know what else to say, but I’m sorry.”
“You could take it back! Or we could table this conversation for a few months or a year or more or something!”
“We can’t do that.”
“Of course, we can!”
“Unfortunately, it seems we can’t. And I don’t mean that we shouldn’t or we won’t. I mean that we can’t.” Math grabbed her hand and led her over to the couch. He sat on the chair next to it so that their knees were touching, and he held her hands. He ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Your hands are so soft.”
“Okay, thanks.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, then turned her arm over and ran his lips over the inside of her wrist.
Tremors ran up Bethany’s arm, and a sigh escaped her lips.
Math moved his arm to her waist, leaning toward her, and then sat back in his chair. “No. I have to concentrate.”
“Or we could stop talking about this madness and go back to the way things were last night. I liked the way things were last night.”
“I can’t resist you. I actually can’t.”
“I liked it when you couldn’t resist me last night.”
“We have to talk about this. It’s important, and we have to talk about this now. Do you want to marry me? Because if you don’t want to, then this conversation doesn’t need to go any farther. I’ll tell you everything I know, but if you don’t want to marry me, it doesn’t matter.”
Bethany still felt like she’d been picked up by a wind elemental, whirled around, and spit out, but she sucked in a deep breath. “So, this seems to have come out of nowhere for me. We had a great night. I’m not saying anything bad about last night. Not at all. Not saying anything bad about the first, second, or fifth times.”
Math raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong with numbers three, four, or six?”
“Nothing, just editing for brevity. Wait, there was a six?”
“After we got out of the shower.”
“Oh, I was counting that as number five, part two.”
“But the point is that we have to decide whether to mate, whether you want to,” he cleared his throat, “accept the mating.”
“Is there a ceremony or magic ritual?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
“I’ve never even heard of a mating ritual involving dragons. Witches have betrothals and handfasting ceremonies. Some people have regular marriage ceremonies, too, especially if they’re marrying a natural.”
“It’s not a ritual or a ceremony. It’s more of a biological imperative. When I was meeting with the king—”
Bethany couldn’t believe how much information was packed into this crazy conversation. She couldn’t keep up. She should be taking notes. “You have a king? There’s a dragon king?”
“Yeah, we should come back to that at some point. Dragon society is old-fashioned. A dragon clan is a modified feudal system, though every generation tries to modernize our societal structure and how we live our lives. Our monarchy isn’t inherited anymore. The king when I was young, King Ianto, took control of the kingdom when he was quite old, and he had some terrible ideas about how dragonmates should be second class citizens. He was overthrown, and the end of his reign prompted change. The current king, King Llewellyn, is much more modern. He was selected by magic from among the dukes of his generation. So, the kingdom isn’t inherited by the first-born prince anymore. And like we discussed earlier, no more caves.”
There were so many things she should ask about that. “Wait, dragonmates? Dragons don’t marry other dragons?”
“Female dragons are rare. In my generation in New Wales, there are a hundred and some males but only thirteen females, and female dragons almost always prefer naturals or mages as mates. Most dragons mate with people from other magical species or naturals.”
“That’s weird, especially for a conservative society.”
“There are some magical reasons for it, I think, but I don’t know for sure. Anyway, when I was meeting with King Llewellyn, he said I was on the cusp of a mating frenzy.”
“Mating frenzy? What the heck is that?” Sounded like it could be fun.
“I don’t know, other than that a mating frenzy comes after a mating fever, and it sounds worse. I tried googling it. Google returned three links, two of which led to Chinese pages phonetic translations of other words, and one was just a huge page full of random keywords for search engine bait. I don’t think there are any websites about dragon mating biology.”
“Really? My mom told me that the first time she went on the internet, the first thing she did was search for online spell books and grimoires. Even back in the days of the text-based internet and message boards, witches were typing their potions, recipes, and spells into forums. My mom said that alt.witching.spellcraft was huge, back in her day.”
“Dragon society is exceedingly old-fashioned. The dens just got an internet connection about ten years ago.”
“I guess witches are more social that way. You know, covens.”
“Whereas dragons started trying to live together in communal dens only a few centuries ago. Before that, we lived far away from natural society, in solitary caves on mountaintops. The breathing-fire thing turns some people off. And we were territorial as hell. Still are, really. Dragon society has a lot of upheavals.”
“But this mating ceremony—” she prompted him.
“The king said that I had to ‘prepare’ you for it, but I don’t know what to do.”
“Ask your parents?”
“They died ten years ago.”
How had Bethany not known that? They needed to talk more about themselves and less about casinos and angel investors.
She scooted closer and held his hands more tightly. “Oh, Math. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m better. It was tough for a while.”
“Siblings?”
“I’m an only child. It’s common. Dragon families are usually small. Most mated dragon pairs have one dragonling, sometimes two, and very rarely three children. It’s an apex predator thing.”
“I’m an only, too, but that’s rare among witches. Considering some of our rituals, it’s not surprising that witch families can get big. Friends?”
“I asked, but they didn’t know anything, either.”
“This is like the seventeen-hundreds with two virgins on their wedding night,” she grumbled.
“People should be better prepared for this.” Lines gathered between Math’s eyes, and he looked distressed. “The problem is that we’ve already begun to mate.”
“You betcha, buddy. I’m still exhausted.” But oddly, not too sore.
“Not that. I’ve fallen into a mating fever. It happens to dragons and some other shifters, too.”
She reached over and touched his shoulder. He didn’t feel feverish through his shirt. She pressed her palm to his cool forehead. “Are you all right?”
Math closed his eyes. “No. I mean, I’ll be fine. It’s nothing. Don’t concern yourself with me. If I had known earlier that I was falling into a mating fever, I would have stopped it somehow. Or I would have backed off so that we wouldn’t have this problem. I’m sorry I put you in this position.”
She leaned back, and Math opened his eyes, his sparking, fiery eyes. She asked, “But you didn’t mean to, did you?”
“I didn’t even know it could happen. I’ve had girlfriends, even a couple of relationships that lasted a few years, but this has never happened to me before. My eyes stayed completely normal the whole time I was with them.”
“I noticed that they’d changed the last couple of weeks. When I first met you, they were a hazel, but then there were gold flecks and then streaks in them, and now they’re like this, entirely gold and glittering with just a few bits of brown left.”
“I didn’t know what it meant. Unmated dragon shifters have natural-human eyes. I didn’t know that mating fever produced the mature eye characteristic.”
“So that’s what mature dragons look like? They all have this,” incredibly beautiful and hypnotizing, “eye characteristic?”
Math nodded. “Humans can see it, but they don’t know they’re seeing it. A lot of dragons retreat from natural society after we mate because some naturals don’t know why they’re so attracted to us. Dragonmates have the eye characteristic, too. I guess it must change during the mating.”
“This mating process sounds like a phase of life, like puberty, not like dating.”
“Somewhat. I can’t believe that I’m going to grow.”
“Holy cow, Math. You’re like six-six, now.”
“My dragon is going to grow. Not me. I’m not quite six-six, by the way. I’m only six-foot-five and three-quarters.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s totally different than six-feet-six,” Bethany said, raising one eyebrow.
“My dragon is already huge, as dragons go. Most dragons aren’t anywhere near as big as mine is. I can’t believe that sucker is going to grow more. It also explains why I can’t seem to stop eating.” He gestured to the catering carts, both of them. “I ate an entire supper already, and I’m still famished. I ordered in some food, if you’re hungry.”
“We need to talk this out, first.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “We do. You haven’t said no yet.”
She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it, like her mouth couldn’t make the word, like she really didn’t want to say it but thought she couldn’t say yes. “All this doesn’t sound so bad, except that you can’t control it.”
Math spread his hands open in front of him helplessly. “That’s all I know.”
“Can we take it slowly? Can we date for a while and see what happens?”
Math raked his hand through his hair. “I don’t think so. The way that King Llewellyn was talking about ‘the mating frenzy,’ it sounded like that was an all-or-nothing situation. It sounded like, when the mating frenzy takes hold of me, either we will mate or we won’t. At the end of it, if we are not mated, then it’s just over. We don’t get a second chance. It’ll never work out between us, so we go our separate ways. Prolonging it makes it worse, I guess.”
She said, “So, it’s magic.”
“And it’s biological, and it’s societal. It physically changes the dragonmate in more ways than just the eye characteristic, too. Dragonmates live as long as dragons do. They’re physically stronger than they were before the mating. They become immune to most diseases. And they have a dragon’s metabolism, even though they can’t shift. It’s like shoveling potato chips into a furnace. My mother used to get so angry at having to eat so much and all the time or else she couldn’t maintain her weight.”
“Hold on a sec. What was that one?”
That line between his eyes was back. “It’s something to do with the magic or the bond.”
Okay, being able to eat anything she wanted to wouldn’t suck. “But the actual mating fever itself,” Bethany said. “It’s just some sort of mating impulse? It doesn’t mean anything?”
“It means everything,” Math said. “It means I’ll love you for the rest of our lives.”
“It doesn’t sound like love. You can’t control it. You wouldn’t be able to choose. It’s just some sort of hormonal or chemical or neurological or physical thing. You don’t love me.”
“I had a lot of time to think while flying back from New Wales. Dragon Airlines has lousy in-flight entertainment, and three hours is a lot of time to consider your life choices when you’re doing nothing but staring down at mountains and desert while you fly.” Math clutched her hands in his. “I am already mating with you because I am already desperately in love with you. If we become mates, I will love you more than I could love anyone else, ever again. It means magic will bind my love for you and make it eternal. It’s a combination of timing and maturation and magical biology, yes, but a mating fever means that I fell in love with you, that my dragon fell in love with you, the stars aligned, and I am yours forever, if you want me.”
Panic welled up in her stomach. “This is a lot of pressure.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the jump-first type. I’m the clean-up-other-people’s-mess type.”
Math smiled at her. “I know.”
“I really like you. It just feels like it’s too soon to even talk about moving in together, let alone a lifelong, magically bound commitment.”
Math smiled at her, though his smile was sad around the edges. “I understand. Hell, I agree with you. I’m sorry this happened.”
Bethany untangled her fingers from his and stood up. “I mean it, Math. I really do like you, a lot. If you can un-mating fever yourself, I’d like to see where this could take us. I think we could have had something amazing. But it’s too fast, you know? It’s too much.”
“I know,” he said, standing beside her. “I understand. I do. And as much as it pains me to say this, I think you need to leave.”
“I—I don’t understand?”
“I don’t know what a mating frenzy is like in dragons. I can’t find any information. I don’t know if it’s going to hit me in an hour or a week, but I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be around each other. I don’t want you to get hurt. In wolves, from what I read on the internet, anyway, a shifter in a mating frenzy can’t control himself around a woman, especially if she’s his fated mate.”
“Wait, fated mate? What the heck are you talking about?”
“I think it’s fated for me, but not for you. King Llewellyn kept saying that the dragonmate has to decide, that they have to accept the mating, or—” He paused, biting his lower lip.
“Or what?” Bethany asked.
“He said that the dragonmate has to surrender to the mating.”
Bethany stared at him. “Oh, I don’t like that at all.”
“I don’t like that wording very much, either. Maybe it’s just an artifact of the language, an anachronism.” He was still frowning. “Dragon society is so conservative, so maybe the word didn’t change. Or maybe it means something else.”
“You don’t think it does.”
Frustration filled his voice, and he spoke quickly, “I can’t find any information. This isn’t a damned spreadsheet. There’s no org chart. It’s nothing but chaos and void.”
“Well, yes,” Bethany said. “It’s not tidy. It’s not organized and spotless.”
Math smiled a rueful grin at her. “I knew you’d understand.”
“It’s simply obvious.”
“I wish this had worked out for us.”
“Yeah,” Bethany said. “Me, too.”
“You should go, while you still can.”
“Right, before you turn all scaly or something.”
His smile still looked sad, and he blinked slowly. “Something like that.”
Bethany let herself out of the suite, glancing back once to see Math standing in the center of the room, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hands shoved into his pockets, staring at his shoes.
He looked forlorn and lost.
But Bethany didn’t want to get married—actually, a magical mating bond that was far beyond marriage—at the age of twenty-two.
It wasn’t Math’s fault, and it wasn’t hers, either.
No one gets married after knowing each other only a few weeks and just one date.
That sounded like a terrible idea.