To Enchant a Dragon by Amanda Milo Page 0,9

would have flown her to a better location long before dark fell. I would think my eyes would be better honed at scoping out an appropriate seaside home for us now that I’ve had two practice runs. If my mate had needed a cave with the perfect number of exits and a large enough chamber free from drafts and water (which is the perfect location for Crested Merlin egg incubation), I would have known exactly where to settle us, but I’m new to my mate’s needs. And I’d leave right now and get her settled tonight—I have a sense of urgency that demands my mate get better care shown to her than this—but something isn’t right with me. My sense of balance even seems to be affected; my rear legs aren’t responding like they should, my body isn’t in sync with itself like it should be... I feel strange.

I don’t tell Adella, but when I call my wings to open, just for a stretch, they don’t spread.

This discovery sparks more than mere concern in me. This is no normal heat; if my system were responding to the moon’s fires, I would be burning for a female’s company sure—but I’d be damned ready and able to fly to find one.

All I can assume is that because I have broken the natural law of things and taken an otherworldly mate, then I have disrupted the natural happenings of my system entirely. Why should my system let me fly? I won’t be seeking out any winged mates. Not now, not ever.

I can still walk well enough though, so I approach my female with purpose. “Adella? I will carry you in my hand while we search for an appropriate settling place. We’ll move further down the coast.” I don’t offer the reason as to why I will be walking, and she doesn’t ask.

Instead, she shakes her head and scoops a handful of sand off to the side of herself, and I realize she’s digging a pit, searching out what water lies trapped under the sand’s surface. “Just rest for the night.” She spares me a glance. “You said you weren’t feeling quite right, and you don’t look it. You’re making a funny face.”

I frown at her. “This is my regular face. It isn’t funny.”

Her lips tug up, more of the shadow cast by a smile than the real thing, but it’s a welcome flash of humor all the same. “Whatever you say, dragon.”

“Kalos.”

“I should stay hydrated enough until the tide returns… Kalos,” she tells me kindly, continuing to dig.

That she’s being so solicitous in the face of such awful first-day matehood circumstances mortifies me. I don’t deserve her kindness, and it drives home the point that although she is a mermaid, something that my kind wouldn’t hesitate to consume, she is an entirely likable creature.

And I mean that beyond what she probably tastes like.

Even if matehood could be reversed—and it cannot be—I don’t believe I could ever swallow a sea maiden after this.

(I can definitely eat the mermen though. If you don’t count their surprisingly strong flailings, I didn’t so much as suffer indigestion.)

Part of me knows I should take Adella back to her cove, but a newly mated dragon does not share his mate. It isn’t safe, not even if the only threats are this mermaid’s siblings. Especially if those other females would attempt to turn my mate from me.

And why wouldn’t her sisters try to rescue her from a dragon’s clutches?

Surely they will take one look at her and attempt to swim her away. Concerningly in this scenario, mermaids can hold their breath in the deep far longer than a dragon can.

I wouldn’t be able to bring her back if she fled from me.

I can’t lose my mate now that I have her. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t enjoyed her for long; she is my mate. To lose her would destroy me.

But my greatest fear is that I would take her back to her family—satisfying my need to please her—only to feel my protective instincts flare, and in a mindless rage, I might decimate her sisters who try to take action to save her from me.

If I destroy her loved ones, Adella will hate me.

I want with everything that I am for her to be happy, but I need her to stay with me. We even curl up together to sleep, with me forming a living wall around Adella as she tries to keep herself submerged in the salt-encrusted pit I