Chapter 7
Lucas
Lucas stood just beyond the French doors with his hands clasped behind his back and watched the late afternoon sun spill gold across the gardens where Sia sat with the girls. He had dreamed of holding her, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the sensation out of his thoughts.
Stella’s laughter rang out first followed by Luna with her softer giggles. Celeste, who rarely surrendered to unguarded emotion, threw her head back and laughed so hard she nearly dropped the book she’d been pretending to read.
And at the center of it all was Sia, just as delighted as the girls. They were at ease with her, finally. Lucas’s chest tightened in a way that felt dangerously close to joy.
“You watch them as if they might vanish.”
The smooth voice came from behind him.
Lucas did not startle. He had learned long ago to control his reactions with stillness until he knew the situation. He turned slowly to find Aldrek standing just inside the office door with his dark greying hair braided down his back and his hands folded within the sleeves of his dark tunic.
The elder’s sharp eyes flicked past Lucas to the lawn beyond. “They laugh more now,” he observed.
Lucas nodded in agreement. “They do.”
Aldrek stepped closer to the glass of the doors until his reflection overlapped Lucas’s in the pane. “And you?”
Lucas clasped his hands behind his back again. “I am pleased.”
Aldrek’s mouth twitched faintly. “You were not raised to offer such thin answers to your elders.”
Lucas suppressed a sigh. There was no avoiding this. “You did not come to discuss my daughters’ laughter.”
“No.” Aldrek’s gaze remained outside. “I came to discuss your marriage.”
The word settled heavily between them.
Replacement marriage was more accurate. Nothing more than a political necessity wrapped in ceremony and tradition.
“How does your new queen fare?” Aldrek asked mildly.
“She is not my queen,” Lucas answered without thinking.
“She stands in that role, at least in title.”
Lucas’s jaw tightened. Outside, Sia sat up and brushed grass from her sleeves while Luna clung to her shoulders.
“She has done more for my daughters,” Lucas admitted quietly, “than I have managed since Dian’s passing.”
Aldrek nodded once. “And between the two of you?”
Lucas’s spine went rigid. “We are… cordial.”
“Cordial,” Aldrek repeated. “You share chambers?”
Lucas held the elder’s gaze evenly. “We share my master suite.”
Aldrek did not blink. “And an heir?”
There it was, the true purpose of the visit. Aldrek may be an old friend, but duty always came first. The dragon line did not survive on laughter and gratitude.
Lucas felt a heat coil low in his abdomen but it was anger, not desire. “It has been mere weeks.”
“Dragons do not require months to secure a future,” Aldrek replied calmly. “The council grows restless. Your daughters are cherished, but the line must be strengthened with a son.”
Lucas’s dragon stirred at that.
“Heirs will come,” Lucas said.
It was not a lie, it was simply not yet true.
Aldrek studied him closely now with a tilt of his head. “You have not consummated your marriage.”
It was not a question. Lucas forced himself not to react.
“We are married,” he said evenly. “What happens between us is not the council’s concern.”
Aldrek’s gaze sharpened. “It is precisely our concern if the bond is not being honored.”
Bond.
The word scraped across an old wound. There was no bond. There was only a ceremony. Vows spoken for stability. A woman who slept in the same bed with him with doubts and history between them.
But Lucas could not tell this elder, who would certainly report back to the rest of the Trust Council, that when he stood too near her or held her in the night, something restless and forbidden rose inside him, and he did not trust it.
“She requires time,” Lucas said carefully. “She was not raised within our… traditions.”
Aldrek’s eyes widened, subtle but piercing. “She was not told what you are.”
Lucas stilled. Of course Aldrek would circle there.
“The dragon line is no secret,” Lucas said.
“To the council. Or other dragons. But not usually with humans.”
Silence stretched.
Outside, Celeste had begun braiding Sia’s hair with grave determination. Stella supervised while Luna chased a butterfly.
Aldrek’s voice lowered. “Does she know what you are?”
Lucas’s throat felt unexpectedly dry.
“I have not spoken of it,” he admitted.
“And her sister?”
Dian. The name was not spoken, but it hovered like smoke between them.
Lucas’s gaze drifted back to the lawn, but he did not see it. He saw instead a moonlit terrace, silver light on dark hair, the moment his hand had closed around Dian’s and fire had roared to life in his veins.
Had she told Sia?
Had there been whispered confessions between sisters? Childhood secrets about scales and wings and the way Lucas’s eyes sometimes glowed when he was angered or worried?
Or had Dian protected the knowledge, as he had once asked her to?
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
Aldrek absorbed that. “If she doesn’t know, and she discovers it by accident, you risk more than embarrassment.”
Lucas’s dragon shifted sharply at that. It did not like the word risk attached to her.
“She is not fragile,” Lucas said.
“No,” Aldrek agreed. “But humans do not always respond well to the surprise of what we are.”
That landed because it was true.
Sia moved through the palace with curiosity, not instinct.She had no awareness of the secrets woven into the walls. She had never once looked at him with the wary recognition that dragons sometimes saw in one another.
If she didn’t know, and if she learned that her husband could fly, would she look at him with fear?
The thought hit harder than he expected.
Aldrek’s tone softened, not gentle, but less biting. “You cannot build a future on concealment, Lucas.”
Lucas gave a short, humorless chuckle. “You mistake this arrangement for a future.”
Aldrek’s gaze slid back to the lawn. “Do I?”
Sia had managed to tangle all three girls into her embrace now. She laughed helplessly as they collapsed onto her in a heap of limbs and skirts.
It did not look temporary or political. It looked… like family.
Lucas felt the dragon rise again, not in hunger this time, but in something far more dangerous.
Belonging.
“She is Dian’s sister,” Lucas said quietly. “That is the only reason she is here.”
Aldrek studied him in silence for a long moment. “And yet, you watch her as if she is already more.”
Heat crept up Lucas’s spine. “You presume too much.”
“Perhaps.” Aldrek’s lips curved faintly. “But I have lived long enough to recognize when a dragon is fighting himself.”
Lucas said nothing.
Aldrek straightened. “Produce an heir, Lucas. Secure the line. And tell your wife the truth before the truth tells itself.”
With that, he disappeared out the door.
Lucas remained looking out. Sia looked up suddenly as if she felt his gaze, and for a fleeting second their eyes met through the pane.
She smiled, not out of duty, but a warm, genuine smile.
His inner dragon stirred.
It unfurled lazily at first, a ripple of heat beneath his ribs, then a sharper coil of instinct as Sia laughed again and brushed a curl from Celeste’s face. The dragon was attuned to warmth, to gentleness, to strength hidden beneath softness. It recognized something in her.
Protect.
The word rumbled through him.
Claim.
Lucas stiffened. No.
He forced the beast back into the quiet cavern of his mind. Sia was not his.
She may not even know what he was. If she discovered he was a dragon shifter before he was certain of her place here or before he understood his own heart, he risked losing her entirely.
His dragon hissed its displeasure at that.
Lucas exhaled slowly.
Dragons mated once. For life. The bond was sacred and irrevocable, forged in time and soul. He had found that bond with Dian, felt it seal the moment their hands touched.
And he had buried her with that same bond.
He could still feel the loss. A phantom pain where something eternal had once burned bright. There would not be another. There couldn’t be.
Sia made Stella laugh again, and Lucas’s gaze softened despite himself.
He stiffened his stance and justified his turmoil. Whatever stirred in him now was simply gratitude and respect. A father’s relief that someone could give his daughters what they had lost. Nothing more.
His dragon shifted restlessly, unconvinced.
Lucas turned away from the French doors before the heat beneath his skin betrayed him. He had a council briefing to attend and letters to review.
He exhaled slowly and forced the heat back down. There would be no choosing or second bond.
Dragons loved once, and his flame had already burned out.