Page 11 of Guardian's Dilemma

I’d found it ironic that my power lay in keeping to the edges of the world, becoming invisible. My magic lay in the boundaries. I played in the edges of people’s vision, used natural defences in my favour. I could make a two-foot-high picket fence an impenetrable wall, if I wanted. I could slide along the walls of rooms and not be seen. I lived on the edges of the world, just like I had always lived on the edges of my clan.

And yet my mate kept his eyes on me the whole time. My power didn’t work on him.

That was going to be awkward.

Especially since I couldn’t exactly let him kill me. Apart from the fact that I didn’t want to die, my dragon rebelled against the idea that my mate would have to live with that, live alone for the rest of his life…

I mean, we couldn’t let him win because then he’d have free reign to wander round the territory and he might kill one of my clan.

Or they might kill him.

My dragon was getting agitated and I was getting more and more confused. I couldn’t tell what I wanted. I wanted my mate to live. But if he lived, he’d kill my family. I wanted my family to live. But if they found my mate, they’d kill him.

A twisting, dark feeling began to pull at my insides. My dragon didn’t like this. It didn’t like any of these thoughts.

I decided to act. All I needed was some time to think.

Since my mate was so obligingly not attacking me at the moment, I kept walking, circling round the edges of the room until I reached the place I wanted. I moved slowly, hoping not to spook my mate into throwing that spell at me, whatever it was, and I could guess it wasn’t good, since the last one had cut my arm open and stung like a bitch.

I raised my hand to the side and felt along the wall for what I wanted. The light switch.

And I clicked it.

The whole room plunged into darkness and I threw myself forward onto the floor. Sure enough, just as I’d thought he would, my mate flung that spell at the place I’d been standing. I heard the crack of it hitting the wall behind me and my dragon growled at the thought that our mate would have thrown that at us, wanted to harm us. He should want to protect us. That’s what mates did.

I crawled along the floor until I was sure I was far enough away that he’d have to get an extremely lucky shot in to find where I was in the pitch black. By that time, my eyes had begun to adjust. Dragon eyesight was better than a human’s and I could just make out the shapes around me and my mate’s form, standing in the centre of the room.

It was strange, to see him standing there. My instinct – always – was to retreat to the edges and watch and listen and strike quickly. Perhaps that was just the way I’d been raised, always on the edges, always aware that I was a Somerville because Lord Somerville graciously deemed me to be so, or perhaps my dragon had known before I did that our power lay in those corners.

My mate, though? He stood in the open. He was bold.

God, he was so bold and beautiful.

I wanted to smell him again.

I shook my head. I needed to concentrate.

He was turning slowly and I knew his eyes would be adjusting – slower than mine, but he’d get there in the end and then my advantage would be gone.

I struck quickly.

It took all of my skill to grab my mate without harming him, pin his hands against his sides. Normally, if someone broke into our territory and made in down in the vault, I’d have slit their throat. At the very least, I’d have bashed them over the head and waited to see whether they were unconscious or whether I’d bashed their skull in. But with my mate, I couldn’t risk it.

He struggled and somehow managed to free his hand enough to direct a spell at me. It wasn’t like the last one, thank goodness, but it made me jolt and loosen my grip. At least I’d wrestled his sword away from him.

Thinking quickly, I retreated again. His eyes would be getting used to the dark now, so I went back to the light switch and threw it again. The lights blazed out, the high chandelier sparking golden light in every direction. Normally, I loved to see that sight but, this time, I couldn’t look. I kept my eyes tightly closed and hoped my mate hadn’t recovered quickly enough to throw a spell at me as I counted one… two… three.

I flipped the switch again.

Behind my closed eyes, I could see the ambient light vanish and blackness replaced the bright sparkling lights.

I darted to the side, just in case he threw something at me again, but he didn’t. My dragon soared up, hopeful. Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to do it again. He might be feeling a bit of mate pull.

Opening my eyes, I saw the room clearly. My mate, though, was blinking out at the large room, vulnerable, having to adjust to the sudden darkness all over again.

This time, I had a better plan. Normally, I would have thought of it straight away but my brain was frazzled and I wasn’t thinking straight.

I went for the silver cuff that we kept for just this purpose. It fitted over a wrist, like a shackle, but it was silver and beautifully engraved. That was because sometimes it was used on otheruasals(and legend had it that once it had been used on a Somerville). We didn’t want an ugly shackle, did we?

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