Page 9 of Love Bites Extra Hard

He gestured to the plate, and I dutifully took another bite. “Dragons are solitary creatures. It’s difficult for us to live in a group, and to expose ourselves by living exactly where Mistwood knows to find us is far from comfortable. We rotate who stays there, to make it seem like we live there.”

Wow.

He gestured to my food again, and I forced myself to keep eating. I wasn’t that hungry, considering it was probably around 2 AM, but I ate anyway.

Talon was an asshole, but he didn’t seem like a guy who would tell me I needed my strength without a good reason.

“You didn’t move me into your room,” I said, before taking another bite.

His eyes narrowed at me, like he was suspicious. “Why would I do that?”

“You said you needed a siren mate.”

“I said I needed a siren. I didn’t say anything about a mate.”

“No one needs a siren for anything other than mating, Tal.” I dropped the nickname again, just to see if I could piss him off.

If he was going to hurt me, I wanted to get on with it already.

“Dragons only mate with the person fate chooses for them. I didn’t bring you here to mate with you. When you’re done taking care of my… problem… I’ll take you back to the vampires.”

“What’s the problem?” I was starting to grow curious.

And relieved.

A lot relieved

He wouldn’t go to the trouble of putting me in a separate room from his and pretending he had both a fated mate and a problem if it wasn’t true.

Most magical beings didn’t have fated mates. It had been a thing, a long time ago. Vampires still had their blood mates, but everyone else’s version of that had faded out and disappeared. No one even hoped for them anymore.

Except vampires.

And, apparently, dragons.

Dragons were rare, though. I’d only met one before, in a nightclub, when my sisters and I went out to feed. Izzy had fed on him, and he tried to take her home, but she hadn’t been interested.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

That was ominous.

At least I had good food to prepare me for it. And Iwasn’tgoing to have to fight off Talon’s advances, because he didn’t want to mate with me. That alone was enough to lift my spirits.

“I didn’t know dragons waited around for their fated mates,” I said.

“We don’t wait for them. We live our lives freely, and if we meet them, we seal a bond if both parties are interested.”

“And if they’re not?”

“They don’t seal a bond.”

Guess that was all there was to it. It seemed… easy.

I guess it wouldn’t seem as easy if you were fated to someone you didn’t like, though. Or if you wanted a mate as much as Clementine had, but couldn’t find the person you were fated to.

Maybe it was just as difficult in its own way.

Whatever the case, I didn’t have to worry about it, because I’d be leaving as soon as I dealt with whatever the problem was.

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