Page 10 of Dragon King’s Bullied Mate

Ollie frowned, thinking about that.

The dragon shifted his weight, then carefully reached out one claw and nudged Ollie’s fallen kite closer. “I think this is yours.”

Ollie stared at it. “You’re not going to… eat me?”

The dragon blinked. “I was actually going to ask if you wanted help fixing your kite.”

Ollie reached out and took the kite. “Can you… really breathe fire?”

The dragon perked up. “A little! But I’m still learning control.”

“Can you show me?”

The knight chuckled softly. “One step at a time.”

The knight didn’t teach Ollie how to fight that day. He taught him how to look again instead of judging first. And sometimes, that’s the braver thing to learn.

Beckett clapped when the story finished. Lyra smiled and rumpled his hair. Until she knew more about dragon shifters, if in fact that’s what her patient was, she didn’t want to instill fear in her young charge.

Because as much as Mikael intrigued her and she found herself drawn to the mystery of him, she wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the risks, especially not where Beckett was concerned. Whatever she had felt for the man in the past needed to stay there. It had been many years since she had even seen him, and that was fine.

That night, after the young boy had gone to bed, Lyra moved quietly through the cottage. When she returned to Mikael’s side and watched the faint tension begin to stir in his limbs. She cupped his face.

“You’re going to wake up soon,” she said softly. Her hand brushed lightly against his head. “And it’s a good thing because the storm is over and I’m running out of time to keep you here.”

“And when you do wake,” she added, “I’d very much like to have enough time with you to get some answers before you leave.”

The heat beneath his skin pulsed faintly in response, and Lyra didn’t pull away.

Chapter 5

Mikael

At some point after the story, he had dozed off. Consciousness returned to Mikael in fragments that refused to align. The pain was still there but dulled now. It lingered beneath everything else as he struggled to make his mind work with some sort of organization rather than pieces floating all over that he tried to grab.

Leave.

He remembered the word, but he hated hearing her say it. He needed her, although he still hadn’t worked everything, or even anything, out yet. But he felt her in the soothing waves of warmth that drew closer and settled near him. She was a part of him now. His dragon stirred, not restless or agitated, but more alert than it had been, and that helped Mikael with his struggles.

“You should have seen the look on your face,” Lyra was saying, her tone lighter than he had ever heard it. She was almost teasing as she spoke to the boy. “You thought the dragon was going to tear Ollie from limb to limb.”

“It could have,” came the retort. “If dragons eat people, then Ollie was lucky that he wasn’t dinner.”

Lyra snorted. “If dragons were truly half as terrible as most of the stories claim, don’t you think we’d have more missing people than we do? Or more towns that were burned down? Maybe even the castle in Iskavard would be burned to the ground.”

Beckett giggled. “That would make people mad.”

“Most stories are just created to make people scared or to entertain those who need a break from their everyday lives.”

Beckett’s reply came quieter, edged with uncertainty. “You said some stories are true.”

“Some are, and sometimes even the pretend stories are based on something real,” she agreed. “But like my story, the truths are not always in the ways people expect.”

Mikael drifted toward the sound without meaning to, anchored by it. He didn’t know why it mattered but he was certain that it did.

“And what if the dragon just… pretends?” Beckett pressed. “What if it waits until you trust it and then it hurts you?”

“Sometimes there are bad things that hurt you.” Lyra paused and her voice was edged with something Mikael couldn’t figure out. “Each person has to make that decision themselves. You can’t automatically think everything is bad or you’re going to miss out on all the good. But you’re right. Sometimes, like the wolves in the stories we’ve read before, even dragons wear sheep’s clothing. You learn as you grow to tell the difference between something that wants to hurt you, and something that doesn’t.”