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And that was all the answer I needed.

“Am I a prisoner here?” I asked, hating the way my voice quivered at the end.

“Never,” Alec said.

“Then say you’ll let me go!”

“We can’t do that. You’re our mate.” His eyes lightened, and for a moment he seemed to grapple with some strong emotion. He took a few deep breaths. “Dragons are possessive about their mates. It’s…unwise to run from us.”

For the first time, genuine fear slid down my spine. Was he saying they would hunt me down?

Lachlan spoke. “You asked us to level with you, Chloe. So here is the truth. Our race has no females. They died out long ago, taken by a mysterious sickness that only affected our women. It happened in another time, when the world was steeped in magic. Maybe it was a virus or some kind of blood disorder, but most likely it was a spell engineered by our enemies. We call it the Curse.”

“Fucking vampires,” Alec muttered, and I jerked my head toward him. Vampires were real, too?

“We’ve never been able to prove it was them,” Lachlan said. “But they and the other Firstborn Races—the other magic wielders in the world—celebrated the Curse, thinking it would be the end of us. Admittedly, they had some justification. Our ancestors were a violent lot. There’s a reason human fairy tales talk of dragons burning villages—”

“We don’t do that anymore,” Alec said.

“—and killing innocents.”

“Or that.”

“What about kidnapping maidens?” I blurted. I’d read enough Grimm’s to know how the stories went, and the Disney versions bore little resemblance to the originals. There was also the fact that I was sitting in a tower room cornered by a pair of freaking dragons.

Lachlan didn’t deny it. “Fate chooses a mate for everyone, Chloe. Even humans. Your kind just doesn’t usually live long enough to meet the person chosen for them. Or maybe they meet in another life, I don’t know. But time isn’t an issue for the Firstborn Races. We can wait thousands of years for our true mate to appear. When the last female dragon died, our forefathers prepared to follow. However, fate is a fluid thing. It adjusts and adapts. Instead of dying off, the male pairs discovered new mates among the Firstborns.”

Well, that didn’t sound so bad. And his explanation about soulmates made sense. There were always those rare couples who seemed perfect for each other, or the occasional touching story of an elderly pair who died hours or days apart.

“Fate gave us new mates,” he said, “but it was an imperfect adjustment.” He found a loose thread on the bedding and snapped it off, leaving a tiny hole. “Each time a dragon pair is matched with a female from another race, we take her away from her people.”

“And the chance to mate with one of her own,” Alec murmured, his gaze on the tear.

“Vampire, werewolf, witch, and fae,” Lachlan said. “All the other Firstborn Races united against us. They couldn’t kill our males outright, so they targeted our females, slaughtering their own daughters in an effort to wipe dragons from the earth.” His jaw clenched. “In doing so, they even killed their own kin. With the exception of our king, all dragons are halflings, since our mothers come from different races. But the lords of the other Firstborns didn’t care about that.”

“They just wanted us dead,” Alec said bitterly. “With no dragons in the world, fate would eventually pair their females with an acceptable mate.” He gave me a thin smile. “Your mother’s attitude toward our way of life isn’t new. Most Firstborns are lusty creatures, but dragons are the only polyamorous race. A thousand-year-old vampire prince is unlikely to cheer at seeing his daughter mated to two males who share a bed.”

“So it was war,” Lachlan said. “We fought for centuries, our numbers dwindling. Desperate, our forefathers took to acquiring females to test if they were compatible as mates. That practice is where your fairy tales come from.”

Acquiring, he’d said. But he really meant abducting. “You mean you held them prisoner.” I glanced around the near-empty room. At the barred window. The castle was old. The tower looked ancient, the blocks in the walls rougher and more primitive than the other rooms I’d seen. “You kept them in places like this.”

“It was a different time, Chloe. Our people were dying.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” Alec said quietly. “And it rarely worked. Cormac, our king, negotiated a treaty with the other races. Dragons agreed not to capture or use magic to steal females, and the other Firstborns agreed to a cease fire. Once a dragon pair claims a female, her kin are forbidden from trying to take her back. But we must claim her fairly, and she has to come to us of her own free will.”

As silence fell, I struggled to make sense of everything. So their war was over and they were free to pursue any female they wanted as long as they didn’t hold her against her will?

Then why was I sitting in a room with bars on the windows?

“To keep you safe,” Lachlan said, reading my thoughts. “The treaty stopped the war, but it didn’t make the other Firstborns suddenly love us. Targeting our females remains one of the few ways to harm a dragon. Our enemies are forever skirting the edges of the treaty without breaking it. Claiming you will afford you some protection, but you’ll still be vulnerable. The safest place for you is by our side.”

My lips parted. Did he mean forever? As in, I could never be alone again? Not even to grab coffee?

“For now,” he said.

I rubbed my forehead, which had started to ache. “This is a lot to take in. It’s all new to me and having you both in my head isn’t helping.”