There’s Something About Dragons (How I Met My Monster)

Chapter 10

Zed

I f I had any doubts that Cari was the ideal woman—or that jerking off before this date was a good idea—watching her put away that giant sausage with my cum in her hair put them all to rest. She’s perfect for me, game for anything life might throw at her… like a dragon fated mate with two dicks and a hair-trigger shift. And she smells fucking amazing with my scent all over her.

I have to tell her tonight. She can handle it. She can handle me .

“He’s the king!” the host belts. “The king of eating the whole thing!” A group of servers gathers around, clapping in tandem and shouting, “King of the thing, king of the thing, king of the thing!” One of them crowns me with a gold plastic circlet, and Cari joins in the clapping, laughing, until they finish their song.

“I’ll bring out your next course right out,” the host promises, sweeping the platter off the table.

“I’m a little afraid of what that might be,” I confess to Cari after he leaves. “I didn’t know exactly what I was signing up for. I’m sorry if it’s not quite what you expected from a first date.”

“I think this is awesome. Definitely memorable.”

I know I’ll never get the image of her wrapping her pretty little mouth around that sausage out of my mind. “Agreed.”

“I know you were trying to let me win, but I’m glad you didn’t. It’s more fun if it’s a real competition.”

“You goaded me into it!” I chuckle. “You knew what you were doing, flirting with the host like that.”

“Yep. And it worked.” Cari looks pretty pleased with herself. “Please don’t make ‘piggy piggy’ my pet name, by the way.”

I love that she’s thinking of the future. Thinking of us as a couple. This feels so natural, like no time has passed at all. Like we’ve been together all along.

“Never,” I swear. “I’ll call you Queen.” She makes a confused face, and I motion to the crown wedged between my horns. “Obviously, if I’m the king, you’re the queen.”

A slow smile spreads across her face. She knows what I’m getting at. Because you don’t become queen by dating a king, do you? Only by marrying him. “Obviously,” she repeats, her cheeks flushing.

She’s so damn beautiful . Why did I wait all this time to find her again?

“I wish I’d tried harder,” I say without thinking. “I wish I hadn’t listened to anybody else.”

“What do you—”

“Aaaaaand here’s our Meatball Match-Up!” Cari’s question is cut off by the return of the host. This time he has two plates full of meatballs balanced on one arm and a stack of sauce cups in the other hand. He spreads it all out in front of us with practiced flair. “You’ve got marinara, barbecue, sweet-and-sour, and spicy mustard. First one to finish their plate wins. Watch out for the toothpicks! Now it’s time to Eat! That! Meat!”

I could finish the plate in fewer than five minutes, but I take my time instead, enjoying the view of Cari with sticky hands and sauce smudged across her cheek.

“You’re so gorgeous,” I tell her. She pauses mid-meatball, her cheeks full like a chipmunk, but she has to hold back her smile to keep the food in her mouth. Instead, she puts her foot on mine under the table, a private acknowledgement of the compliment.

She has no idea what those little feet do to me. Wrapped up in the strappy heels she’s wearing tonight? I’d rather have those toes in my mouth than these meatballs, no matter how succulent they might be.

I have to get my thoughts under control or my feral form is going to take advantage of how weak she makes me. I focus on my plate and try to eat like a human. The last thing I need is toothpicks stuck in my throat and another date with Cari cut short by a trip to the monster medical center.

She has a good head start on me and is close to finishing her plate, so I speed up, skipping the sauces and just sliding meatballs off their toothpicks with a practiced flick of my claws. But I pause when I feel Radar’s tiny paws on my shin.

When I glance down at him, he rests his chin on my knee, whining. All the meat smells must be driving him crazy. Even though they brought him out a dog-designed meal, I can’t resist his cuteness. I slip him a plain meatball under the table.

Immediately, a buzzer sounds. “Disqualified!” the host announces.

Cari frowns, cleaning the sauce from her face and fingers with her napkin. “What? Why?”

The host nods at me. “He fed some of his meatballs to the dog. Automatic disqualification.”

“I don’t mind if my dog is on his team,” Cari assures him, shooting me a mushy grin that tells me I’m the real winner. Apparently, the best way to her heart is still through Radar.

“Our restaurant, our rules,” the host says cheerfully, producing another gold crown and plopping it on her head, where its plastic gleam can’t compete with the shine of her sleek blonde bob. “Meatball Matchup goes to the Carnivore Queen!”

“Carnivore Queen! Carnivore Queen!” the other servers chime in, clapping. Cari beams at them, adjusting her crown and preening until the hubbub dies down.

“All right, lovebirds. I’ll be back with your final celebration course,” the host chirps, dashing off again.

“It’s not really fair that I won,” Cari says, sounding a little self-conscious as we both take off our crowns and place them on the table. She slips Radar another one of the leftover meatballs, which he gobbles down so quickly that he could be part dragon.

“You were going to win anyway. You were way ahead.”

“Only because you let me.”

“Only because I couldn’t stop watching you put away those meatballs. You’re…”

“A piggy piggy?” She giggle-snorts. “Seriously, though, don’t call me that.”

“A wonder. I’ve always thought so.”

A smile rounds her cheeks, but there’s puzzlement in her clear blue eyes. “Why did you mean before, when you said you shouldn’t have listened to other people?”

I wince. “I listened to friends who said I should leave you alone after you didn’t respond to my messages.” It sounds dumb when I say it out loud, especially now that it’s so clear that Cari’s my alokoi. My feral form, which has been sated into sleep by the sausage and meatballs, wakes up enough to agree. He told me all along that she was special.

Surprise flits through her expression. “You messaged me?”

I nod. “Your @SeeRadarRun account. I…uh…am a fan.” A huge fan. The biggest fan. The kind who keeps spreadsheets. She doesn’t need to know that, though. “My username is Zedible. Like ‘edible’ with a Z. I thought I was being clever when I picked it, but I didn’t realize the uh…connotations. Let’s just say it’s led to a lot of unsolicited messages.”

Cari giggles as she pulls out her phone. She scrolls through it, her forehead scrunched in concentration. “Oh my god. Here you are.” She flashes the screen toward me, where I see my name and the unread message, sent seven years ago.

I remember what it says because I agonized over every word.

Zedible

I ran across your account and recognized Radar.

(Lies. I’d been following for years already.)

Zedible

You probably don’t remember me from high school, but I just wanted to say hi!

(Another lie. Of course she’d remember the dragon who destroyed her house on the first date.)

Zedible

If you ever find yourself in Apple Grove, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee and catch up.

(Lie upon lie. How about, “I’d love to lick you from head to toe and make you mine forever”? That’d be a whole lot more accurate.)

“I wish I’d seen this,” she says sadly, turning it back to read through the message. “I would have said yes in a heartbeat. This was during a really bad time, so I wasn’t reading messages.” She swallows hard and clicks off the phone, like she’s banishing the source of the bad memories.

“What happened?” I’m gripping the edge of the table so hard, my claws make grooves in the wooden surface.

“I had a pretty persistent cyberstalker. He harassed me every way he could. Emails, voicemails, messages, letters, gifts. Every time I blocked him, he would just make new accounts. It got so bad that I almost shut down my socials. I was this close, but I really needed the income to pay for vet school.

“Instead I stopped reading direct messages and had all of my brand deals go through an agent. It took some of the fear away to be less accessible to him. He still left me weird porch presents, but I didn’t have to listen to the creepy voice memos he sent or read his sick fantasies.”

My feral form isn’t sleeping anymore. He’s wide-awake and ready to defend her. “Who was it? Did they catch him?”

She shakes her head. “He was never caught. I got a doorbell camera until I graduated, and then I changed my name and moved. So far, it’s worked. I haven’t heard from him since then.”

“That’s good,” I grit out, making a mental note to get my hands on any evidence I can so I can hunt him down and make them pay for terrifying her. “I’m glad you don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

Especially because if he tries anything, I’m going to be there.

Cari’s smile turns sad. “I’m not as scared as I used to be, but I can’t say I’m ever fully relaxed. I always feel like someone’s watching me. Following me. I’m probably just being paranoid, though. I’ve had those feelings forever, even back when you and I were friends.”

Back when I was the one following her, watching her while she slept. She could feel me there.

At first, I’m warmed by the thought that she was thinking of me while I was thinking of her, but then a chill settles over me. If she learns I’ve been stalking her all these years, she’s going to think I was this guy.

Dammit. I can’t tell her that we’re mates tonight because she knows about the biological imperatives for dragons. The focus on our mates. The need to track and watch. I thought she could handle anything, but this is the one thing that will freak her out.

I’m barely back in her life. The news that I have an ongoing obsession with the smell of cum in her hair and have been recording every detail about her since the day we met is not going to go over well. But I’m not going to lie to her, either.

“You’re not being paranoid. You’re being smart,” I assure her. “If you think someone’s watching you, trust your intuition.”