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Chapter 4

Augustine

A ugustine simply couldn’t understand. In the middle of conversation with his mate, of showering him with compliments, he shut down.

Augustine told him he was beautiful, and he turned away, no longer interested in the conversation. What kind of being did not enjoy being told of his beauty?

Did he not enjoy beauty? No, not possible.

Perhaps no one enjoyed beautiful things as much as Augustine himself, but being a dragon, he was a little biased in favor of lovely things.

Or... was that the problem? Did his mate dislike dragons?

Augustine looked over at him, to the long, lean, rigid lines of his back, since he was turned away. His lovely teal hair, wavy from the ocean air, with an almost iridescent sheen when the light hit it just so. If anything, he was even more beautiful in the lights of the lair. Shining and teal and gold and... simply breathtaking.

Even the way his tense muscles stood out was somehow beautiful. The dusting of freckles on his shoulders that almost glittered under the light, peeking out from beneath his robe, as though the man himself were made of gold.

He wouldn’t have been the first creature to hate dragons. Augustine’s kind had been hunted to near extinction over the last millennium. The peasants always complained that it was about dead and missing livestock, but Augustine himself had certainly never eaten some farmer’s cow. Neither had his mother, dainty thing she’d been.

She had always preferred fish, caught herself from the ocean, and taking from no one. Still, the peasants had claimed slaughtered livestock when they had hunted down her lair, murdered her, and stolen her hoard.

Augustine absently rubbed at the scar those same peasants had given him when he’d tried to save her that day. If he’d come in as himself and not in his soft two-legged form, if they’d realized he was a dragon, and not just another one of them, no doubt they’d have murdered him as well.

He hadn’t believed the lie about livestock then, either.

It had been greed, pure and simple, and the cows were an excuse to murder and steal what they couldn’t acquire another way.

His mother. Maybe she would help him now.

Augustine marched past where his mate stood, arms crossed and scowl on his pretty lips, and looked over the half dozen trunks in the main room. Was it one of those? Not the pine wood with the silver lock, or the leather covered one...

There! The ancient wooden chest sitting next to the luxurious velvet and brocade sofa, with wrought iron bindings and a heavy black lock. He tapped the lock twice, reaching out and asking the mechanism inside to unlock for him.

It was almost his mother’s chiding tone that responded, “ It’s about time, child ,” as it clicked open, dropping into his hand. Little wonder, really. It had belonged to her for centuries, and objects often took on aspects of their owners or creators, and she’d been both for this chest.

This chest, that she’d given him in anticipation of the day he found his mate.

Mother had been stronger with magic than Augustine, and opening the chest, he wondered if perhaps she’d had a touch of future-sight. The first thing in the chest, sitting on top of a heavy, folded piece of velvet—clothing, perhaps?—was an enormous, perfectly cut aquamarine stone, almost an exact match to his mate’s beautiful clear teal eyes.

He held it in front of himself, out where his mate could see it. Those stunning teal eyes caught on it for a moment, as though he could see the importance of a gift from Augustine’s mother even though he hadn’t been informed of the object’s origin, but then he looked away again.

The light flickering on his lovely face played over the perfect line of his nose, casting shadows over his perfect plush lips... and caught a tick in his jaw muscle. “It’s lovely,” he said, his voice still clipped and angry. “Which is all that matters to anyone, naturally.”

It was obvious that the gift didn’t impress him. Augustine swallowed down the implied insult to his mother and pulled up the item that had been under the stone.

It was equally beautiful, unsurprisingly. A long robe made from an almost platinum shade of ciselé velvet with a hand-cut floral pattern. It had to have been made on a loom, since Augustine’s mother had died before the advent of machine-made fabrics, but the material was almost too fine to be real, the weave tiny and so very soft.

Augustine stood, letting the end of the fabric waterfall to the floor in a loose tumble, showing off the pattern. He used a quick spell, one he’d memorized many years ago, to dispel any lingering mustiness that came from being in a trunk for so many years.

Declan didn’t even look at it.

“My mother collected these things for me to give to my mate,” Augustine said, trying, and likely failing, to keep the tension out of his voice. “They are supposed to be for you.”

The look that crossed Declan’s luscious lips could only be termed a snarl as he spun toward Augustine, eyes narrowed. For a second, he was distracted by the robe, eyes going wide and breath catching, but he shook his head and looked up at Augustine. “Do you actually think gifts are going to make this better? You’ve kidnapped me. You can’t hand me a pretty rock and say everything is fine.”

A pretty rock hardly described the treasures his mother had collected for Declan, but Augustine tried to be understanding. Declan simply did not understand yet. He didn’t feel the pull the way Augustine did. He wasn’t human, but perhaps he was as lacking in magic as one of them. Perhaps he didn’t realize he was meant to be with Augustine.

Perhaps... perhaps he didn’t find Augustine beautiful at all.

He shuddered and tried to hold back the fear that threatened to rush over him. No, maybe Augustine wasn’t the most beautiful dragon ever hatched, but his scales were shiny and well groomed, and his human body was acceptably shaped when in that form.

He took a deep breath and looked his mate in the eye again. “It is not a rock. It is a mating gift from my mother.” He held up the robe. “And this, as well.”

He shifted the robe to one hand, to motion to the rest of the chest, but Declan batted the robe away, the delicate thing catching on the edge of the wood, a tiny tearing noise echoing through the cave like an earthquake. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want your gifts. I don’t give a damn about pretty things, and I certainly don’t want your mother’s presents. She’s probably just another kidnapping dragon, like you.”

The fabric being rent was echoed by Augustine’s heart doing the same.

He dropped the ruined robe into the open chest and took one big step over to grab Declan up, hoist him over his shoulder, and carry him off. Declan shouted and banged his fists against Augustine’s back the whole way, but it meant little, his tiny soft-skinned hands banging against Augustine’s thick scaled hide. Even in his two-legged form, his scales protected him.

They arrived at the secondary bedroom, and Augustine marched right in, tossing his mate on the bed, where the man froze, eyes going wide in shock and fear. He scrabbled backward like a crab, toward the headboard, staring at Augustine in horror, gasping for breath and trying to speak.

“My mother,” Augustine bit out, “was the kindest, sweetest, most generous dragon to ever live, until your kind murdered her to steal her hoard. You will never speak of her again.”

Perhaps the little two-legged creature would not understand what it meant, for a dragon to be generous. It was one of the rarest, most revered gifts among dragonkind.

It mattered little. Augustine could not even look at his mate, with that poison so fresh in his mind. He left the room, locking the door behind him.