Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet 1)

“And notice your mama don’t have a man,” Leroy had added, just in case the meaning of his callous dig hadn’t come across clear.

My mother had merely glared at him and suggested the retired king do something other than make her life harder. But now a new idea occurs to me…

“I could make meals for us from now on if you want me to. But I’ll need you to do a grocery store run.”

“I cannot do as you have asked,” he immediately answers. “But please do not worry, a new delivery will be made every week.”

My heart sinks.

Well, that’s the end of that nub of a plan.

A few days later while we’re eating breakfast, and I’m still no closer to figuring out how to execute Plan Escape, the house informs us that the delivery person from the local grocery store is here.

I still, and Damianos regards me across the table, his golden gaze slitting.

“I do not believe you would wish for me to harm the man making the delivery or for me to god speak his mind,” he says. “But that is exactly what will happen if you attempt to follow me and seek his assistance.”

With that threat, he leaves to answer the door.

My heart beats loudly in my ears as I consider the kitchen door. It’s so close and there’s just enough time to make a run for it. If I made it to the Yellow Mountain village, I might be back on my throne in New Wolfsburg by the time the night is through.

Or…

The memory of Kirk slicing his own neck flashes across my mind. No, I can’t make a run for it…if I try to escape while the delivery person is here, who knows how Damianos will punish me if he catches me?

A few days of him being nice to me doesn’t erase the very real possibilities of what he’ll do if I make him mad again. I force myself to stay seated and I even manage a smile when Damianos comes back with a huge box, which we unpack together.

“Do you prefer steak then?” he asks after I pull out a large package of rib eyes. “I can feel your great excitement over our mate bond.”

“Yes, I love steak,” I answer. This is how I find out for sure he can’t read my mind. Because if he knew why I was really so excited about the steak, he would throw the rib eyes straight into the trash.

But instead of chucking them, Damianos says, “If it pleases you, Reverence, let’s have it for breakfast tomorrow. Do you know of this dish, steak and eggs? Colby used to make it often.”

“It does please me, and I totally know how to make steak and eggs,” I answer with my brightest smile. “Thanks!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Mom forced our local K-12 wolf school to incorporate meditation into the curriculum after she took over as Queen of Michigan. Neither of my dads saw much use for it, and I hadn’t either. For twelve years, I’d squirmed on a mat for the first half-hour of school, wondering why we had to do this useless shit.

But after figuring out my new escape plan, I was making all the mental apologies to Mom. If not for being able to focus my mind by rote, there’s no way I would have been able to keep it calm enough not to broadcast over our mate bond that I was totally up to something.

I make it through lunch and dinner that day and even watch the first few episodes of a World War II documentary series while sitting beside Damianos on the couch. The truth is, I’ve never loved long multi-part documentaries. Give me a collection of short vids about how to actually do something any day. My dads say that’s my Grandma Chloe’s influence. She was one of the original vloggers back in her day and enjoyed making the same kind of tutorials I loved to watch.

But as it turns out, documentaries are fun to watch with Damianos, somebody who has lived through all the eras being covered. His side notes and scathing corrections make learning about history way less boring.

Though our easy couch camaraderie does hit a snag when I ask him why he didn’t help out in World War II as the fourth episode’s credits roll.

“You asking me that is the equivalent of me asking you why your kind did not help out your primate ancestors. How could you let them carry out their squabbles and sometimes even kill each other to gain dominance?” he answers. “Other than for entertainment purposes, I gave little thought or consideration to what the anthros did to each other, especially after I decreed that we drakkon should purposefully become myth and stop eating humans.”

“Why did you do that?” I ask, hoping for an even halfway moral reason.