Page 72 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

His face was solid, like stone, but the lack of emotion there was belied by what I could see in his eyes and what I could feel.

“You saved me,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied after a long moment.

“So, why aren’t you happy about that?” I asked.

“I am, Sam. Oh, I am.”

He was telling the truth. I could feel his emphasis.

I blinked in surprise, comprehension starting to fully dawn.

“Yes,” he whispered in response to my unspoken question. “That’s me you’re feeling.”

Ignoring the tight, stretching feeling across my back, I pushed myself into a sitting position.

“What did you do to me, Cade?” I asked. “How … how am I—you’re in my head!”

“I had no choice,” he whispered.

Truth echoed through me.

“No choice about what?” I was getting mad, frustrated at his unwillingness to spill the truth.

“There was only one way to save your life,” he said, grimacing. “I tried to tell you, but you passed out before I could. You … you were dying. I didn’t want you to die!”

“What did you do to me?” I half-screamed as his conviction pulsed in a corner of my mind, revealing his true emotions regardless of what was on his face.

“I covered the wound with one of my scales,” he said tersely. “I bound us together. Otherwise, you would have died.”

“So, this …” I pointed at my head. “This really is you?”

“A part of me,” he said. “You have to accept the bond for it to truly take. Right now, it’s … sort of in limbo.”

“Accept it? What do you mean?”

“You accept it’s what you want. That you … love me,” he said, glancing away.

I frowned at the embarrassment, regret, and a sliver of something else that came through.

“You want me to accept I love you?” I asked, shaking my head. “Cade, I …”

“I know,” he said as I tried to come up with words to explain I hadn’t really begun to consider him that way.

Yes, it was on my mind. It never left. We’d been assigned as potential “mates.” I was looking at everything between us under that lens. But love? That was a big commitment.

“This is why it’s normal to wait to scale bond,” he said. “So both parties know what they’re getting into.”

I slowly reached up and over my back. My fingers encountered the scale, and I jerked them back in sudden shock at the smooth, warm touch of it. Slowly, tentatively, I rolled my shoulders, twisting to the left and right.

“It moves with me,” I said.

“Yes. In time, as it binds itself fully, if you accept it, it’ll become as flexible as true flesh. Though it’ll remain as hard and protective as a dragon scale.”

“I see.” I sighed. “And if I don’t accept it, Cade? Will you take it off?”

He shook his head.

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