Page 11 of The Alliance

Beside me, Anthony made a move to step towards them and I grabbed him.

“Not today,” I said. “Not while Dee’s in such a possessive mood. She might lash out if anyone gets near her mate.”

Anthony was desperate to study those flowers. They appeared when Arram was in their dryad form and was touched by their mate, and nobody had been able to study them before, which meant Anthony hadn’t been able to read up on it.

I felt him sag against me with disappointment.

“One day soon,” I promised him, “I’ll ask them to show you specially. I’m sure Arram won’t mind and Dee is more than happy to show off her mate’s flowers.”

She liked to show off the fact that they only bloomed for her, too. She always looked proud as anything when Arram had pretty little flowers blooming all over their body.

I jumped when a voice spoke right in my ear. I hadn’t heard anyone come into the room.

Of course it was Dum. Never far away from Dee, he had seen her display of possessive ownership and was grinning with far too many teeth, right next to my neck.

“Leaves a trail of petals behind us all the damned time,” he said.

Anthony twisted round to see Dum. He smiled at the dragon, and I was amazed, as always, that he never seemed to mind those two sneaking round and being generally dangerous. It didn’t seem to have entered Anthony’s head that they would do him any harm. Something I had to admit looked likely. They’d taken it into their heads that he needed protecting, and they were the ones to do it.

My dragon gave a low little rumble as it settled down again. It didn’t mind Dee and Dum protecting our mate. He was worth protecting.

Dum folded his arms and took in the picture of Dee making out with her mate against the wall, showing everyone exactly whose mate the dryad was. I had to admit, I could feel all the dragons around me were slightly closer to the surface than usual. We had strangers in our territory and they were nervous. Watchful. Possessive. Protective.

My whole family was giving in to their dragon’s instincts quicker than usual.

Dum spoke casually, “Do you think she’s going to fuck Arram right up against that wall?”

My beautiful mate blushed and murmured, “Maybe we should leave.”

Kingsley had already silently left the room.

I’d noticed that, too. He had courage, to come into a dragon’s territory. But whether it was just common sense that he didn’t want to push the dragons too hard or whether his ownridireinstincts were restless around us, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I’d noticed that he tended to look less tense and alert when he was around the non-dragons.

Dum pursed his lips, thinking. “You know, I think she might. Thatridirewas standing awfully close to Arram, you know.”

Apparently, Dee could hear us because she snarled again and pressed her body harder against Arram’s, trying to cover them completely. If I were to guess, I’d say that her dragon wouldn’t settle until she’d convinced it that she’d claimed Arram again.

Dum cackled gleefully and kept going. “They were standingsoclose together, weren’t they? Their bodies were almost touching—”

I thought it was probably time to get Dum out of there before he could convince Dee to hunt down Kingsley in some kind of vengeance for touching her mate. She didn’t look like she’d see reason right then, and I didn’t want to be the one who tried to convince her that her mate and Kingsley had been talking very platonically in front of witnesses the whole time.

“Come on. Yes, you, Dum.”

I managed to get him out of the room by using Anthony as bait. Dum followed my mate like a lamb, asking, “What am I going to do for the rest of the afternoon now that Dee’s occupied?”

Anthony suggested, “You could go and help Prince in the kitchen?”

Dum shot him the sort of look he might give an adorable puppy, a combination of disbelief and cuteness overload. He humoured my mate enough to say, “Yeah, I might,” and hurried off before Anthony could actually expect him to do that.

Anthony turned to me. I wound my arms around his slim waist and looked up into his dark eyes.

“What about us? What are we going to do now?”

I didn’t really mean to, but I might have pressed my body up against his. I loved to feel my mate pressed against me and his smell was intoxicating every time I did it. His natural scent became deeper with a faint flush of arousal.

“Um, well we could… we could go to help in the kitchen? Or we could go to the library? Or maybe to our room?”

I craned my neck and pressed my lips to his. His breath caught and he wound his arms around my neck, pressing closer to me.

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