There were a hundred other questions she should ask, and at least half of them were just Dragons?!
But Cara said, “If you knew for sure that I was yours, would you calm down? You said you wanted me to meet him, was that just—wishful thinking?”
Gus shook his head quickly. Once I’m sure of you, I’ll be sure—mated dragons are much calmer in general. Even without a mate to fight over, my brothers and I can’t be around each other too much these days. If we were all mated, we could all live in town and never fight.
Gus made another little shrugging motion, and his mouth drew back in a dragonish smile, teeth glinting. Not like that, anyway.
Cara couldn’t help smiling back. “What would it take to make you sure?”
Gus shook his head harder this time. It’s a big decision. There’s a lot to talk about.
“We’re talking, aren’t we?” Cara said. “I don’t have anything else planned for today.”
Gus heaved an enormous sigh and nodded.
Hold on, he said. I need to change for this.
Then he curled in on himself—not just curling up but shrinking, Cara realized, when the sight began to really bend her brain. She shut her eyes and shook her head, trying to make the impossible sight fall into place. When she looked again Gus was standing there, naked except for the glitter of gold around his neck and curling up his left wrist.
He walked up to her like he hardly noticed his own nakedness, and he sat down in the grass at the feet of the stone dragon. She sat down facing him, at the feet of the woman. She noticed, when she sat, that the statue woman was also adorned with something shiny. There was a thick gold bangle around one ankle, more than an inch wide and sized so that it obviously couldn’t come off over her foot. Cara couldn’t resist touching it gently.
“It’s the same one she wore when she was alive.”
Cara looked up sharply, but Gus’s gaze was fixed on her fingers where they touched the anklet.
“Your mother?” Cara asked, though she knew already.
Gus nodded without looking up. “My father took it from her ankle after she died—death freed her of her promises. He buried her with all her favorite jewels, all the treasures he loved most, but not that. That was only for her memory, once she was gone, so he placed it here.
“Once the funeral was over he transformed,” Gus looked up at the dragon above him—his father, surely as recognizable to him in that shape as his human mother. “He never changed back. I became mayor, though he still kept the peace among us boys for that last year. But he couldn’t live without her, and it wasn’t long before he followed her. That’s what it means, for a dragon to take a mate.”
Cara felt herself reeling at the idea of Gus pining away for her. She was horrified at the idea of his death, even if it was after her own. “Is that—do you not want…”
Gus looked up for the first time, meeting her eyes with a startled look. “No, I—a life without a mate—without you—would be half a life. But you should know what you’re agreeing to.”
Cara nodded slowly. “Is that the worst of it?”
Gus shrugged stiffly, looking away again. “It depends on what you want. I—I want children.”
“I know,” Cara said, and suddenly she couldn’t bear not touching Gus while having this conversation. She scooted close enough for her legs to cross his, and set her hand on his knee. He immediately set his hand over hers.
Cara said gently, “The nursery is awfully empty, isn’t it?”
Gus glanced over, meeting her eyes, and nodded before he looked away. “Is that—do you…”
“I want a family,” Cara said. “You know I was an only child, and I’m not close to my parents or the rest of my family. I want more than that. I want to make a family with someone—with you.”
Gus’s hand tightened on hers, and he said, “Dragons usually have only one or two children—my pack of brothers is kind of a fluke. And the children you have—they’ll be like me. Dragons.”
“Your mother wasn’t?” Cara asked, though it seemed obvious.
“Perfectly human,” Gus said, and he lifted her hand up and curled forward to press a kiss to her knuckles. “Like you.”
“Did you love her less because she wasn’t a dragon? Did she love any of you boys less?”
Gus shook his head hard. “That isn’t—I don’t think you wouldn’t love them, but their lives might not be like you imagined.”
“They might be like Ilie, you mean,” Cara said, and the real meaning of it struck her for the first time since she’d realized who the dragon was. “He’s a dragon all the time. He can’t change back?”
“I think he could—my father told me once that he could force Ilie to shift—but he doesn’t. The younger a shifter is when they first change, the stronger the dragon is in him. Ilie was four months old. I remember standing over his crib—I was two or three, so it was around the time I first shifted.
“We would play together like that, trying to fly in the nursery, tussling around. But he shifted more and more often as he grew up—being a dragon always just felt right to him. And when he was thirteen he changed for good.”
“And?” Cara asked, looking up again at the sculpture they sat under, woman and dragon together. “Did that break your mother’s heart?”
Gus smiled down at their joined hands. “Not that I ever saw. I think Ilie was her favorite. But it’s—it’s something you should consider.”
“Gus,” Cara said. “I’ve considered things carefully for my whole life. I was always cautious. I always did the smart thing, every time. I got good grades so I could go to a good school so I could get a good job, and that job was boring and a little soul-crushing, but it was safe, and steady, so I kept doing it. I stayed with it. I didn’t date sketchy guys, I didn’t drink at parties, I didn’t go out alone at night—I didn’t take the chance, okay? I never took the chance.”
Gus watched her in silence, his gray eyes intent.
“But being careful has meant being alone,” Cara went on. “Having no one to hold me in one place. No one to hold me in my life, nothing to keep me there at all. That’s why I ran away, that’s why I’ve been on this road trip, because there’s nothing for me anywhere.
“I wanted to take chances, I wanted to—swing boldly. And you weren’t there to catch me, exactly, but you were there to pick me up and dust me off after I fell on my ass, and I knew the second I saw you, the same as you knew as soon as you saw me. I didn’t know it was possible, but that’s what I want. I want to belong with you—belong to you, if that’s what you want. I want this. If it’s hard later—we’ll be together, won’t we? We’ll face it together.”
Gus leaned closer and closer as she spoke. He kissed her when she’d finished, pushing her gently down onto the grass as he straddled her. He went on kissing and kissing her, and she was really, really aware now that he was naked.
Also his mom was watching.
“I love you,” Gus whispered against her lips. “God, Cara—you’re so brave, and I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” she whispered back. “So how do I convince you that I mean it?”
Gus picked his head up, and his expression was decidedly rueful. He was actually blushing a little. “It’s…there’s a kind of ritual, for mating, when you’re ready to really mean it. It’s very…traditional.”
“Traditional?” Cara repeated, picturing a white dress, a church.
“Dragon shifter traditional,” Gus explained. He was definitely blushing a little now. “Every dragon shifter’s mate is his princess, in a certain way. Do you know how princesses usually meet dragons?”