Page 67 of Nine-Tenths

Dragons,I realize immediately.A whole goddamn congregation of them.

They're trying so hard to look harmless, but their effort is laughable. Dav’s draconic magnetism feels like subtle charm. This feels like a bludgeon.

They're all wearing bland suits, with some sort of crest embroidered on the front pockets. Each symbol is different, but they're all cupped by what looks like film festival laurels, held together at the bottom with three maple leaves and a stylized lick of fire. The people are equally bland, with varying degrees of brown-to-blonde hair and flame-shaded eyes.

Except for Pedra, standing glumly in the back of the crowd, looking like she wants to say something, but is too scared to speak up.

"Are you the man in these photos?" one of them asks. He's round-faced, aggressively clean-shaven, with the kind of dark, nondescript hair sported by office workers on TV. There's disgust on his face, which is frankly offensive. He's holding up a phone, and it's displaying the pic Hadi took, where I'm looking at Dav like he hung the stars.

Bitch better not be a homophobe.I square myself up, doing my best to block their progress into the café. I glance at Pedra, trying to gauge what the fuck is going on, but she won't meet my eye.

"Yeah, that's me but—" The sound of the kitchen door slamming open cuts me off.

"Your Excellency," Dav says from the threshold, and if I didn't know Dav as well as I do, I'd call his tone civil. Now? I'd call it downright frosty.

The man with the phone taps the embroidery on his chest, the emblem of a hand holding a dagger. Dav pulls a lapel pin with a similar design from his waistcoat pocket and pins it on pointedly. The symbol in the middle of Dav's laurels is unmistakably a Tudor Rose.

I've never seen this pin before.

Hadi is standing out behind the counter now, watching with a silent and stony expression. I don't know what Dav told her in the kitchen before he banged out to defend my honor, but it must have been serious. Pedra slides to the side of the group, eyes bouncing between me and Dav.

"Is this him?" what’s-his-nuts asks Dav, staring straight through me, as if I haven't already answered.

"I haven't told him a thing," Dav says.

"I don't understand—" I start.

"And let's leave it that way," the guy interrupts.

"Excuse you," I interrupt right back. "You can't talk to my boyfriend like that, buddy. I don't care who you are."

"I am your Lieutenant Governor," he snaps, ember-dark eyes blazing, and yeah, this dude is adragon. Dav seems human, until you realize he isn't. This dude… no way you'd ever mistake him for anything but what he is. "As you fall under my control, I hereby order you tostay silent."

I'm such a goddamned idiot. Lieutenant Governor Francis Simcoe. Right. This is who I'm mouthing off to.

So what?

He's made Dav—my boyfriend, I'd just called him that out loud and we haven't evenhadthe conversation about what we are to one another, so there's me jumping ahead again,shit—upset.

"Fuck you!" I snap back. "I don't belong to anyone but me!"

"Oh, don't you?" He offers me an amused, predatory grin. "That's good to hear." He turns a flinty, superior look on Dav.

I expect my dragon to spit fire, or bluster, or come around the corner and dip me in a kiss. Something possessive. Something to prove to everyone in this weird too-polite stand-off, that I do belong to someone, and that someone ishim.

That, after all my protests, he actuallyismy dragon.

He loves me.

He said so.

"Colin… please. Hush," Dav says instead. He's moving slowly, coming around the counter, but not toward me. He's walking right past the other dragons (holy shit, we're infested with royalty) to stand in front of Pedra.

She cringes and jams her hands into her pockets.

"I didn't know," she says. "I took the beans to a lab and they called—" she gestures to the suits. "I didn'tknow."

"I'm not angry with you," Dav says gently. He turns to face the Lieutenant Governor, standing between Pedra and the other dragon, almost like a… claim.