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Chapter 2

Augustine

I t was complete.

After centuries of building his nest, amassing his hoard, and ensuring his security, it was finished.

Every room of Augustine’s little cave system was fully furnished with beautiful, gleaming antiques. Every wall was covered with the finest paintings, every floor carpeted by the plushest, most perfectly woven rugs.

And the gold? Well, aside from the fact that he had an entire cave full of the stuff, everything he wanted gilded was gilded, and his collection of jewels would have been enough to make the collective crowned heads of history weep with jealousy.

There was only one thing missing.

In centuries of life, Augustine had never managed to find the crown jewel of any dragon’s hoard: a mate to share it with.

Dragons were not, by nature, solitary. They didn’t require much, not villages or huge families or the massive, terrifying cities that humans gravitated toward.

No, each dragon simply needed one other being to make their lives whole. Someone to love, cherish, and frankly, talk to, so they didn’t run mad with only themselves for company.

It wasn’t an exact science, like werewolves and their true mates. What Augustine would have given for a magical pointer like that, constantly nudging him in the direction he needed to go. Fate, dragging him toward his destiny.

As much as he loved his independence, loved knowing that all of his decisions were his own, and that he’d always been good at making them, he thought he might have given it up for the clemency of fate. Fate, that promised werewolves a mate, if only they did as their hearts told them to.

His mother had told him when he was a child that he would know it when he saw his mate, but after centuries of life, centuries alone, he no longer believed it. Surely, if he had a mate, he had missed them along the way, and they had lived and died without ever meeting him.

Augustine didn’t think he’d even recognize an order from his heart if he got one. He’d spent too many years turning over every situation, looking at choices from each angle, making certain that he was doing the right thing before choosing a path.

But then, as he sat there, looking out at mother ocean, bemoaning the lack of fate in his life, fate struck him right in the solar plexus.

The most perfect, incredible, stunning creature ever born simply faded out of the darkness, picking his way down the beach near Augustine’s caves—where few beings ever bothered to wander anymore—and began to strip off his clothing as he went. As he bared acres of creamy, unblemished skin to the moon, all Augustine could do was watch, mouth agape.

The broad expanse of his back had a single marking, a swirling shape of a tattoo that might have been a runic symbol of some kind, or a representation of the ocean. The muscles flexed and bunched as he stretched, then reached down to unzip his trousers, letting them fall to the sand at his feet.

He wore nothing beneath, so Augustine was treated to another vision of perfect skin, a firm round ass that most humans tried for with diets and exercise regimens, but few perfected. In fact, Augustine had never, in all his centuries, seen one this perfect.

The man was tall if he were human, but his vibrant teal hair—and the matching thatch of curls between his legs when he turned to glance up the beach in Augustine’s direction—implied otherwise.

Never, in all existence, had there been a more perfect creature.

Was this what it felt like, for werewolves? Seeing that single, perfect gem of a being and simply... knowing? His mother had said it would be the same, but August had stopped believing in it so very long ago.

It mattered little enough, the how and why.

Augustine watched the perfect creature dive into the ocean, splashing about, moving through the water as though it were a second home to him.

Augustine slipped into the ocean himself, and as he did so, he let his human form slide away, skin replaced with scales, and bulk filling him out in every direction until he once again felt substantial, not like some wisp of a human who might be blown away on a strong wind.

It was the work of seconds to dive deep, coming up beneath the perfect jewel of a creature and snatching it up in his arms—in his natural form, they were almost as big around as the man himself.

The man who thrashed and kicked and tried to escape, but held no hope of overpowering a centuries-old dragon.

Not that night or ever in the future.

He could already picture the creature swathed in the bolts of soft blue and purple silk that he’d collected. Draped across the velvet coverlet on his bed. Wearing the tons of jewelry that had never really had a purpose until now.

Now, they would finally serve the purpose they had always been intended for, but that Augustine had never entirely understood. They would serve to decorate this man, however he wished them to.

This man was the crowning jewel of Augustine’s hoard.

He simply did not know it yet.