To Enchant a Dragon by Amanda Milo Page 0,2

pitiable mate (human as it is) coexisting well enough. At least nature changes the dragon’s form to ensure that they match.

On that thought, dread slams me like a lodged casting.

...You don’t know what a casting is? You, dear reader, must not be a dragon. Or at least not dragonkin.

Crested Merlins like myself regurgitate the indigestible bits of our meals, called ‘castings.’ Basically, we hack up compacted balls of bones and feathers and fur bits that won’t pass through our systems. Crested Merlins also collect our pellets and store them. It’s a habit that’s filled nearly half of my cave, a collection I hoped to share proudly one day with my mate.

If nature turned my mate into a dragon, she would be awed at my saved castings.

But mermaids don’t change into dragons. And dragons...

My mate and I are doomed.

I cannot take on the form of half a fish.

I cannot live in the sea.

She can’t fly or even walk.

What have I done?

Carefully, I spread my hands until the beautiful half-woman, half-sea creature is revealed. I expect her eyes to be clenched tightly in terror, or for her to be glaring up at me with unadulterated hate.

Instead, her luminous eyes (also the glory of prisms, just like her riotously jewel-colored mane) meet mine. Her gaze is wet with heartbreak, her pretty countenance plaintive and sad. Perhaps she feels the bond between us as I do and knows what’s been done. What’s irrevocably been done.

Her third eyelids sweep over the surfaces of her eyes, forcing the tears forming there to spill down her cheeks, the saltwater trails hydrating her already sea-starved skin, but only where the liquid borne from her heart burns its paths.

I exhale a weighted breath, and she flinches. I swallow hard and ask, “What is your name?”

“Adella,” she replies uncertainly.

Adella. It’s a beautiful name. And the very meaning of her name is nobility of the seas.

“My name,” I tell my mate and not my dinner, “is Kalos.” It means great lover to his beloved, not that I’ve ever had a mate before to prove my name true.

I stare down at her fins.

Not that I can prove it to the lifemate I have now, either.

What. Have. I. DONE.

“Please—” she starts.

I cut her off, bringing my spread hands with her draped over my claw-tipped fingers, closer to my face. “Shh. Do not ask me to return you. I can’t let you go.”

She looks ready to burst into endless tears. “But why?”

“Because,” I confess, “we are mates.”

Her expression doesn’t change; no recognition crosses her face. “Why can’t you let me go if we’re friends?” she asks in a very faint voice.

“No, no.” Frustration leaves my gut feeling hot and sick. Even my mate’s word-meanings are not mine, not the ones of my people. We are so different in every way. But… it is done. We are mated. “Not ‘mate’ as in friend,” I clarify. “You are my mate as in my other bonded half. My drhema.” My cherished one, is what the endearment means. And I can already feel that I will cherish her. Deeply. Thoroughly. Forevermore.

She still stares up at me, and perhaps this expression on her face is disbelief, not a lack of comprehension. “How…” She chokes, sounding as absolutely horrified as I’m struggling not to feel.

Ruefully, I admit, “Because we touched, and apparently, your kind is alike enough to mine in this way that we’re mate-compatible.”

She sputters. “I am to you what a dragonfly is to a shark!”

“That’s harsh.”

Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you—”

“Shark,” I muse. “Shark of the skies, I suppose. I like it.” I look down at her. “I meant that you were doing yourself a disservice. You are more ravishing than any dragonfly.”

This stops her words. She closes her mouth.

I sigh. “I am sorry too. I had no idea you’d put me at risk. There’s a reason dragons turn our food to charcoal before we handle it.”

She flinches, and I could kick myself.

“Krevk’d—I mean… you aren’t food to me now. You aren’t what I would have wanted for myself, to take as a mate, I mean—I was dancing around a caverock female dragon—” I bite my tongue to stop the explanation. Adella may be a woman-fish, but she is my woman-fish, and I won’t have her thinking I would pine for another now.

I won’t. The bond prevents it. I’ll never want another female for as long as I live.

...Not that this declaration will sound particularly meaningful if mermaids don’t share a dragon’s significant