15. Leif
Leif
“I’ll be damned,” the man says, and then we all just stand here.
Like idiots.
I have to say I’ve never seen Erik at a loss for words quite like this before. And Gunnar…
Gunnar is enjoying this far too much. I want to wipe the grin off his face. Someone should. But now isn’t the time, because Elara is in the middle of the room, looking more lost than I’ve ever seen her.
She’s waiting on answers that no one has given her.
She doesn’t deserve that.
I have tried to start this conversation so many times I’ve lost count. She knows we keep pushing off the explanation. The last attempt got interrupted by a man coming through the front door and nearly getting himself killed for it.
Not this time.
I cross the kitchen before anyone can take it from her again.
She’s still standing there between Vick and Erik, her emotions so clear on her face that even I can read them. Up close she looks exactly like what she is — a woman who has been brave past her limit for days.
I take her hands. They’re cold. She flinches and tugs back — I know it’s instinct but it doesn’t change anything. I don’t let go and let her pull my hands with hers.
“Trust me,” I whisper, trying to keep her calm. Her eyes come up to mine. I tighten my grip, just enough to be an answer. “Please.”
Brock makes a sound I’m choosing to ignore. I don’t say please often. She doesn’t know that but every other man in this room does.
She searches my face for the trick and doesn’t find one. “Okay,” she says so quiet I almost miss it.
I pull her with me toward the table, back to where she was sitting before Vick made his entrance. Bring my hands to her shoulders and gently push until she’s sitting again. But I’m not doing this looking down at her. I don’t hesitate, getting on my knees before her.
“Muffin, what are you…”
I shake my head, my mouth tips up, but I can’t focus on anything but her.
I could drown in her green eyes and die happy.
This conversation is going to change everything and I can only hope that she’ll still look at me the way she’s looking at me now when it’s over.
“Elara… What Erik was trying to say is that here mates don’t exist.” I stop just letting that sink in for a second. “They haven’t for generations.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A mate, in our realm, requires a female dragon.”
“Okay… And?”
She’s not going to let me off easy, but she’s not making arguments yet. I believe that counts for something.
“They don’t exist, Elara. Female dragons don’t exist.”
She blinks and I can see her trying to understand. Behind me, someone coughs. Pointedly.
“They didn’t exist,” I hold her eyes. “Until you.”
She makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a protest and it might be my new favorite thing. I hold back my smile as the red comes up her neck and takes over her whole face.
“You can’t be serious.”
She looks around the room at every man in here. I don’t miss the way they move past Vick quicker than the others. She looks back at Gunnar a second time.
“Even…”
I nod as her eyes come back to me.
“No.” She’s shaking her head and I know it’s about to start.
“That’s not even possible. Mates aren’t real just like you said. They can’t be. They’re part of my books where men like Xaviar run shirtless through…” She stops and turns another shade of red.
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is I can’t be your mate because mates aren’t real. And because mates aren’t real there’s no way I can be this female… whatever you seem to think I am!”
A laugh slips out of me, warm and unplanned. “Yes, Elara. You are.”
She sits there, eyes wide, hands still in mine, trying to figure out how this is real.
And then I see it coming. Something moves behind her face — the next question forming — and I know exactly which one it is, because it’s the one I would ask, and there is nothing I can do about it but hold on.
She shoots up out of the chair.
“But wait. A mate means— a— but dragon. Dragons. Wait. Are you— you said—”
I am trying. My face is fighting me and I am winning, barely, because she needs one of us steady. Rayner is already gone, head back, shoulders shaking, absolutely gone. And Gunnar has never once met a moment he couldn’t make worse.
“Oh, did your scaly self finally catch up?”
“Gunnar.” It comes out flat. “Now is not the goddamn time.”
I get up and go to her again.
This time she lets me take her hands. I’ll be living on that for a while.
“It’s okay, Elara.” Her hands are warmer than they were. “More than okay.”
And because she’s standing in the middle of a strange kitchen in a strange realm with her whole understanding of the world in pieces on the floor, and she’s still on her feet, still asking questions, still braver than any soldier I have ever commanded, I give her the truest thing I have.
“You are the most beautiful female I have ever seen. And I am proud to be your mate.”
“No.”
She jerks her hands out of mine.
“Nope.”
And she’s gone — across the kitchen, out the door, fast — before I’ve finished standing up.
The room is quiet for exactly one second.
“Well,” Brock says. “That went well.”
“Yeah.” Vick, dry as paper. “Real smooth, guys.”
“Hey!” Gunnar rounds on him. “If it weren’t for you intruding, we would have gotten there.”
Rayner makes a noise.
“Okay. Okay. Eventually.”
I look at the door she went through.
She didn’t slam it.
Open, I can work with.