Mistakenly Mated to a Dragon (Grimm, Malphas & Associates #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Something was wrong with the sea.

She shivered. Kept working.

It’s nothing. You’re imagining things.

The fourth batch of croissants sat on the counter, mocking her. Overworked. Dense. The kind that would break a tooth and destroy a reputation. She scraped the dough into the compost and started over.

Flour. Butter. Salt. Her hands trembled as she measured.

Three days. She had three days until the Supernatural Legal Summit, the biggest catering contract The Salty Siren had ever landed.

She was going to fail spectacularly.

Stop it. You’re catastrophizing.

But the smell of the sea was stronger now, curling through the kitchen like fingers. Marina’s skin prickled. The locket at her throat, her grandmother’s locket, felt warm against her collarbone.

That hadn’t happened in two years.

She pressed her palm against it, felt the silver pulse with something that might have been her imagination. Inside was a photograph of Nana on one side and a twist of dried seaweed on the other. The seaweed was supposed to be dormant. Dead. Just a memento.

It didn’t feel dead right now.

The sea is calling, something whispered. Something is coming.

“It can take a number,” Marina told the empty kitchen, and turned back to her croissants. She was very good at ignoring things. Ominous portents, apparently, included.

The back door banged open.

She yelped. Flour went everywhere.

“Morning, sunshine!” Bea Thornwood swept in like a hurricane in yoga pants, purple hair piled in a messy bun, carrying two cups of something that steamed with suspicious intensity. “I brought anxiety juice.”

“It’s four in the morning.”

“It’s also three days before your thing, and your aura is doing something deeply concerning.” Bea set one cup on the counter. “Drink. It’s chamomile and something I’m not legally allowed to name.”

Marina eyed it. “Is it going to make me see colors?”

“Only the ones that are already there.”

Bea hopped onto the counter, ignoring Marina’s pointed look at the flour she was sitting in. Her nose wrinkled. “Do you smell that? It’s like the ocean is… louder than usual.”

Marina’s hand went to her locket again. “You can smell it too?”

“I’m a witch, babe. I can smell a lot of things.” Bea’s expression sharpened. “Why? What do you sense?”

“Nothing. I don’t—” Marina shook her head. “I don’t sense things. I bake things. That’s my whole skill set.”

“You’re a selkie. You absolutely sense things.”

“I’m a selkie who hasn’t swum in two years. I’m basically a very anxious human who happens to own a sealskin that’s currently gathering dust in my closet.”

Bea looked like she wanted to argue. Instead, she stole a cooling scone. “Fine. How’s the spiral?”

“I’m not spiraling.”

“You’re stress-baking at four AM. You only do that when you’re spiraling, avoiding something, or both.” Her eyes narrowed. “Oh god. It’s both, isn’t it?”

Marina focused on the new batch of dough. Fold. Turn. Fold. The motions should have been soothing. They weren’t.

“I just want everything to be perfect. This is my chance to prove that The Salty Siren can handle big events. That I can handle big events.” She pressed too hard. Eased up. “What if I mess it up? What if they hate everything? What if I—”

“Marina.” Bea set down her scone. “What’s really going on?”

The question found the thing she’d been avoiding.

“I don’t know,” Marina admitted. “I woke up at two and couldn’t get back to sleep. I keep feeling like something’s about to happen. Something big. And I can’t tell if it’s the summit or…” She gestured vaguely at the window, at the salt-thick air. “Something else.”

Bea was quiet. That was alarming. Bea was never quiet.

“My grandmother used to say that selkies can feel the tides of fate,” Bea said. “That when something major is coming, the sea tells them first.”

“Your grandmother also said that mercury retrograde was caused by angry pixies.”

“And she was right about that.” Bea set down her scone. “Look, I’m not saying you’re having a premonition. I’m just saying… maybe pay attention? Your instincts might be trying to tell you something.”

Marina’s instincts were telling her to crawl back into bed and pretend the summit didn’t exist. But she didn’t say that.

“I need to practice my welcome speech,” she said instead. “For when the organizers come in. Something professional. Confident.”

Bea’s grin returned, wicked and familiar. “Oh, please. Let me hear it.”

Marina cleared her throat. Wiped her hands on her apron. Stood straighter.

“Welcome to The Salty Siren. I’m Marina Pearl, the owner and head baker. We’re so pleased to be catering this year’s summit, and I hope you’ll enjoy…”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“You sound like a hostage reading a ransom note.”

Marina slumped. “I know.”

“Try again. This time, pretend you’re not terrified of your own shadow.”

“I’m not terrified of my shadow,” she said. “I’m terrified of rooms full of important people who are definitely going to judge my pastries and find them wanting.”

“That’s weirdly specific.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

Bea laughed, really laughed, and Marina felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease.

“You’re going to be fine,” Bea said. “And if anyone gives you trouble, I’ll hex their coffee.”

“Please don’t hex the lawyers.”

“Fine. I’ll only hex them a little.” Bea drained her mystery tea and headed for the door. “I’ve got a moonstone shipment coming at six. But call me if you need backup. Or a calming hex. Or both.”

The door swung shut.

Silence. Except for the sea.

Marina listened. The salt smell had faded slightly, but her locket was still warm. Waiting.

She shook her head and went back to her croissants.

The morning rush hit like a wave, and Marina let it carry her.

Mrs. Whitmore came in for her usual blueberry muffin and stayed forty-five minutes discussing her cat’s digestive issues in alarming detail.

The Blackwood twins ordered six scones and ate them at the window table while doing homework they should have finished last night.

A vampire tourist asked if she had anything without garlic and seemed genuinely disappointed when Marina said yes.

“Everything has garlic?” he asked, peering mournfully at the display case.

“Everything except the lemon bars.”

He bought four and left a generous tip, though he kept glancing at the harbor through the window like it made him nervous.

Old Mr. Callahan, the selkie who ran the bait shop, stopped by for sourdough and told Marina her grandmother would be proud.

She smiled. Thanked him. Definitely didn’t cry in the walk-in freezer for ten minutes afterward.

She’d just gotten better at working around it.

Between customers, she prepped. Rolling dough until her shoulders burned.

Tempering chocolate for a truffle filling she’d added to the menu in a moment of madness.

Making practice batches of honey cakes that still didn’t taste quite right: close to her grandmother’s recipe, but missing the secret Nana had never written down.

Through it all, the strange electricity hummed beneath her skin. And twice, she caught herself standing at the window, staring at the harbor, the sea calling to a part of her she’d tried very hard to forget.

At ten, the bell chimed and Estelle Nakamura swept in.

The mayor of Sweetwater Cove was somewhere north of two hundred years old, though she looked forty and dressed like she was perpetually late for a gallery opening.

Today: a silk blouse the color of autumn leaves, earrings that caught the light like they remembered being part of something larger. Her shadow had too many tails.

Kitsune. Fox spirit. The kind of creature who knew things before they happened.

Marina’s locket pulsed with heat.

“The usual, please.” Estelle settled onto a counter stool. “And gossip. I’m desperately low.”

Marina started on the chai latte. Oat milk. Extra cinnamon. A whisper of honey. “I don’t have any gossip.”

“That’s because you never leave this bakery.” Estelle accepted the drink with an elegant nod. “But I have gossip. Interesting gossip. The kind that might concern you.”

Marina’s hands stilled on the espresso machine. “Concern me how?”

“The Draven heir is coming to the summit.”

The name meant nothing. But Marina’s locket flared hot, and she pressed her palm against it before she could stop herself.

Estelle’s eyes tracked the movement. Her shadow-tails stopped swaying.

“Is that… significant?” Marina managed, forcing her hand back to the counter.

“Dragons, dear. One of the old families.” Estelle’s eyes glittered: knowing, ancient, amused. “They’ve been cursed for generations. Something about a broken vow and a particularly vindictive witch. The heir has been trying to break it for years. Very dramatic. Very tortured. Very single.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“Don’t you?” Estelle sipped her chai. “I’ve been alive for a very long time, Marina Pearl. I’ve learned to recognize when the threads of fate are tangling together.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Marina said.

“That’s the lovely thing about fate. It doesn’t require your belief.” Estelle set down her cup. “When was the last time you swam?”

Marina stiffened. “That’s—I don’t—”

“Two years, isn’t it? Since your grandmother passed. A selkie who doesn’t swim is a selkie who isn’t listening to herself.” Estelle held Marina’s gaze. “And I think you’re going to need to listen very carefully in the coming days.”

Marina looked away. “I’m very busy with the summit.”

“Of course you are.” Estelle smiled, showing just a hint of fox-sharp teeth. “But the sea wasn’t made for staying still, dear. Neither were you. And neither is what’s coming.”

She left a tip worth triple the drink and swept out.

The bell chimed.

Marina stood alone in her bakery, her grandmother’s locket warm against her skin.

By closing time, Marina’s nerves were raw.

The strange electricity had built all day: a pressure behind her eyes, a restlessness in her bones. Twice she’d caught herself walking toward the door to the beach before remembering she had customers. Three times she’d touched her locket and felt it pulse in response.

She locked up. Flipped the sign. Leaned against the counter in the evening quiet.

Her gaze found the shelf behind the register.

Her grandmother’s recipe book. Leather-bound. Gathering dust.

She hadn’t opened it in two years. Couldn’t. The book was handwritten, filled with Nana’s cramped cursive and little drawings in the margins: a smiling sun next to the honey cake recipe, a curling wave beside the sea salt caramels. Every time Marina looked at it, grief pressed against her chest.

But the honey cakes weren’t right. And Estelle’s words kept circling: A selkie who doesn’t swim is a selkie who isn’t listening to herself.

She could leave it. She had a dozen recipes that would carry the summit fine; nobody in the world was waiting on this one but her. The sensible thing was to kill the lights, climb the stairs, and let the book gather one more night of dust on top of the seven hundred others.

Marina crossed to the shelf instead.

Her hand rose. For two years, she’d stopped an inch short. For two years, she’d told herself tomorrow and meant never.

Not tonight. Tonight she was done flinching at a book her grandmother had loved.

Her fingers closed around the spine.

The leather was warm. Alive. It hummed against her palm like it had been waiting for her.

She pulled the book from the shelf.

The weight of it surprised her. Heavier than she remembered. Or maybe that was just two years of avoidance finally catching up.

She carried it to the counter, set it down gently, and opened the cover.

The pages smelled like her grandmother: lavender and sea salt and the particular warmth of someone who’d spent her life making beautiful things. Her eyes stung. For a moment she was twelve again, standing on a stool at this same counter, watching Nana’s hands shape dough with decades of practice.

I miss you. I miss you so much.

I should have opened this sooner. I should have…

The pages riffled. On their own. Moving under her fingers with purpose, searching, until they stopped at a page near the back.

A page she’d never seen before.

The handwriting wasn’t her grandmother’s. It was older. More formal. The kind of script that predated the country, maybe the century.

For when the dragon comes, it read. And he will come. The sea has seen it.

Marina read it twice.

Below the words was a recipe. Not for food but for something else entirely. Ingredients she didn’t recognize. Instructions that read more like ritual than cooking. And in the margin, in Nana’s familiar scrawl, a note:

Marina, my darling: when the dragon comes, remember what matters. When the time comes, trust yourself. The sea chose you for a reason. And so did I.

She stared at the words. Read them again. A third time.

Her grandmother had known. Somehow, impossibly, Nana had known something was coming. Had known it would involve Marina. Had left her instructions and never said a word.

Why didn’t you tell me?

The locket flared hot enough to burn.

The lights flickered once. Twice. Went dark for a heartbeat before stuttering back to life.

And somewhere in the distance, far away but getting closer, Marina heard thunder. Except the sky through the window was clear, stars just beginning to emerge, and the sound was rhythmic in a way that thunder never was.

Not thunder.

Wingbeats.

Marina stood in the bakery holding the book, the locket burning against her throat, listening to something ancient and impossible flying toward Sweetwater Cove.

She closed the book. Pressed it against her chest.

Outside, the wingbeats grew louder.