MATED TO A DRAGON

The Hoard

He showed me the hoard at dawn.

I had woken to find a new dress laid outside my door, deep green wool that brought out the brown of my eyes. Kael was waiting in the library, back in his man-form, holding two cups of something steaming that smelled like bitter chocolate.

"Drink. It will give you strength. The hoard is deep."

The drink was hot and rich and made my head feel clearer. He took my hand, his large, warm hand swallowing mine, and led me past the library, past the kitchen, down a stairway that had not been there yesterday. The mountain was alive. It made paths where Kael wanted them.

The deeper we went, the warmer it became, until the air itself glowed red.

And then we entered the cavern.

I have no words for what I saw. I tried to understand it, but my human mind could not hold it.

It was not gold. Well, there was gold, piles of it, coins from kingdoms that no longer existed, crowns rusted with age. But that was nothing. That was just the floor.

The hoard was memories.

Floating in the air, suspended in crystal orbs of all sizes, were lights. Thousands of lights. Each light held a scene. I saw a woman giving birth. I saw a battle with ships that flew. I saw a child learning to write. I saw dragons, dozens of dragons, flying in a sky that was not our sky, a sky with two moons.

"What is this?" I whispered.

"My memories. And the memories of my family. Dragons do not write history in books. We store it. We keep it. This is four thousand years of dragon history."

He walked to one orb and touched it. It flared, and suddenly I saw a young Kael, no bigger than a horse, playing with another dragon, a silver one.

"My sister," he said quietly. "She died in the Great War between dragons and humans. Humans feared us. They hunted us. We hid. Most of my kind left this world. They went through the veil to a world without humans. I stayed. This mountain was my mother's nesting ground. I could not leave."

I felt tears in my eyes without knowing why. I reached out and touched his arm. He was trembling.

"You are alone," I said.

It was not a question.

"Yes," he said. "For a very long time, I have been alone. Until your village started sending me company."

He turned to me, and his golden eyes were full of an old, old pain.

"The other girls, Elara. They were not my mate. They were... guests. I was kind to them, but I never touched them. I never wanted to. With you... when you walked into my temple, my blood sang. My dragon recognized you. That has only happened once before in my life, and she died before I could claim her."

He stepped closer, and the heat from his body was overwhelming.

"Do you know what it means to be mated to a dragon?" he asked, his voice low. "It means you will live as long as I do. It means you will never be sick. It means you will be able to see memories, to walk the mountain as I do, to command stone. It means you will be mine, and I will be yours, and no force in this world or any other will ever take you from me. But it must be a choice. A dragon's mate cannot be taken. She must be given, freely."

My breath was fast. "And if I say no?"

"Then you leave in spring. With gold, with books, with whatever you want. And I will never ask again. I will watch you go and I will stay alone. And I will still protect your valley, because it is yours."

I looked at the floating memories, at the thousands of years of loneliness stored in this cavern.

In Oakhaven, I was Elara Finch, the third daughter, good for nothing but sacrifice. Here, in this mountain, this ancient, lonely creature was offering me forever. Not as a sacrifice. As an equal.

"I need time," I whispered.

"You have all winter," he said.

He took my hand again, and this time I held on tighter.

From the shadows of the hoard, something else watched us. A small orb, near the floor, glowed brighter than the others. Inside it, I saw myself. Me, as a child, picking white flowers in Oakhaven. How? How did he have a memory of me?

Kael saw me looking and quickly waved his hand. The orb went dark.

"Some memories are not ready to be seen yet," he said, too quickly.

But I had seen it. And I knew my story with this dragon had started long before I walked up that mountain.

Long before I was even born.