Page 19 of No Room at Dragon's Landing

“Hardly.” He stepped in closer, our bodies only a fraction of an inch apart, and my stupid alarm had to choose then, of all times, to go off.

“Time for me to get to work,” I said. “You go back to bed and catch some more sleep. You got a fair bit of exercise last night.”

“I’m sure your aunt could handle the front desk,” he murmured, nuzzling into the side of my neck. “Or I can help because this is my mate’s business, and it’s the busiest week of the year.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very. And besides, as we’re getting everything ready, we could maybe talk about this—this house, tiny home you were thinking of putting there—and what it might look like.”

“You like the idea?”

“Honestly, I don’t know if I like the idea of actually having a space like that for work. But I do know that I love that you thought of that for me and want to let the idea simmer. I love that you spent your morning focused on how to make sure this worked between us. I love that you love me.”

“I really do. Make no mistake, my mate. I really do.”

Chapter Fourteen

Boen

It had been a no-brainer that I was going to drop everything and come to Dragon’s Landing to live with my mate. I’d never felt like I’d fully been living until I met Cyrus. He’d helped me come so alive, and my creativity—boy, did it explode. I completed multiple storyboards for my publisher’s approval in record time, and they loved each one. They even said that Dragon’s Landing was good for me.

My agent agreed. He’d felt horrible when I told him about the scam reservations until I let him know that it was how I found my boyfriend. I hated to use that term, but my agent wasn’t a shifter as far as I knew, and it was easier to use the human words. He thought it was romantic and I should consider writing a book with a similar plot. Hard pass on that. Our story was ours, and I planned to treasure it for always and not shout it for all of the world. But I did appreciate the sentiment.

Packing up my small place and bringing it all here had been the difficult part, and it wasn’t altogether that bad. The landlord had been great about letting me break my lease, thanks to a housing shortage in my area. The second he listed it, he could get more money than I’d been paying him, making it a win-win for both of us.

Actually settling into life with my mate in our home? That had been easy. It didn’t take much to make his quarters ours. We were still working on figuring out the best place for me to work, but that was mostly a me issue. I’d figure it out, soon enough.

One thing was for sure; I didn’t love the idea of being isolated in a separate building while working, especially not if that building only functioned as a space for me. It felt like a waste.

Truth was, I really liked working in our quarters, even if it was a bit crowded. Recently, we’d begun talking about maybe putting a home out there for us instead of a studio. Then I could turn our current quarters into my studio. We hadn’t solidified the idea yet, but it was promising. It would give us room to spread out, but also, we wouldn’t have to worry about being loud at night—which sometimes we probably were in the main house.

“Everybody’s checked out,” Cyrus said as he came up behind me, resting his head on my shoulder. “No one checks in until tomorrow.”

It had been our first breather since I moved in. He’d blocked off the date initially as a test while working with the new the online booking system he adopted. Somehow he’d never realized he left it that way, which was how it accidentally became a day off, one we’d both been looking forward to.

“I was just thinking about something like this,” I said, showing him the floor plans I’d found online while he was dealing with the front desk stuff.

“You’re leaning toward a cabin?”

“Yeah, but also maybe not a cabin.” I clicked opened another tab. “We could do something like this, where it matches the B&B—almost like it’s one of the old outbuildings for this place—and it wouldn’t stick out the way a cabin would. It could be part of the place’s charm.”

“Oh, I see.” He scrolled through the slideshow. “It almost looks like when they used to keep the kitchens in a separate building, only instead of a kitchen, it would be our house.”

Which had been my exact thoughts too. “What do you think?”

“I think it looks good.” He sucked in a long breath. “But I kind of put a lot into this place, and I don’t know if I have enough to finance that.”

And this was where the uncomfortable conversation about finances was going to come in. He knew I had a job, and I knew he had one, but neither of us discussed what that looked like as far as money went. It hadn’t mattered at the time, but now it did.

I looked up at him. “You know both of us have jobs.”

He nodded.

“And one of us hasn’t been paying rent for months.” That someone being me. “And I got back my deposit.”

“This isn’t months’ worth of money.”

“There’s more,” I said, pulling up another screen and logging into my bank account. “This is my savings.”

---