Page 36 of Guardian's Dilemma

No, my first priority was my mate. He was looking shaken and my dragon nudged at me to wrap my arms around him.

It just went to show what my dragon knew, though. I got the impression that, if I’d tried to comfort Kingsley, he’d blast me apart the way he’d always wanted to blast a dragon. Not in a good way, that was for sure.

I could feel the power thrumming through him and – against my better judgement – got a thrill of satisfaction that it wasmyblood that was making him so powerful. It was about the only thing we’d got right all day. Things had not gone to plan at all.

In fact, for the first time in maybe ever, I didn’thavea plan. I’d always known what needed to be done and I’d done it. Train to become stronger, tick. Find my power and harness it, tick. Live in the vault and guard the treasure, tick. Leave the territory secretly to find Seren and protect him, then sneak back in, tick.

That one had been harder to pull off than the others, but it had been necessary. What had I been meant to do? Just leave him out there, alone and hurt? My dragonhatedthe idea. Like, viscerally hated it.

The problem I had now was that my dragon hated the idea of leaving Kingsley, too.

Which was going to be a problem because I needed to get him out of our territory and somewhere safe, and also I needed to report in to Lord Somerville. I couldn’t be in two places at once.

My mate solved the problem for me by asking, “Is there somewhere we can go?”

I was so shocked that it took me a few seconds to answer him. “Yes, yes, there is. There’s a cottage. I was preparing it for- if someone needed it.”

Actually, I’d been preparing it for Seren, since he’d been disowned. The cottage was just outside of the territory, which meant Lord Somerville wouldn’t have had any reason to find him there, but he’d have been close enough for me to check up on. It hadn’t been a perfect solution and I was so incredibly grateful that I hadn’t needed it. Seren had become a Hoskins. He was protected.

“This way,” I said.

Kingsley followed me. We snuck out of the territory and walked. It seemed to take ages and I wasn’t used to being so slow but my legs wouldn’t go any faster and I felt weak. My stomach ached with the pain of open wounds and some pretty nasty torture spells that I didn’t want to mention were embedded in me and were still incredibly distracting, but would fade eventually. Kingsley kept pace with me and I tried to just focus on getting to safety. My dragon would heal me soon enough. I’d be fine within an hour. It was just going to be a long hour, that was all.

Kingsley was looking around, taking in our location. It only occurred to me then to ask, “How did you get here?”

“Car,” he said. My poor mate was overwhelmed. Well, it had been a big day for him, I guess. Met a dragon, found a dragon clan, found his mate, nearly got killed by his own coven…

I could see why he was struggling to process.

“Here it is.” I pointed at a cottage that was barely a cottage at all. It was a two-up, two-down but it was structurally sound and dry and stocked with a few essentials. Kingsley walked straight up to it without batting an eye and tried the door. It was locked, so he looked round at me, waiting for me to hand him the key.

I just stared at him with my mouth hanging open.

“What?” he asked.

“You just—”

His face changed, became a bit more closed-off. “I thought you said it was safe.”

“It is! That’s my point. Nobody can get to it through all the protections I’ve laid around the place. It’s almost as secure as the S- as my clan’s territory.”

Kingsley frowned. “I can see your magic everywhere.”

“Can you see what it does?”

He shrugged. “If it’s meant to keep people out, it’s doing a piss-poor job of it. Can we get in or not?”

His shoulders were starting to sag and I felt the power that I’d given him waning rapidly. Dragon’s blood wasn’t meant to be used to channel magic except when it was in a dragon. Anyone who used it like thoseridirehad, to boost their own magic, got a burst of power and then it fizzled out.

“Yeah. The key is under that flower pot.”

The pot didn’t even have any flowers in it, since that had not exactly been top of my to-do list.

“Seriously?”

It was my turn to shrug. “If someone can get through my protections, a lock isn’t going to keep them out.”

He studied me for a moment and then walked back to the end of the little garden path, where the protections were layered up the strongest. He just strolled right through them. I didn’t even feel it. That would explain why I hadn’t felt him breaking into our territory, whereas I’d felt the otherridire’s breach like a physical assault.

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