Page 22 of Consorting with Dragons

“No, I certainly did not.”

“Oh. Well, he is. So, we should be able to get that King Travon to give my father his money back.”

He was still just sitting there staring at me, like he was in shock.

“Why are you staring at me that way?”

“It’s…a huge surprise. I had no idea.”

“You never asked.”

“Listen Rylan, this might be a good time to tell you something really important. About why I reacted so strongly when I first met you.”

“Because you believed I was a thief?”

“No. Well, yes, but that’s not it. There’s another, bigger reason I reacted to you the way I did.” He blew out a long sigh and scrubbed his face with his hand. “Gods, I can’t believe any of this is happening.”

“Just tell me.”

He took my hand in his and looked deeply into my eyes. “Have you ever heard of the Lycan mating bond?”

I just stared incredulously at him then, because everyone who had ever dealt with Lycans had heard of that. My uncle Anarr had been caught up in that craziness when he first met his husband, Renard Dimitru, a former Lycan general. Oddly enough, Anarr had also been arrested by that same general the very first time they met. Just like I had been arrested by this one.

I pulled my hand away. “Are you trying to say…did you feel that? For me?”

He leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “Yes, Rylan, I did. I do. It made me a little excited, I’m afraid.”

“Alittleexcited?” I sat up straight and pointed my finger at him. “You were totally crazy and out of control, and I didn’t doanything!”

“Well, you did pull that disruptor on me.”

“Totally deserved!”

“And you tried to shoot me.”

“I-I didn’t! I mean, yes, I did fire it, but that was an accident. And you called me a thief!”

“I thought you were at the time. You refused to explain anything.”

“I didn’t refuse. Not exactly. You didn’t give me much chance to tell you anything. I just didn’t understand what washappening. Though I suppose it might have been wrong of me to pull that disruptor out.”

“Might have been? You could have killed me.”

I sat there for a moment, still fuming as I went back over all that had happened that day. It was still a bit of a blur. “But I had reasons.”

“I know.”

“Is my crew all right? Did you hurt them?”

“No, they’re fine and they’re all back home safely now. They didn’t want to leave you behind.”

“Of course not. You can’t blame them.”

“I know.”

I sat for a few seconds longer, trying to figure all this out in my head. It was difficult, because he was holding my hand again somehow and gazing at me with those beautiful green eyes. And I wasn’t objecting. Anarr always said the mating bond went both ways. He’d told my omak-ahn, Blake, that he had probably fallen in love with Renard right away too, but Renard had been such an ass to him that he hadn’t let on right away. He’d been in denial in a way. Still, Blake was human and didn’t understand such things at all. He and my uncle Renard had never really become friends, even though he and Anarr were very happily married now and had been for years.

I looked over at General Fortina and I totally understood what Anarr had meant, because he was an ass too. But he was a handsome ass. He’d been kind to me, all things considered, and he smelled wonderful to me, gods help me. All Lycans were pretty much the same, though they didn’t like to admit it. Even from planet to planet they claimed differences, but Lycans were all a little crazy. Everyone said so. Horvath was the same as the planets of Lycanus, really, though none of them would admit it. Typical Lycan behavior.

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