Page 50 of Guardian's Dilemma

“What did you find?”

“Blood.”

Glimmer shuddered and I actually reached out my hand to him before I realised what I was doing. I gave him a pat on the shoulder and withdrew my hand. Both of them were looking at me as though I was weird.

Yeah, that had been weird.

“You say you’re fated mates?”

“Hesays that.”

Glimmer growled, “Youaremy fated mate.”

I looked to Douglas. He knew so much, and I was really hoping he could help me with this. “It’s not possible, right? Dragons don’t get fated mates. They don’t have souls.”

Even as I said it, I realised I didn’t believe it any more. Douglas must have heard the uncertainty in my voice because he gave me a sympathetic smile.

“I did wonder about you, Kingsley.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were so sure that dragons were evil. Would never hear a word of nuance. That’s how they train you these days, I guess. They like to send outridirewho are absolutely certain that what they’re hunting is evil and has no soul.”

I didn’t like where that was going.

Sure enough, Douglas said, “Dragons do have souls. They can have fated mates. Some of them are perfectly harmless – well, perhaps notharmlessbut they’re content to live and let live – and, in the old days, the Council would never have disturbed them. Only dragons who got out of line were our concern.”

“But… dragonsareevil,” I said. I’d been told they were. Everyone said so. All the time. Over and over again.

Douglas shook his head.

“The Council changed. Instead of hunting dragons who rampaged through the towns or slaughtered innocents, they started going after dragons before they could do any harm. We stopped bringing dangerous creatures to justice and became hunters.”

Glimmer narrowed his eyes at Douglas. “How old are you, exactly?”

“Only a few hundred years old.”

Glimmer sniffed. I felt a flash of anger that he was smelling someone else and I had to squash that down quickly.

“You smell human.”

“I’m part-fey.”

“That would explain it. So you remember theridirefrom the old days?”

He nodded. “That’s why they couldn’t get rid of me. I earned my place here. All they managed to do was side-line me as an administrator here. I couldn’t stop them.”

My head was reeling and I turned to Glimmer. I did not question why I would do that.

“What can we do? We need to make sure nobody else is using dragon’s blood.”

Glimmer moved closer to me and I looked down into his clear blue eyes, and saw all the fierce protectiveness and anger and determination that lingered in them.

“We’ll stop them. We’ll find out where they’re getting their blood and we’ll burn it all.”

Douglas gave a delicate cough and I blinked, suddenly realising how close I was standing to Glimmer. His eyes were mesmerising.

I looked over to Douglas sheepishly, hoping he hadn’t spotted my momentary lapse. He had.

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