Page 10 of Miles

“What was what?” I asked, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. “Coming up for air, are you?”

He smirked at my joke. “Yeah, well, even our endurance has its limits.” He touched my arm, signaling for me to stop when we reached the lobby.

It was empty for the time being, though I knew better than to believe we had privacy there.

Even so, he lowered his voice and continued, “I was just walking up to the door when you were arguing with the girls.”

“I wasn’t arguing.”

“You berated them as if they were children.”

“They were behaving like children.”

“Much the way you’re behaving now.”

I stiffened. “If that’s the way you see it, perhaps I should leave.”

“You don’t want to leave,” he called out to my retreating back as I walked away.

I paused, reflecting on the truth in his words. No, I didn’t want to go. Not until I at least heard her voice. That was what disturbed me most.

He must have taken my silence as the response he was waiting for, since he said, “I didn’t understand it at first, either.”

“Understand what?”

“What my dragon wanted. It made no sense. Martina was a nuisance—headstrong, impossible, and very likely a grave liability to our mission.”

“Putting it mildly,” I muttered, remembering how close I’d come to throwing her bodily from the boat.

“And yet, something was in my head, telling me not to be foolhardy,” he went on, crossing the lobby to stand by my side. “I didn’t like it. I didn’t want things to turn out that way. I felt as though I had no control over my own destiny.”

I remained silent, though my dragon did just about everything he could to tell me Gate was right. That I had no control because he was the one who ultimately decided what we would and wouldn’t do, who we would and would not create a future with. He wanted the girl in the bed, the girl without a voice or a name or a past.

“I don’t know who she is,” I reminded him.

“You do. Or, rather, he does.”

Meaning the dragon.

“What if that isn’t good enough? I mean, suppose she’s really the sort of person I described back there? A criminal, a thief, someone whose presence in my life could spell danger for us?”

“What do you think the odds of that really are?” he asked, not unkindly.

He could’ve grilled me mercilessly, told me I was acting like an old woman—and I would’ve deserved all of it, and more. Instead, he was my friend, as he’d always been.

“Sincerely, Miles. What do you feel?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do—or, you would, if you’d just let yourself feel it, rather than trying to understand and dissect and determine what the future will look like with her in it. The fact is, there’s no way to tell what the future holds. We can only take what life hands us, and life handed you this girl. Are you going to waste time pushing her away, telling yourself the situation isn’t quite right? Or are you going to embrace her and let her in?”

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” I chuckled in an attempt to cover up the roiling, raging conflict in my head.

“I think you’re deliberately putting up barriers because you’re not accustomed to the dragon demanding something like this,” he replied. “It’s one thing for him to demand you let him stretch his wings, but another to give in when he demands his mate.”

“How did you stand it? I mean, is this what you went through?”

“Raking myself over the coals? In a way, yes,” he replied, shaking his head ruefully. “It was misery.”

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