Page 2 of The Dragon’s Emberlinked Mate (Dragon Flight Academy #3)

Rhythe

“And who is the cutest dragon that ever lived? You are. Yes, you are.” I stared down at my adorable nephew, who lay on the floor flailing his arms and legs as he laughed at my antics.

Becoming an uncle was the best thing ever.

I got to spend time with my fabulous niblings, and then at the end of the day, leave them with their parents who could deal with diapers and feedings and all the unfun stuff.

“You can’t say that. There’s four more of them, and they all look remarkably similar,” Pep, my brother and identical twin, said.

I continued in my babbling baby talk. “I know there are five of you, and I love each and every one of you. You are perfect. Yes, you are perfect. Yes you are, and you are all the cutest dragons who ever lived.”

“If they are all the cutest, you won’t mind me trading dragonets, will you? They need their bath.”

Though they were only a few months old, we had this bath-then-bedtime routine down to a science. My parents and I, as well as the nanny my brother had hired and his mate, all had the routine running like a well-oiled machine. There was no winging it here. Any time we tried, chaos ensued.

Someone would entertain a baby or two, someone would bathe a baby or two, and then one of the parents, either Valen or Pip, would rock the children to sleep and put them down.

If all went well, the whole process could take less than forty minutes.

That was on a good day. Not every day was a good day.

Char was the last baby for me to hand off, and so I did.

I handed him to Pip. The nanny had already left for the day, so it was just the three of us here with all five kids.

It was rare for my brother and his mate to be here alone with the kids.

Five was a lot to keep track of, and Pip and Valen both had demanding jobs.

“I’ll put this one down once I’m finished,” Pip said.

“Thank you, darling,” Valen said, now standing in the room, rocking Blaze in his arms. His pants were soaking wet. I knew better than to ask.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the way my brother called his much older mate darling. I was surprised the two of them didn’t exchange a kiss, as if they were going to be apart for hours and not the mere minutes it would take to wash the child and put him down.

They were all kinds of adorable, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous.

Twenty minutes later, the babies were all asleep in their cribs.

My twin settled into the rocking chair and leaned his head back.

I got up off the floor and sank onto the couch.

I suppose I could go home and do my own thing, but my house was empty and quiet.

I didn’t like it. Too much time to be alone with my thoughts.

“Are you going to talk to me about what has been bothering you for months now?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

Of course, I couldn’t lie to my twin, not reliably.

If I asked him to, he could probably pinpoint the exact moment my world had tipped on its axis.

My parents teased us and said he knew me better than I knew myself.

They weren’t wrong. But the same could be said the other way around.

There was a bond that came with sharing an egg.

Luckily at the time, he’d been distracted enough with his new mate and the massive clutch of eggs they were expecting that he hadn’t tracked me down to finagle answers out of me. But even then, I knew he noticed. I tried to pretend that he hadn’t, but of course he did.

It had been months since that fateful day where everything changed. I still wasn’t ready to talk about it. Even now Pip was tired and distracted, and this line of questioning wouldn’t last long. I needed to deflect and let the topic fade away. At least that was my plan.

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Do you still need me to watch the kids tomorrow?”

He sighed. “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind. The nanny will be here, and Mom and Dad will probably come over as well, but they do so well with you.”

“Of course,” I said. “As if I need any special reason to come over. What do you have going on?”

“Valen and I are going out to dinner with Emmen and Charlie.”

My back straightened at the mention of Emmen. A man I had once admired from afar. He had become so much more to me now. So much for having effective deflection. Instead I brought the conversation right to the person I was actively avoiding thinking about.

“Who’s that?” I asked before I could stop myself. So much for thinking before speaking. “Charlie, I mean.”

Of course, my brother knew of my obsession with Commander Emmen. Only my brother knew it as my obsession with the general who fought in the dragon wars, not with the actual man himself—the man my dragon had decided was our mate. My white lie wasn’t going to hold up. I was screwed.

Only… he couldn’t be my mate, not really.

Right? Wasn’t that too cruel for fate? Why would they gift the most perfect dragon in existence to a mate like me?

It had to be my own wishful thinking, and that was why I refused to act on it.

I wasn’t the only one there, after all. If he was truly mine, he’d have noticed too.

“Commander Emmen’s mate or boyfriend, I guess.”

My ears perked up, and my jealousy grew. My dragon was pissed at this entire conversation and pushed me to take my wings and fly to the man. That was a hard pass. If anything, I needed to work on getting both my beast and myself under control. Emmen wasn’t ours, and we needed to get over this.

“They’ve been seeing each other for a little while. I guess Emmen’s on some mission to take a mate so that he isn’t as lonely, I guess.”

I nearly threw up.

“It’s not his fated mate, though.” It couldn’t be his fated. I was his fated. Even if I couldn’t be.

“Yeah, but you know some dragons settle down with mates that aren’t their fated.”

I did not know this. Sure, some young dragons liked to play around, but that was a far cry from settling down.

“Guess he’s tired of waiting around.”

My stomach twisted. Emmen didn’t have to wait around. I was right here.

Only I was a coward.

“I’m gonna go flying,” I said, and I pushed myself up off the chair, taking large steps toward the back door. It would take a lot to get my beast to stay where I told him to once we took to the air, but there was no containing him, not with this new information.

When Valen and Pip had built this house, they specifically made it so it was easy to shift into dragon form and disappear into the sky, which was exactly what I intended to do. They also built it so I had my own room I could stay in. Pip mated well.

“Rhythe? Is everything okay?”

It absolutely was not fine. Not even close.

“Fine. I’m fine,” I lied. But when was “fine” not a lie. “I just… I need some air.”

It wouldn’t take my brother long to come after me, except he couldn’t. He had a family at home, so he wasn’t about to go gallivanting off into the night. At least I was counting on that to be true. I needed my space.

I couldn’t breathe.

I ripped my clothes off and launched myself into the air, letting my wings beat rapidly. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to get away.

Emmen didn’t even know I was his, because I was too cowardly to tell him. And now he had moved on. He was tired of waiting, and I was too scared to tell him that I was his. Part of me couldn’t, because why didn’t he recognize me on his own? It had to be that I was wrong.

And besides, he deserved better than me anyway.

Right now, there was another person out there, touching my mate, enjoying his company. A person who wasn’t me. And I hated that. I hated the way things were before I even knew about Charlie. Charlie, what kind of a name was that?

My dragon roared his distress as we flapped into the night. I blamed my distraught state for my lack of awareness on where I was and what I was doing—at least, that was what I would tell everyone later, when I woke up in the hospital.

After flying directly into the side of a mountain.

At least I didn’t hunt down Emmen. That had to count for something.