Page 16 of Her Dragon Defender

Eden wet her lips. "But I don't know where she is. The school told me she'd gone off to get married. I haven't seen her since the last ball, the night she vanished. I came here looking for her. No one seems to know where she is. Well, except maybe the lord of the manor, Craig Tremotino, but I haven't been able to get close enough to him to ask, and I doubt he'd tell me, anyway."

"But aren't you her mate? How can you not know where she is?"

Eden let out a nervous giggle. "I'm not anyone's mate, even if that sounds like the best kind of fairytale. Fated mates are the stuff of books. Diana was...is...my best friend, and we were going to start an animal sanctuary together. I've been fundraising all night, when that's usually her job at these things, because she's so much better at it, but all that money will be for nothing unless I can find her, because there's no sanctuary without her."

"But she said you were her partner. She talked about you all the time..." the man began.

"In starting the sanctuary, yeah. Business partners in running the place. Anything else...no. Diana isn't in love with me. I mean, everyone loves her, me included, but not the kind of love that results in marriage. I mean, the last time I saw her, she was adamant that marriage was the last thing on her mind that night. There's no way she could have met someone who could have changed her mind that quickly, all in one night."

The man smiled faintly. "Not unless they were her fated mate. The connection between mates is instant and unbreakable, or at least that's what I've been told."

A man who believed in fairytales. That was new. Then again, this man had appeared just as a dragon had disappeared. A dragon Eden wanted to say couldn't possibly have existed, but she'd seen it and heard and touched it, which meant it had definitely been real.

So if dragons were real...then maybe fated mates were, too. And a whole lot of other things.

"What are you?" she whispered.

He managed an uncertain smile. "I'm Diana's brother, Blaze."

A name was nice. Made him seem more real, even if he was smoking hot and wearing a loincloth made out of a sheet. But that wasn't what she'd asked.

"No, what are you? Are you a werewolf?" she asked.

"No," he said, then sighed. "This is all going to sound crazy, but, well, you've heard of werewolves, and witches and vampires, right?"

Eden gave a curt nod.

Another sigh. "I'm a dragon shifter."

Eden backed away. "That dragon was you? I touched your nose. You breathed on me. Could've set fire to me..."

He held up his hand. "Please, keep your voice down. You're in danger."

"Yeah, from you. The man who was just a dragon. How is that even possible? Wait, if you're Diana's brother, does that mean she's a dragon, too?" Even as the words left her lips, Eden knew it was impossible. In books, animals automatically sensed shifters and avoided them, while animals adored Diana. Maybe even more than humans did.

He hung his head. "Not exactly. It happens sometimes, though it's usually only a problem for bitten shifters, instead of born ones. She can't shapeshift into anything except her human form. But she's still a full blooded shifter, even if she can't shift, so our parents let her come here in the hope she'd still be able to find her fated mate. They were overjoyed when they got her message, saying she'd gone on her honeymoon. But it's been months, and I need to find her. If you're not her mate...when did you last see her?"

Eden took a deep breath. "I helped her with her hair for the last ball here. The masquerade one. She went to the ball and never came back. The next day the porters collected her belongings, and told me she'd moved away with her new husband."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"I didn't see her. She said she was going to the ball to collect donations for our animal sanctuary, like I was doing tonight, and that she never wanted to get married. So when the school staff said she was on her honeymoon..."

The man's eyes narrowed, and in the light of the setting sun, they glowed like they were on fire. Remembering the monstrous beast he could transform into, Eden couldn't suppress a shudder.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

No. Just afraid she was going to be turned into a human torch by Diana's fire-breathing brother.

Almost as if he'd read her mind, he said, "I'm not here to hurt you. I know it's hard to believe, seeing as you saw me in my dragon form, but if dragons went around killing everyone they met, there'd be pictures all over the internet by now. Mostly, we stay hidden and don't reveal ourselves unless...well, you know. You're at Mirror Academy. One of your parents must be a shifter, too."

Eden shook her head. "I never met my parents. I was raised in foster homes."

His indigo eyes widened, reminding her painfully of Diana. "You mean I'm your first?"

Eden's cheeks grew hot. "Don't get ahead of yourself. The headmistress at Mirror Academy lectures us regularly on how our marriage prospects depend on our purity and chastity. So if you think luring me up here and locking me in this room will earn you a gratitude fuck, you're in for a nasty surprise, dragon or not. I'm sure a knee to the crotch hurts dragon sized balls as much as any other man's."

Never mind that she'd kinda been considering it. He was smoking hot naked and in a loincloth.

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