Page 78 of Guardian's Dilemma

He sighed. “I just realised something, that’s all. It’s been bugging me that I made so many mistakes when I met you, and I couldn’t work out why. I just worked it out. It’s because I was fightingagainstyou, not fighting toprotectyou. Protecting you, fighting alongside you, that’s easy. I’m good at that.”

The smile that broke over my face threatened to consume me completely and I shimmied with excitement. “It sounds like you want to fight with me.”

“Well somebody’s got to protect you. If your clan won’t do it, I will.”

“Are- are you saying that you’ll be my clan?”

“All dragons need a clan,” he said, and brought his mouth down onto mine. He took control of my mouth in an instant, pushing his tongue between my lips and kissing me hard. It was possession and love and passion and relief, all at once. And I understood that. I understood the urge he had to claim me. To feel my body under his hands and reassure himself that I was alive and well.

I was basically prepared to strip my mate down out there in the field and do whatever he wanted, as long as it involved us kissing, but Kingsley broke away from me, panting.

“Get back to the cottage. I want to get that spell out of you. Then you’re mine.”

“I’ve always been yours,” I said, and shifted.

Kingsley rode me back to the cottage and it felt like coming home.

Chapter 27: Kingsley

Everything suddenly seemed so simple.

What before had seemed utterly unthinkable now seemed like fact.

Before, we’d been aridireand a dragon. We couldn’t be together. We couldn’t be mates. The very idea was crazy.

Now, though? We were mates.

I knew it, deep in my core. I could feel Glimmer beside me, radiating the soft orange energy he always gave out, the energy that had let me know he was in danger, the energy that had led me to him. Nobody else could feel it. Nobody else could see him when he concealed himself in it. Only me.

It wasn’t as though either of us had changed all that much. My coven might have thrown me out, but I was still aridire. I had the training and the magic and the same need to protect people from evil that I’d always had. Glimmer was still a dragon.

And I knew without him having to say it that he wouldn’t leave this place. That washisclan. He’d stay to keep them safe.

“Nearly done,” I murmured as I prised the shard of icy magic out of Glimmer’s shoulder. He sat still, breathing through the pain, and I felt a flash of admiration. He was so strong.

“There, all done.” I stood back to study him. “Any others?”

He shook his head.

“He hit me in the stomach as well but it caught the side. It didn’t lodge in me.”

I ran my hands over Glimmer’s stomach, checking for the feel of that cold magic.

“Isn’t it weird that a dragon has ice magic?”

Glimmer snorted. “That’s Lord Somerville for you. He’s… not the warmest.”

“He’s a dick,” I muttered darkly. I had not forgiven him for hurting Glimmer.

Unfortunately, Glimmer only became more pleased the angrier I got. It was as though he’d never had someone look after him the way I’d suddenly started to.

The thought made me want to kiss him, so I did.

He opened up to me just as I’d come to expect and I realised that, somewhere along the way, I’d learned Glimmer’s responses to me. I felt him lean into me, his strong hands at my waist, his tongue sliding against mine. I kissed him until I was breathless.

“You taste so good,” he said. I tried not to puff up with pride but probably failed. Glimmer always said stuff like that and it shouldn’t make a difference what I tasted like or what he thought, but it did. I wanted to be perfect for him.

As I ran my hands over his body, I felt the scrape of dried blood just below the wound. It was already healing, even as I watched, but the flakes of bright red blood against his pale, freckled skin made me angry.

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