Page 85 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

Clenching my jaw, I glared at her.

“Tell him if you think he should know. Or not. As I said, you know him best.”

Then she turned, leaving.

“He deserved to know!” I shouted at her back. “You should have told him anyway.”

Halfway up the stairs, the woman whirled, hair billowing out behind her. “I know,” she said stiffly. “But I am the ruler of my people. I must respect their wishes. And their wish wasn’t to have him know right away. But to wait until he could handle hearing it. To wait until he was no longer alone. What sort of sovereign would I be if I simply went around ignoring my peoples’ desires? I cannot pick and choose when I listen to them. That is not what it means to be a ruler. Even if, in my heart, I would choose to do it differently. Do not think I am blind to what you say, Samantha Dearling, because I am not. In here”—she tapped her chest—“I would do as you say. But here”—she tapped her head—“I am but a servant of my people.”

The sovereign spoke again in a lower voice. “Don’t think for a second that this did not keep me up at night with guilt. As have many other things I have been unable to act upon the way my heart desires. That is the curse of being charged to lead all my people. Not just some of them.”

“You should have told him,” I said stubbornly, but deep down, I knew she was right.

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But you’re the one he will turn to for support. The one he loves. The one who will help him get through it. Hearing it from you will ease the sting. There’s no way to make it easy to hear, but from you, it will hurt just a little bit less. And don’t you think he deserves that?”

“Maybe,” I said grumpily.

“You’re a good woman, Samantha. You have the heart of a dragon. He sees that. As do I.”

Then she was gone, her bodyguards following in her wake.

Chapter Forty-One

Samantha

Cade came rushing down the same stairs the Sovereign had gone up twenty minutes earlier when she departed.

“Samantha!” he bellowed.

“I’m here,” I said as calmly as I could, extending my arms as he leaped the last few stairs and swept me up in his arms.

“What is it? What happened? Are you okay?” he asked, looking past me as he hugged me.

“I’m fine,” I said, rubbing the back of his head. “You’re sweaty.”

He eyed me skeptically. “Hello to you, too, my love.”

“Darling,” I said, planting a kiss on his cheeks. “Come. Into the shower with you.”

His eyes burned with feral desire, but I pressed a finger to his lips, shaking my head.

“A regular shower?” he half-whined.

“Together,” I said.

“Something is going on,” he rumbled. “I can feel your turmoil. Your worry. Why are you trying to act calm?”

“Shower,” I repeated, pointing back up the stairs.

“Very well,” he said, succumbing to my orders. Carrying me as if I weighed no more than a feather, he walked back up the stairs and into our bedroom, turning on the shower.

Then I slowly stripped him of his clothes, watching his face the entire time. Taking note of the smile lines under his eyes as he stared back at me and the softness of his eyes that I knew could be replaced in an instant if he thought someone had wronged me.

“My protector,” I whispered, stroking his face as steam stared to pour from the shower. “My big protector. So strong yet so gentle.”

He frowned, the smile lines become worry wrinkles. “Something is either very right or very wrong. What’s going on, Sam? Why are you giving me these mixed signals?”

I licked my lips. I’d rehearsed what I was going to say a dozen times, but now that he was standing in front of me, my courage was fading. How was I supposed to tell Cade his family had literally torn themselves apart to get at the gold mine? That one of his uncles and sons had gone so insane with lust over the fortune in the hills that they’d murdered the others?

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