Chapter 6
I textedBrynn while Jasper showered. The bathroom door was wide open, and I could’ve looked over to see him naked if I tried, but I didn’t.
I obviously didn’t need any help in the horny department.
And considering the ache in my muscles and the sweat that had his t-shirt clinging to me in extremely unpleasant ways, I didn’t need any more temptation to run to his side.
Me
Hey, this is Miranda. I’m not sure if you heard, but Jasper and I are going through heat together
It sounded awkward, but I wasn’t sure how else to put it.
She answered immediately.
Brynn
Yes, Elodie called me a few hours ago! I’m so excited for you guys!
I bit my lip.
Her excitement was misplaced, since we wouldn’t be sealing the bond, but I couldn’t exactly say that.
Me
Thanks!
Jasper wants me to redecorate our living space and told me you’re the person to go to
Brynn
YES!
I’ll need pictures of Mate Mountain as payment, though. My brothers have never showed me anything
I sent the pictures over, making sure to include the picture of our landing pad. I decided to think of it as a big balcony, to avoid considering the fact that Jasper would want me to fly with him again at some point.
Brynn
Hot damn, that’s a view
Me
Right? I think I want to work out there. We need some really cozy chairs or something
Brynn
We can make this place gorgeous!
Send me pics of the style you like, and I’ll make it happen! I’d let you pick everything yourself, but it would be difficult from all the way in the mountains
Me
Hahaha yeah
Give me a few minutes
She sent a thumbs-up, and I scrolled through Pinterest for a bit until I had a dozen pictures for her. Jasper got out of the shower and started making food again while I did—I was pretty sure he was making more pancakes.
As much as I liked pancakes, I was really hoping he had another recipe or two somewhere. Otherwise, I was going to have to ask Vi for a few of her easiest recipes.
Which would mean talking to her.
And hearing her freak out about the mate situation.
Considering I was still freaking out myself, I wasn’t looking forward to that.
So I’d put it off a bit longer.
I sent the pictures over to Brynn.
Brynn
Ohhh I love these
We can totally do something like this
Give me an hour to talk to my favorite furniture store
I’ll call Jas and get some dragons out here to pick everything up ASAP afterward!
Me
Thank youuuu!
Brynn
Of course, this is what sisters are for!
She sent me a kiss-blowing emoji, and I bit my lip again.
We were only going to be in each other’s lives temporarily, because I wasn’t sealing the bond.
But Viola…
I finally opened the text she’d sent the night before.
Vi
I just got off the phone with Elodie
I’m freaking out
Call me when you can
I love you
Biting down harder on my lip, I closed my eyes for a long moment.
My natural instinct was to hide.
To wait until she called me and forced me to talk to her.
But Vi was the one person I couldn’t let myself do that with.
“I’m going to talk to my sister. I need some privacy,” I told Jasper, as I stood up. The bedroom was the best place for that.
“Just leave the door unlocked. It’s difficult to be away from you,” he said.
I agreed.
A minute later, I was arranging the wild blankets on the bed. The room smelled like sex in a way that made my sweat more annoying and the slickness between my thighs more pronounced.
Heat was going to drive me literally insane.
I rearranged the blankets half a dozen times, trying to make myself comfortable, before I finally gave up and forced myself to hit the button to video-call Viola.
She answered immediately.
There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was much messier than usual, hanging around her face instead of up in its usual ponytail.
“You’re okay?” she demanded.
“I’m fine.” I managed a small smile.
Emotions were welling in my throat and eyes, but I fought them as hard as I could.
She let out a long breath.
Then, she dragged her hand through her hair, pulling it out of her face.
“A temporary mate bond, huh?”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes for a second, still fighting the tears. I wasn’t even sure why I was trying not to cry. The emotions of everything had just hit me all at once, I guess. Being flown away from my home, trapped in a new place, stuck in heat…
And the severe ache in every muscle I had didn’t help either.
“How do you feel about it?” Her voice was cautious.
I’d joked around about wanting a supernatural mate before. Too many times. It had come back to bite me in the ass, but she probably thought I was thrilled.
“I don’t know. Jasper seems like a decent guy, but he lives permanently at Mate Mountain. He’s sort of the alpha here. If we… if the bond seals… I’ll be stuck living here with him too.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“I’m really hoping to avoid that,” I said, biting my lip again.
Harder.
“August and Elodie’s didn’t seal on its own. You can still make it through this without tying yourself to him.” Vi sounded unsteady.
She was never unsteady. Not visibly, at least.
She was the strong one of the two of us. Always had been.
“That’s really rare, though,” I said quietly. “Most of them end up sealed.”
“Not yours, Randa.”
I nodded.
I didn’t know if it was even possible, but I’d do my damndest to fight it.
As much as I needed Vi, she needed me more. We were opposites, and we disagreed on a hell of a lot, but we were as close as we could possibly be.
I would survive living away from her. I’d be sad, and I’d miss her, but I’d survive. I wasn’t sure she’d be okay without me, though. Vi always felt like she had to be strong for everyone around her—I was the only one she let her guard down with.
“Don’t screw him,” Vi warned. “There’s no going back from there. You saw how attached Elodie got.”
I bit my lip harder.
I mean, we hadn’t technically…
But basically, yeah, we had.
She groaned when she saw my face. “Already?”
“Being really horny is part of the temporary bond thing,” I protested weakly.
“Just don’t get attached,” Vi said, dragging her hair out of her face again. She was more frazzled than I’d seen her in a long, long time. Probably since she broke up with her long-term boyfriend.
“I won’t.”
She nodded, more to herself than to me. “Did you try convincing him to bring you back to Scale Ridge?”
“Yeah, it’s a no-go. He’s crazy possessive because of the bond thing.” Mentioning his frequent lack of sanity seemed unwise, so I stayed quiet about it.
“Can I come there to check in with you?”
I shook my head. “They don’t really let humans here.”
“Figures.” Vi sighed. “Can he cook, at least?”
“He makes pancakes.”
She gave me a dead-panned look. “Please tell me that’s not the only thing he can make.”
“If he can make anything else, I don’t know about it. We’ve had pancakes twice already, and he’s making them again, so I’m thinking the answer’s no.”
She groaned. “Text me his phone number. I’ll send him a few easy recipes. Heaven knows you should never be allowed into a kitchen. You’ll forget to start a timer and burn Mate Mountain to the ground.”
I laughed, and sent her his number.
The conversation shifted back to the mate bond, and whether I was going to keep up with my work. Vi had always been the realistic, get-stuff-done twin, so it was good to run through the important things with her. That would help me make sure I wasn’t forgetting something.
Before we hung up, she promised to text me a list of things to get on top of before I got lost to the sexiness of the bond. I thanked her, and we finally said goodbye.
As soon as the call ended, Jasper was striding into the room with another plate of pancakes. They smelled different, so I inhaled.
“They’re pumpkin,” he said, setting the plate down on my lap.
“Thanks.” I bit my lip.
A moment of tense, awkward silence stretched between us.
He finally started to leave the bedroom, and I blurted, “I gave Viola your number. I hope you don’t mind. It’ll make her feel better to be able to contact you. She’s worried about me.”
“That’s fine.” His voice was neutral.
I was still worried.
“She might send you recipes. Don’t be offended. She usually cooks for both of us, and she thinks I’ll burn the place down if I try to do it.”
“Will you burn it down?” He looked over his shoulder at me, his gaze almost curious.
“Probably not.”
He didn’t look convinced.
I didn’t feel convinced.
“I’ve only burnt a few things before,” I finally said, in my defense. “I get distracted and forget to start timers sometimes. I’ve never started a fire or anything.”
Though I had burned bacon so badly once that the entire building had filled with smoke. The fire department had been called.
That had been embarrassing.
Jasper’s lips curved upward in that hint of a smile he’d given me before.
Mine did too.
I showeredwhile Jasper cleaned August and Elodie’s scent off my work things. After I was dressed in another one of his t-shirts, he led me down the hallway until we found a community laundry room. It was empty, like everywhere else we’d gone in the mountain thus far.
Except that one hallway when we first arrived.
“Did you warn everyone to stay away from us or something?” I asked him, as he closed the laundry room’s door behind us. My phone was in my hand, and I had a t-shirt on, but I was otherwise unoccupied.
“No. August probably did, though. Or Josh, after I almost killed him last night. I’m sure word has spread that we’re in heat, and that I’m not in control of my instincts. Everyone will give us space until it’s over.”
That was probably a good thing, though it was weird that the mountain seemed so empty.
“How many people are in your thunder? And living here?”
“About a hundred unmated males living here. More than that in the thunder overall. I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head, but probably around two or three hundred. Our mated pairs live wherever they want, and only fly in when we ask them to. Which we rarely do.”
“So if we seal the bond, we really will be the only mated couple living here?”
“Yes. If any others wanted to stay, they’d be welcome to any of the larger living spaces.”
“Does anyone ever do that?”
“Not since the war ended over a hundred years ago. Before the war, more couples preferred to stay here, so they didn’t have to hide what they were from the humans. Now that supernaturals are safe in your society, we haven’t had any couples choose to live here.”
Huh.
“And humans aren’t allowed, right?”
“No.”
Not even a maybe.
“What if that human was my twin sister?” I prodded.
“Still no. The only way a female gets into Mate Mountain is if she’s attached to a male dragon or being locked in our prison. Brynn’s never even been here.”
I knew that.
I’d just figured it was worth asking anyway.
Jasper started rummaging through my bag, throwing my clothes in the washer and piling the other essentials on top of the dryer. There were a few familiar things—shoes, hair ties, my razor, my makeup—but there was also a bottle of lotion I didn’t recognize, and a set of shampoo and conditioner that weren’t mine.
I started to reach for them, but Jasper stepped between me and the bottles.
I heaved a sigh.
“The only scents I want on your skin are mine and yours,” he said.
“I’ve noticed.”
He finished going through the bag, then pushed the bag itself into the washer.
Great.
I looked back at the toiletries, and realized I was missing something pretty vital. Since Jasper wasn’t really saying much, I unlocked my phone again and texted Elodie instead of asking him about it.
Me
I’m going to need tampons in a few days
Pads too
Elodie
Oh
Your period won’t come
I blinked down at the phone.
Elodie
Women mated to dragons don’t have periods
Just heat
Heat’s the only time you can get pregnant, too
But I’d recommend staying on birth control until you’re ready for a tiny dragon, cause that shit’s intense
No way you’ll make it through without getting knocked up if you’re going with condoms
I blinked again.
Me
Maybe being mated to a dragon wouldn’t be so bad after all
Elodie
LOL
That’s the spirit
Me
The shampoo you sent isn’t mine
Elodie
The lotion isn’t either
I have a whole stash, just grabbed some for you
Dragons are really sensitive to smells. If you use your normal shampoo and conditioner, it’ll make him grumpy
Have you had the talk about the sense of smell yet?
Me
Not that I know of
Elodie
Have the talk
Me
Can’t you give it to me?
Elodie
No
I’m starting to think you’re using me to avoid having conversations with Jasper. He’s not still beastly, is he?
Me
Not at the moment
But he doesn’t want to talk to me
It’s super awkward
Elodie
Hahaha
Have the conversation
He has nothing against you, Jasper is just a quiet guy
I sent her a gif of a dirty look.
She sent one back of someone blowing a kiss.
With a sigh, I hit the button to turn off my phone. It was almost dead, anyway.
“What’s wrong?” Jasper asked.
“Nothing.”
He shot me a dirty look.
He clearly realized I was lying.
“Elodie doesn’t want to answer my questions about dragons anymore. That’s all,” I said.
His forehead wrinkled. “You don’t have to ask her. I’m right here.”
“That’s basically what she said.”
The wrinkle in his forehead deepened, but he grabbed my stuff and led me out of the room. I followed him back to his apartment, and neither of us said anything.
“What do you want to know?” he asked me, as he dumped all of my stuff into the kitchen sink. Everything was about to get washed with dish soap, apparently.
“What don’t I want to know would be a better question.”
He started washing a bottle of shampoo.
My hair was still in its bun from the day before, because I hadn’t seen any conditioner in his bathroom. Hairspray was preferable to dry, crunchy hair, so yesterday’s hairspray had stayed.
“What didn’t she want to tell you?”
“I don’t know. She asked if we’d had the talk about your sense of smell yet. I said no, and asked her to give it to me. She refused.”
He scrubbed the bottle of shampoo far more violently than he should’ve needed to.
I took a seat at the kitchen table.
When he finally set the bottle on a towel, he said in a low voice, “Dragons aren’t like humans.”
“I hadn’t realized,” I drawled.
He grimaced, not looking over at me. “There’s this thing in the roof of our mouths. It’s similar to a lizard’s.”
I frowned.
“It heightens our sense of smell, but only as it applies to our mate. It’s dormant until we meet her. You. As I get acquainted with your scent, I’ll be able to pick up on the slightest changes. Taste them, even.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Emotions. Desire. Pain. Interest.” He lifted a shoulder. “Everything.”
“Well, that’s intense.”
“Yeah. The beast in me is still trying to adjust to your scent. Anything that disturbs it feels wrong. You belong to me—so it’s my job to understand you. My instincts believe so, anyway.”
“Well, that sucks for you. I don’t even think I understand me sometimes.”
He chuckled. “I can think of worse problems to have.”
Like being trapped in a mountain with a stranger, maybe?
I couldn’t say that aloud, though.
And ultimately, he had just called me a problem.
“Does that ability just vanish when we make it through heat without sealing the bond?”
His amusement disappeared. “I don’t know. I can ask August.”
“That would be good to find out, so we can be prepared.”
He dipped his head, but didn’t say anything else.