Page 114 of His Greatest Treasure

“Congrats, Blaze. You’d better take care of him or vengeance and all that jazz. I suppose I don’t need to go into details. Glimmer’s probably already threatened you.”

I startled and looked round for Glimmer. He was prowling round the outside of the group, looking pleased. When he heard his name, he grinned.

Blaze gave a little giggle.

“He has, actually. He said he’d protect me with his life because I was family. But he said he’d invent new ways to torture me if ever I hurt Alfie.” He glanced over his shoulder at me, a smile on his face. “I’m not worried. I’m never going to hurt you, my darling.”

Inside me, my dragon grumbled. “I’m meant to protect you. I can’t believe my own family threatened you.”

Blaze went to retreat back to me, to snuggle into my embrace where he belonged, but he was stopped by Seren, who still had hold of his hand. A little shoot of worry shot up inside me, but Seren smiled and let his hand go.

As soon as he was free, Blaze was in my arms and I held him close, pressing my nose into his burning red hair and inhaling.

That was when I realised: he had new protections over him. Seren had been covering him in the same armour he’d covered me in all those years ago.

I smiled into my mate’s hair. My family would protect him. There would be nobody in the world safer than my Blaze.

Chapter 45

Blaze

Morgan’s mate, Lew, twitched his head. I saw that he was a warrior, even if he was smiling and happy now. He looked around automatically and I admired that he was so aware of everything. Alfie had told me all about him, but on the basis he had never actually met the man until ten minutes ago, he’d got all his information from Morgan, and Morgan might be a little… biased.

Apparently he was meant to be some incredible warrior who’d been in the Fife Army. He was also meant to be the most gorgeous man in the world, but already I could see that was total bias on Morgan’s part. Thecuraidhwas strong and tall and good-looking, but he just couldn’t hold a candle to the kind of vibrance that Alfie had.

Lew scanned the room and, when his eyes reached the door, he jerked back suddenly.

His first instinct was to yank his mate back into his arms, even though Morgan was in the middle of saying something to Alfie at the time. Morgan was cut off mid-sentence as he was practically lifted off his feet and shoved behind Lew.

Lew growled, “Ridire!” with enough alarm in his voice that he would have got everyone’s attention, even if they hadn’t caught the word.

Instantly, Morgan went tense and Dane and Seren began to growl openly.

Kingsley stayed where he was in the doorway, only he stopped leaning on the door-frame so casually. He stood upright, sensing imminent battle.

Glimmer appeared in the middle of the group suddenly, even though I hadn’t seen him go there at all.

He grinned wide as he said, “This is my mate, Kingsley.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” said Seren. He shoved forward to stand in front of Lew, who still didn’t look like he was going to let Morgan out from behind him for the foreseeable future.

Kingsley said, “I’m not actually aridireany longer.”

Glimmer grinned harder and said, “Itoldyou that you still looked like aridire.”

“I’m not even holding any weapons.” He lifted his arms away from his body, as though to demonstrate how unarmed he was. He sounded exasperated.

I could see why. As far as I could tell, he was a perfectly ordinary – albeit physically fit – man in ordinary clothes, lounging in a doorway. Why the dragons all bristled at the sight of him, I couldn’t tell.

And it was funny, to see great warriors like Lew and Dane look scared of one human.

On the other hand, I’d seen Kingsley fight, and he was absolutely efficient and merciless. They were probably right to look so wary.

Alfie drew all of their attention.

They might not realise it but they all looked when he spoke. He didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard. He commanded everyone in the room, and he didn’t even notice.

“Nobody’s going to fight. You’re not allowed to hurt anyone in the castle. It’s- it’s a new rule.”

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