Page 17 of Overbooked at Dragon's Landing

Now, it was time for the festival.

The town prided itself on keeping some traditions but changing a lot every year. This year, they added a recycled art contest, and the judging hadn’t begun yet, which meanteverything was still in place. Nothing had been moved to the center of the village to be shown off as the prize yet. We were hitting it at the perfect time.

“This is so cool,” a little kid standing in front of us said, unable to believe his eyes.

I understood why. The artist was a genius. The entire sculpture of a dragon was made out of old kitchenware—forks, spoons, spatulas, pieces of potato mashers. If it was metal and from the kitchen, they had welded it together to form this really cool and fairly realistic dragon.

It was the first one we saw, and I was already sure it would be the winner. How could it not be? It was magnificent. But then, as we went from one sculpture to another, I saw that they were all spectacular and was glad no one asked me to judge. It would be nearly impossible.

“I wonder how hard this is to do?” Craig asked as we were looking at a display of farm animals, all with at least a good part of their bodies being made of old oxygen tanks.

“I think the welding part is probably not too hard.” Or, if it was a dragon, they might have worked with someone else and used their flames.

But that was a whole lot to bring up. Knowing about shifters was pretty common, but people preferred not to see things that made them uncomfortable. And a person standing next to them, being able to shift and burn them into a pile of ash, definitely fell into that category.

“Yeah, I think figuring out what to piece together would be the hard part. It’d be fun, though.” Craig rubbed his chin. “A lot of fun.”

“I bet you could do it.” Ralph placed his hand on the small of our mate’s back. “You used to do all those models back in high school.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about those, but they had instructions.” As if that somehow dismissed the skill it took to piece them together.

He turned to me. “Did you ever do anything like that?”

And just like he’d done a thousand times in the short time we’d known each other, Craig brought me right back into the conversation instead of leaving me on the outskirts, listening in. And the thing was, I didn’t even think he was doing it on purpose. It was just in his nature to be accepting, welcoming, social.

It should’ve erased all of my insecurities, and it helped, but only facing my concerns head-on would accomplish anything.

“No, I didn’t do those. I did do my fair share of plastic bricks, though—like so many.” I wished I had kept them. Some of the models I’d built were pretty cool, and with the prices they were getting for them now, they’d have been nice to have. If we had kids one day…

I wanted us to, and they hadn’t given me any reason to think they didn’t want a family. But the thing with babies was, it wasn’t all about what people wanted. It was partially about whether it was in the cards or not, and that we wouldn’t know. Not yet. We were three different beings. It could go either way. We could have a baby already on the way, or we might try for a decade. It was hard to tell.

“I used to love those bricks, but I was like Craig—I needed the directions,” Ralph said. “I always thought it was so cool when Sally, my neighbor, could just take a bucket of random pieces and build something unique and different and exactly what she set her mind to.”

“Oh, Sally! I forgot about her. She’d be good at this kind of art.”

A crowd started building behind up us, so we moved on to the next piece and the next.

From there, we walked the little shops. Most of it was touristy stuff set out specifically for the festival, but in a way, that was what made it more fun. We grabbed a few stickers for our laptops. Craig found a hoodie he loved, and Ralph got some homemade candies he said reminded him of his mom. And me? I just looked around.

I already had to figure out what to do with a houseful of belongings. I didn’t need to add one more thing to the mix.

“I’m hungry.” Craig leaned in to my side. “Do you think we could find some food to go?”

“Go? I thought you’d want to be here all day.” I didn’t mind heading back to the hotel, but if something was wrong, I wanted to know that too.

“It’s great and all”—he pulled me into a hug—“but I’d rather grab a picnic and go see my own dragon.”

A scoff from behind had me shaking my head.

“Hey,” Craig said, rolling his eyes, “and my wolf too.”

“Yes, your wolf too.”

“I think we can find some lunch.” I pressed a kiss to the top of Craig’s head. “And then we can either come back here or go to the hotel and rest.”

“Rest?” Ralph raised his eyebrows in a very exaggerated manner. “I think I like the sound of that.” He gave a mischievous grin. “Rest. Wink, wink.”

And great. Now all I could think about was getting the two of them naked.

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