11. Gunnar
Gunnar
“Gunnar.”
My name. Said like a sentence. The kind with a judge attached.
This was funnier when it was Brock.
Thirty seconds ago this was the best morning I’ve had in a decade. Brock stuttered. Brock. The man talked a peace treaty out of a king with a knife at his throat, and one small woman with bed hair broke him before breakfast. I had plans for that. Long plans.
Now everybody’s looking at me.
Brock has his coffee back. Serene. The bastard.
Fine. She wants an answer. What she’s getting is the room back.
“Careful, Beautiful.” I lean back, hook an arm over the empty chair, and give her the grin — the good one, the one that’s started three fights and ended two. “Keep looking at me like that and the others are going to get jealous.”
Nothing.
No blush. No eye roll. Not even the mouth-twitch she does when she’s fighting one.
Huh.
“Why was it funny?”
“You know what’s funny? Brock’s face. Look at him. Man thinks he’s out of the—”
“Gunnar.”
She didn’t even turn her head.
So this is what Brock felt like.
Hate it.
The grin’s not working. The grin always works. I’d like it on the record that the grin has worked on royalty.
“You had a whole word ready,” she says. Quiet. Level. That’s the unfair part — she just keeps coming. “Blanket fort. You didn’t even have to think about it. You’ve been calling it that for days, haven’t you. You had a harmless little name all picked out.”
I look at Leif. Commander. Brother-in-arms. Centuries of me saving his life.
He looks back and does nothing.
When the Vestry comes for us all, I’m negotiating separately.
“It’s not a thing,” I say. “It’s a story. A fairy tale. It’s a thing mothers tell dragon kids so they’ll—”
The kitchen stops.
“…Dragon kids.”
“Kids. Generic kids.”
“You said dragon kids.”
“I said kids. In a strong accent.”
She closes her eyes. Wrestles something down behind them. Opens them.
Worse. They’re worse now.
“No,” she says. “You know what? No. One impossible thing at a time. That word goes on the pile, and we ARE coming back to the pile. Right now — nest. What is it? Not what it looks like. What it IS. You knew on sight. You’ve been laughing for days. Tell me what you know.”
Easy. Joke first. There’s always a joke.
“It’s like a group project,” I start, “except the grade is—”
And it dies.
In my mouth. Halfway out. In front of everyone.
That has never happened. Not once. I don’t care for this either.
And with the joke gone there’s nothing standing between me and the sentence, and it comes out on its own. Flat. My own voice.
“A nest is what a female builds for her mates.”
Nobody moves.
“When she’s chosen them.” Still coming. Apparently once it starts it doesn’t stop.
“Her blankets. Her scent. Her territory. Built for the ones that are hers. It’s the oldest word we have.
Every dragon alive knows it on sight, and none of us have ever seen one, because there hasn’t been a female to build one in—”
I stop.
Two sentences late. Today, that counts as discipline.
Elara is very still.
“Mates,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Plural.”
“Famously.”
“For — " Her hands do something in the air. “For WHAT?”
“Nesting.”
“For mating,” Rayner says. Warm. Sincere. A friend to no one.
“Thank you, Rayner.”
“You’re welcome.”
She’s gone from pink to a red I’d usually take credit for.
Then she stops looking at me. And that should be a relief but it isn’t. Not even a little bit. Because she’s looking at Erik.
“The face,” she says. “You made a FACE. When you saw the pull-out you went completely — I thought you were SICK. I offered you WATER. And then you slept in it. You — oh my god. You slept in it.”
“I did.” No apology anywhere in the man.
“I built you a — I did RESEARCH — there was a SYSTEM — " She’s out of the chair. Pacing. Both hands in her hair. “Okay. No. Here’s the thing about your story. For that word to even apply, I would have to be a — and I’m not.
I’m a WRITER. From CHICAGO. I have a Costco membership.
Human women make nice guest beds all the time. It’s called being raised right—”
Nobody agrees with her.
I know exactly how that feels. Freshly.
“AND — " Louder. One finger up. Wheeling around. “Even if — EVEN IF — your little fairy tale worked the way you say it does, it can’t mean — that. It can’t mean the thing you’re all carefully not saying. Because HE — "
The finger comes around to me.
Loaded.
“— sat in it. Flopped right in like it was a couch at a party. Made himself completely at home. And nothing happened. No lightning. No objection. NOTHING. So either your sacred mate nest doesn’t care who climbs in, or it’s a blanket fort with a mythology problem, and either way, everyone can stop looking at me like that. ”
She sits. Vindicated. Breathing hard. Reaches for her coffee. Case closed.
And everyone looks at me.
Brock, over his mug, with centuries of I-know-you in one eyebrow. Rayner, gently, which is worse. Leif, level. Even Erik turns from the stove.
Because they caught it. Same as I did.
She just used me as proof it means nothing.
And she’s got the story wrong.
She was in her room. Texting. She never saw the two times I couldn’t make myself sit in the thing. Never saw Erik pull my wrist, or the swearing. All she saw was the morning — me homesteading with a coffee, squaring her pillow wall. As far as she knows, I strolled in.
The wrong story is the safe story. The wrong story agrees with me.
Fine.
Great.
That’s what I’m for.
Four centuries of telling everyone fate’s a fairy tale, and the first person who ever agreed with me out loud just used me to do it.
Not investigating that. Some doors you don’t kick.
“Well.” I’m up. I need to not be in this chair. “Compelling. Airtight. Somebody get her a gavel.”
“Thank you.”
“Anytime, Beautiful.”
I take my mug to the pot and pour slow. The armor’s back on by the time I turn around — grin, walk, all of it. Her eyes track me the whole way. Narrow. Furious. Satisfied with herself.
I stop at her chair.
“For what it’s worth” — low, just for her, in a room where everyone hears everything — “you got the story wrong.”
Her chin comes up. Ready to argue. She’s always ready to argue.
“I never flopped into your nest, Beautiful. I couldn’t. I tried twice and couldn’t make myself sit down in the thing. Erik had to drag me in by the wrist.”
“He swore,” Erik says, from the stove. “Then he stayed.”
“Thank you, Erik.”
Her mouth is open. Nothing is coming out of it.
“So here’s your correction. A female’s nest doesn’t let just anyone in. Anything that doesn’t belong, her instincts throw out before it lands — and mine wouldn’t even let me walk into it on my own.”
I lean down. Close enough to hear her breath change. Close enough that she knows I heard it.
“And once I was in, nothing in you minded me there.”
And I walk, coffee in hand, and I don’t look back. The kitchen behind me is quiet enough to hear a case fall apart.
Good exit line. Best of the morning. Worth it for her face alone.
It meant nothing.
It means nothing.
Because if her nest let me in, then fate finally got its—
No.
Nope.
Not today.
The front door is too loud as it swings shut behind me.
I need air.
I need to be away from… her.
Trees, grass, somewhere I can breathe in all the way.
I make it off the steps before I hear something. I look up.
“Ah, Gunnar. Excellent.”
Fuck.