Page 3 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

“Heard what?” I repeated with a bit of emphasis. “I was in my office when that new intern came in pale as a ghost, ordering me to your office.”

Sandra made a sound and dug in her bag. Finding whatever she was looking for, she shoved it into my hand. “Fire her. She was supposed to give you this. Idiot.”

I grabbed the paper, slipping to the side as two officers in military uniforms went jogging past “on the double,” as they called it. Although I was used to reading and dodging the crowds of people, it was still unusual to see officers moving with such alacrity inside.

Whatever was going on, it involved the military.

“Where are we going?” I asked, unable to pause long enough to read the paper. There was far more traffic than normal, and we had to dodge, dip, duck, and dive our way through the crowd in a most undignified manner for the Secretary of State—as her assistant, I was under no such restraint.

The fact it didn’t faze her was another warning bell.

“President.”

All the warning bells went off, a wild cacophony of alarms in my head. That was not good.

“Are we evacuating?” I hissed, fearing Baltimore was gone. If the military line had been breached, the dragons were less than an hour away. We would have to move fast.

“The opposite, actually. The dragons have sent a representative.”

“Here?” I hissed in shock, understanding now why the military was running wild. If a dragon was there, at the White House, that would send them into a tizzy.

“Yes.”

I took a half-step to gather my composure. It was something I’d learned how to do very quickly while working my way up the political ladder.

“What do they want?” When I spoke, it was in a calm, measured tone.

“A ceasefire, apparently,” Secretary Levison said, waving aside lesser staffers as we made a beeline for the Oval Office.

“What?”

My composed exterior shattered as I yelped in total shock. It was back in a second as I schooled my face into neutrality before the reprimanding glare from my boss could reach me.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, beginning to analyze the situation. “But they are—were winning, were they not? Why on Earth would they want to stop now? All they would have to do is—”

“I know all that,” the secretary snapped, clearly impatient and frustrated at being blindsided like the rest of us.

I fell silent the rest of the trip, filing into the office behind her and standing to one side, where the various aides all gathered as the President and his department heads assembled.

Several of the Joint Chiefs were there as well, but I resolutely ignored them. Well, one in particular. A tall male with a layer of black stubble already showing on his face, peppered with gray here and there. He stood tall and proud, but there was a fire in his eyes as he stared unflinchingly at the newcomer in the room.

I held back a sneer at my ex-husband. The idiot likely thought if he could just leap across the table, he could finally kill one of the enemy—something his tanks and guns hadn’t been able to achieve.

Turning my gaze on the other person, I evaluated him as the doors closed, sealing the room. He wasn’t quite the tallest in the room. One of the aides of the Secretary of Homeland Security was a giant. But while the aide had an inch or three on the dragon’s representative, he had none of his muscle.

The seams of the representative’s sharp-edged black shirt were on the verge of bursting with every breath he took. Biceps bigger than my legs were corded with steel cable. His quads were easily bigger than my waist, and yet somehow, despite his stature, the dragon-man wore it well. Naturally, even.

“All right. We’re here,” the president said from where he sat behind his desk. “What is it you have to say?”

The dragon-man—at least, I was fairly certain that was what he was, given I’d never met one yet. Though we’d had reports from within occupied territories that stated the beasts could shift between forms—inhaled and spoke in a calm voice.

“The Sovereign of All Dragonkind sends a message to your nation,” he said. “She proposes a ceasefire between your forces and ours. It’s contingent on you providing us eight women of breeding age per year to come to our home and become the mates of dragons. As long as you do this, the ceasefire will remain in place.”

He stopped speaking.

I glanced at some of the other aides as we all tried our best to remain still and calm. That was it? Those were all their terms?

“Is there anything else?” the president asked calmly.

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