Into The Dragon's World - Brittany White Page 0,29

York. It had taken him months to get his footing. Casey, though...she bounced back pretty quickly.

He smiled at the thought of her. He had never known anyone quite like her. In this world, females who tried to match with him tended to be more interested in the prospect of becoming the future queen than in being his mate. In the other world, the women he had met were nice, some had been absolutely gorgeous, but none of them had given him that deep feeling of connection that he felt with Casey, especially so soon after meeting. Not even Savannah.

His pleasant mood darkened at the thought. He had believed Savannah was his life mate. She knew he was a shifter, but it didn’t matter to her. They had argued, as any couple did, and they had made up and made plans and expected to create a future together. He’d loved her more intensely and truly than he’d believed possible. After her death, he had felt gutted. He’d allowed his guilt over being unable to save her fester and grow to fill up the emptiness. He had mourned Savannah longer than he had loved her.

His attraction to Casey made no sense to him. Yes, he found her beautiful and sexy, but there was something deeper than that. She made him laugh. She wasn’t impressed with him or overwhelmed. She didn’t care who he was or what he had. And she had barely batted an eye at his shifting, which would, admittedly, be a deal-breaker for a lot of women. She accepted him. More than that, she seemed to genuinely like him.

He wanted more than that. He wanted her to love him.

Suddenly, he couldn’t get out of the bath or dress fast enough. He needed to see her again, to make sure she was alright.

“You’re up!” Casey smiled and immediately threw her arms around his neck, standing on tip toe as she hugged him as tightly as she dared. Brady winced but said nothing. He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes. This was what he needed.

After a few moments, Casey leaned back a little. “Oh, my God...your chest! I’m sorry...does it hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Brady said with a smile. In order to let his wounds breathe, he wore his tunic unbuttoned over his loose-fitting trousers. Casey examined his bandages, gently touching the wrappings, the tips of her fingers barely brushing his bare skin. She looked back up at him.

“I thought you were going to die,” she said softly.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” His smile slanted. “You’d kill me, remember?”

Casey laughed even as a few tears escaped her eyes. She sniffed and blinked the tears away. “Don’t scare me like that again. Do you hear me?”

Brady lost himself in her wide, trusting eyes. If he had wondered even a bit about his feelings for her before, he knew he now had his answer. He realized he would do anything she asked, anything she wanted.

But would she want him?

“How about a tour?” he said and grinned, distracting them both from the intensity of the moment. Casey dipped her eyes and stepped back, nodding. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw a flash of disappointment in her eyes and wondered if he’d somehow missed an opportunity.

Casey took his arm and smiled. “Lead the way, m’lord.”

Brady somehow remembered his way around the castle. He led Casey through the solar, another open-air room with vast ceilings and almost blinding sunlight. The grand ballroom, nearly the size of a football field, was being quickly decorated by servants in preparation for the celebration. They toured the kitchen and the vegetable gardens and walked along the battlements atop the castle walls. Hours passed like seconds.

Eventually, they found themselves in the throne room, where the King and Queen’s thrones sat atop a small platform. As with all the other rooms in the castle, the ceilings were lofty, with bare wooden beams running high over their heads. Brady was fascinated by Casey’s reactions to everything. He felt as if he were seeing everything through new eyes. Things that he had thought boring and normal when he was growing up were now amazing and incredible. The whole world had changed.

Brady watched Casey as she ran up the steps to the thrones. The thrones were built to accommodate their dragon forms. They were elaborate, complicated creations of wood and stone. Casey was dwarfed by them. There were smaller, human-sized thrones somewhere in the castle, but his parents never chose