Chapter 17
Skylar
“Let’s go sit down and get comfortable,” Anthony suggested.
My heart was full of love but also still pretty damn shocked.
Everything felt surreal. I should’ve been more upset or shell-shocked, but I kept my composure.
It was easier to keep it than I would’ve expected.
Even with the fear of the unknown, I knew one thing for certain and that was that Anthony had always been my person.
With that in mind, my stress left. He was my person, and I was even more sure of it now with the whole fated mate situation.
We had barely settled in the living room with our wine glasses replenished when his doorbell rang. He sat straight up. “Damn. I’m so distracted. I normally hear people drive up.”
He set his glass on the coffee table and jogged to the door. When he opened it, his father’s gaze pinned on me. They’d known I was in here. Well, they probably saw my car.
“What are you guys doing here?” Anthony asked.
“Darling, we felt,” his mother raised her eyebrows warningly, “as if you needed some assistance.”
He chuckled. “I was afraid of that. Come in. She knows.”
His mother’s jaw dropped. “She does?” She turned to her husband. “See, Mitch? I told you she wouldn’t run screaming.” She walked into the room carrying what looked suspiciously like a casserole wrapped in a towel. “I brought dinner.”
She hurried through the house. “Don’t bother!” She waved Anthony off as he tried to follow her. “I’ve got it. I’ll just put it in the oven on warm.”
“That was nice of you,” I said, feeling more timid than I’d felt since I was sixteen. But then, these were the people who made Anthony leave.
Mitch glared at me and plopped down in one of Anthony’s recliners. His living room was quite big, which was nice. Mine was cozier, but it was right on the beach.
Karah returned from the kitchen with a beer in one hand and another glass of wine in the other. “Hope you don’t mind if we join you,” she said in a chirpy voice.
Mitch rolled his eyes, but she shoved the beer in his hands. “Drink, Mitch,” she said darkly.
It was all I could do not to laugh as he gave her a sullen look and did as he was told. I assumed he’d been the alpha before Anthony. Big bad dragon alpha, doing exactly as his wife told him to do.
At least it set a good example for Anthony. Again, I had to force myself not to giggle.
Anthony put his arm around me in a gesture of solidarity. “She did amazingly,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for her to handle the news better. We won’t need Sammy after all.” So they knew he was telling me, and had the witch on standby. To what, wipe my memory? What the hell.
Karah beamed. “I’m so glad to hear it, dear.” She perched on the arm of the chair that Mitch had settled into. Leaning forward, she patted his knee. “Mitch and I tried for more children but were only blessed with Anthony. It will be wonderful to have a daughter.”
I tried not to look freaked out. My mom took off on us when I was a kid.
It had taken me years to stop thinking I’d done something wrong.
When I was a young woman, Dad had finally told me the full truth, that Mom had suffered from several mental illnesses like bipolar disorder.
He’d been worried I would suffer the same fate, but so far so good.
It had made me worried about my future children as well, but my PCOS had solved that worry.
“I can’t imagine the shock of learning about the magical world this late in life.” Karah shook her head, still beaming.
Mitch leaned forward and something sort of washed over me. I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he trying to use magic on me? “You can’t tell anyone,” he said.
“Dad, stop it.” I felt the same heaviness in Anthony’s voice. They were using magic! “She knows she can’t blab. And don’t use your leftover alpha powers on my mate.”
Mitch sat back and looked extraordinarily grumpy.
“As the previous alpha, it’s my job to help keep the clan safe.
As far as we know, she’s the first human with permission to have this secret.
” He fixed me with his glare again, but this time his words didn’t carry the same weight.
“You understand there are massive consequences to revealing our secret?”
“Don't threaten my mate,” Anthony said in a low, angry voice. Tension filled the air.
“Please don’t argue,” I said. “I do understand, but not the kind of consequences you’re talking about.
I imagine if I told, and you couldn’t get your witch to fix it, you’d be hunted down.
Studied. Researched. It would be traumatic, honestly.
The drug companies alone would lock you up and study you until they found a way to make money off you. ”
“Exactly,” Mitch said and for the first time, he didn’t look completely angry. Just mostly.
“I’d never put Anthony in danger. Or the rest of you.
I couldn’t do that.” Even though I had to wonder to myself if it was right to keep the secret of their magic when they might have the power to cure so many diseases locked in their DNA.
But that wasn’t my call to make. What I’d said was true.
If this got out, the world would destroy them in the name of progress. “It’s not my secret to tell.”
Karah looked convinced, but Mitch still looked skeptical. I didn’t care, though. I just had to prove it to them.
I slept fitfully, at least until Anthony came to bed and wrapped his arms around me. When I got up the next morning, though, he was downstairs. At least it gave me some time to take a shower and think about things.
I let the hot water run down my back and ran the events of my life through my head. I assessed my emotions and anxiety.
Now that I’d slept on it, I wasn’t so freaked out.
Interesting. I mean, of course I was, a little.
He was a dragon, after all. But even with the fear of the unknown, this wasn’t something I was willing to walk away from.
As I lathered up my hair, I thought about how much it had hurt for him to leave.
Could I survive that if he did it again?
He seemed pretty grounded here now. I didn’t know clan or dragon politics very much, but it seemed like it wouldn’t be the best idea for an alpha to leave his clan. Unless the whole lot of them packed up and took off, and that really didn’t seem likely.
I grabbed Anthony’s showerhead and put it on pulse to rinse off. When I turned it toward my groin area, the water pulsed against my clit and I gasped. My water pressure sucked, and I never had the opportunity to get off that way.
But why do it here, now? Anthony was downstairs. We were alone in the middle of the woods, and I’d all but decided I wanted to take this thing all the way. I finished rinsing off and jumped out, then brushed my teeth and wrapped myself in one of his big, fluffy towels and my hair in another.
Instead of going back into his bedroom to dress, I walked downstairs. He wasn’t in the kitchen or living room, but the front door was cracked open just a hair.
Throwing the towel off of my hair, I shook it out around my shoulders and pinched my cheeks for a little color. Then, I opened the front door and leaned against the frame. “I’m done freaking out,” I said in my sultriest voice.
Bingo. Anthony’s pupils widened. I was about to get exactly what I wanted.