Page 39 of Chase Me

“Yeah, right. Not unless you found a way to quadruple your powers.” Cage scoffed at Jakob and jerked his thumb at him. He grinned at Ciara like they had some sort of conspiratorial agreement that Jakob was a dumbass.

Ciara stuck her tongue out at him.

“As soon as the sun rises and I'm sure Ciara is safe, we can take this outside and I'll show you.”

Great. The dragons were going to get their dicks out and measure them.

“Sounds fun. But we'd better save it for the AllWyr Council.” Cage leaned back against the counter. “Have fun explaining to Match how you lost the First Dragon's relic to meet a hot chick.”

“I've got a lot more to tell the AllWyr Council about.” Jakobchucked Ciara on the chin and moved the blanket from her right shoulder, exposing it to Cage's view.

Cage's jaw not only dropped open again, but his eyeballs about popped out of his head.

What? What did he see? Ciara twisted her head to look at herself but could only see someone’s shoulder. There was no way that that was her skin because she did not have a giant tattoo of a green dragon.

“Like the fact that Ciara is my true soulmate and that I have claimed her.”

Those tingles that Jakob put in her back traveled up her spine, pinged her in the back of the skull, and sent pins and needles across her scalp.

This was going to throw a kink in her plans. Not the kind of kink that got her motor running, the kind that stopped it dead.

YOU BELONG TO ME

If Ciara hadn't worked some sort of magic on all of their emotions, Cage's head would have exploded. Into a million pieces.

Jakob knew exactly how he felt.

But he was less concerned about Cage's reaction to his declaration as he waited to see what Ciara did.

So far, she hadn't moved a muscle. Seriously, she was frozen.

“Ciara, honey?” He'd take anything from her at the moment. Tears, anger, she could even slap him in the face.

Mating was a pretty big thing to spring on a person, even if she didn't fully understand the extent of what a dragon's true mate meant.

She did none of those things. Instead, she pushed his arm away and walked out of the kitchen.

Shit. That was probably bad.

He followed her, and Cage was hot on his heels. She went back through the great room and up the stairs, moving fast enough that he had to take them two at a time just to catch up.

“Ciara, talk to me.”

She held up a hand, and then just one finger. That finger shook at him, but Ciara still didn't say anything. She kept walking until she got to the guest room he'd put her in yesterday.

Was it all too much for her? Was she going to collapse? Go to bed and pull the covers over her head? Christ, he’d done this to her. Broken his mate when it was his job to protect her, keep her safe.

It wasn’t like he could ask any other dragons for their advice on how to handle a mate. No one else had a mate or even thought they would. He was making this up as he went along.

If he had to wrap her up in cotton—or even better cotton candy—he would protect her, make her feel safe.

She threw the door open and went to stand in front of a dresser that had a small mirror hanging on the wall over it.

The blanket covering her fell to the floor and she bared her shoulder.

The reflection staring back at her was confused. Lips pressed together into a thin line, and wide eyes that watched her fingers brush over the mark he'd given her. The dragon sparkled under her touch.

“What. The. Hell. Is. This?”

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