Page 18

EIGHTEEN

"But you have to know! She's your mate. You should be able to sense her though the bond, no matter where she is. Don't lie to me. Where's Diana?"

Eden began to back away, hoping she could get inside and slam the balcony door shut before this strangely attractive but very naked and decidedly angry man followed her in. Clearly, he was delusional.

"I don't know where Diana is. None of what you just said makes any sense. Fated mates and mate bonds are the stuff of fiction, not real life. Magic and fairytales and..." Gulp. "Dragons."

She risked another glance at the roof, but there was no sign of the dragon she'd seen and touched only moments before. Just this hot, hard, shining...she tried to slam the door shut, but the rock hard bicep he wedged inside the frame wouldn't let her.

Fuck. Eden raced for the champagne bottle she'd left on the table, only to knock it onto the floor before she could grab it to use it as a weapon.

He sidled into the room, both hands up like he was trying to tell her he was unarmed. As if. With guns like that, the man was a living weapon.

Her gaze dipped lower. Talk about weapons – she didn't know real men could actually get that big. The man was massive. It would take some careful manoeuvring in order to ride that monster...oh, but what a ride it would be. The ultimate in happy endings...

He grabbed a sheet from the bed and wrapped it around his hips, hiding it from sight. "I'm not here to hurt you, I swear. I only want to find my sister."

"Diana? Diana is your sister?" That would certainly explain why his hair was the same colour. Now that she thought about it, there were other similarities, too – the sharp, chiselled lines of his face, the deep wells of his indigo eyes that seemed to draw you in, so you couldn't refuse him anything.

Refuse HER anything, Eden corrected her thoughts. She'd do anything for Diana, but she didn't owe her brother anything at all.

"Yes. I'm worried about her. She hasn't returned any of my messages, and I need to speak to her. Tell me where she is. Or tell her I need to see her. Diana knows I'd never hurt her."

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.

"I didn't mean...ah, shit. Diana would kick my arse if she was here, or laugh her head off. I meant I'm the first shifter you've seen. Nothing more, I swear."

Eden nodded slowly. "Well, yeah. And I understand why you keep your abilities hidden. I mean, if the whole world knew dragons and werewolves actually existed...wait, do werewolves exist, too?"

It was his turn to nod. "There are all kinds of shifters. In fact, there's a whole society of hidden beings who can do amazing things. I'm sure you understand why we have to keep quiet about our abilities."

He didn't need to explain. There was enough racism and sexism and ableism in the world already, and then there was the whole thing with Area 51. If the general public knew people could turn into dragons, and that werewolves, and all kinds of other fairytale creatures were real, the whole world would likely implode into anarchy.

As all these thoughts swirled around in Eden's mind, she realised how rude she must sound. And to think she'd been having etiquette lessons for almost a year. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I haven't even told you my name. I'm Eden, by the way."

"A pleasure to meet you, Eden," he said, offering his hand, while the other continued to hold up his loincloth. "Like I said, I'm Blaze."

Eden couldn't help laughing. "You're kidding, right? How do you hide being a dragon shifter with a name like Blaze? I mean, your parents might as well have named you Forest Fire! At least Diana got a normal name."

Blaze's eyes narrowed. "It's a family tradition," he said, making Eden feel terrible for laughing. "Diana is her middle name. Our parents actually called her Ember, but when she realised she couldn't shift, she refused to be known as Ember any more, and told us she preferred Diana, and she's been Diana ever since. That's why she came here, to find her mate, because she didn't have her dragon to guide her."

Now it was Eden's turn to narrow her eyes. "What do you mean? Her mate? Like, her true love? And what does being able to turn into a dragon have to do with it?"

Blaze sighed and raked his free hand through his hair – the other one was still valiantly holding up his loincloth. "Some of us believe that all supernatural shifters have a mate – or as you put it, a true love – that they're fated to be with. They're two parts of one soul, and when they find each other, they instinctively know. Only, Diana never got that ability, and so, she thought the next best thing would be coming here."

Eden shook her head. "No. She was here to study business and accounting, so she'd be better at running the animal sanctuary. She wasn't looking for love." A sudden thought slammed into her mind, and she blurted out, "Do you have a fated mate?"

Blaze's pale skin flushed bright red, and he turned his head away, unable to meet her gaze. "I don't believe in that sort of thing."

He was lying, Eden knew. Why else would he have believed she was Diana's mate, if he didn't believe in fated mates?

But there was another thought under that, too. One that left her feeling warm and wet and like she wanted to step closer to Blaze. Like there was some sort of magnetic pull between them.

Or fate...

Eden let out an involuntary sigh of longing.