MATED TO A DRAGON

Chapter 2: The Dragon's Lair

The temple was not a temple at all.

It was a house. A strange, impossible house built inside the heart of the mountain.

The walls were black stone, but they breathed warmth. Amber veins pulsed like slow heartbeats, casting a soft golden light over everything. There were no torches. The mountain itself was the light.

And it was huge. Far bigger on the inside than the outside had suggested.

Kael walked ahead of me, his bare feet silent on the polished stone. His tail, long and covered in smooth black scales, flicked once, as if annoyed. I followed because I did not know what else to do. Behind me, the massive doorway had already closed. Not slammed. It simply grew shut, stone flowing over stone like water, until there was no exit at all.

My breath caught. "Did you just trap me?"

He did not turn around. "I closed the door. The wind on that peak will kill a human in an hour. You were shivering."

I had not realized I was. My thin white dress did nothing against the cold outside, but in here, the air was warm. Almost too warm, like standing too close to a forge.

We walked deeper. The main hall opened into a vast library. I stopped and stared.

Books. Thousands of books. Shelves carved into the walls rose three stories high, connected by floating stone staircases that had no railing. Scrolls were stacked in crystal cases. Maps covered a massive table in the center, their ink still wet, showing places I had never heard of. The Floating Isles of Aeria. The Sunken Kingdom.

"Do you... read?" I asked, stupidly.

Kael finally turned. He leaned against a pillar, his arms crossed. In this light, his horns looked less terrifying and more like a crown. "I have lived for four hundred and twelve years, Elara Finch. What else would I do up here? Count the sacrifices your village throws at me?"

Four hundred and twelve years. My mind could not hold that number.

"How many have there been?" I whispered. "Before me."

His golden eyes dimmed. "Six. Over sixty years. Your Elders are consistent."

"And where are they? The other girls?"

He pushed off the pillar and walked to the map table. "One chose to return to the lowlands. I gave her gold and sent her to the coast. She married a sailor. One became a scholar and lives in the great library of Eldoria now. Two chose to stay with me for a time, then asked to leave. One... died. She was sick when they sent her up. She was already dying. I could not save her."

I felt sick. My village had told us we were being sent to our deaths. To be eaten. To be burned. They never told us we were being given a choice.

"Why didn't they ever come back to Oakhaven? To tell the truth?"

Kael laughed, but it was a bitter sound. "Would your Elders have believed them? Would they have believed that the monster on the mountain is not a monster, but a guardian who has been keeping the valley alive? That I make it rain when your crops fail? That I keep the sickness from your wells? No. It is easier for them to have a monster to blame than to admit they are sending innocent girls to die in the snow."

He said it so casually, but I saw his claws dig into the stone table.

He was angry. Not at me, at them.

"Why do you protect Oakhaven if they hate you?" I asked.

He looked at me then, truly looked at me, and the intensity of his gaze made my knees weak.

"Because this mountain is my home. This valley is part of my territory. A dragon does not abandon its territory, even when the humans in it are fools. And because..." He paused, his nostrils flaring slightly, as if he smelled something. His eyes dropped to my neck, my wrists. "Because your scent is different."

My hand flew to my throat. "My scent?"

"You smell of wildflowers and iron. And fear, but also... something else. Something I have not smelled in a very long time." He took a step closer, then stopped himself, as if remembering he should not. "You said you are not a lamb. Are you brave, Elara?"

I thought of Tomas crying. I thought of my mother's white flowers. I thought of how I had walked into the darkness on my own two feet.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I am angry. I am angry that they lied to me my whole life. I am angry that I spent nineteen years afraid of you."

"Good," Kael said. "Anger is better than fear. Fear makes you small. Anger makes you interesting."

He waved a hand, and a section of the stone wall slid away, revealing a smaller, warmer room. There was a large bed covered in furs, a fire pit with no fire but with glowing coals that never burned out, and a bath carved into the floor, steaming with hot water.

"Yours," he said. "If you want it. No one will enter without your permission. Not even me. That is the law of my home."

I stared at the bed, at the bath. I had shared a tiny straw bed with two sisters my whole life. I had bathed in cold water from a bucket.

"You are giving me a room?"

"I am giving you a choice," he corrected. "You can stay. You can learn. You can leave when the snows melt in the spring, and I will give you enough to start a new life anywhere you want. Or you can stay forever, if you wish. But you will not be a prisoner. Not here. I have seen enough prisoners."

His words should have comforted me, but they raised a new, strange fear. If I was not a prisoner, what was I? What did a dragon want with a human girl if not to eat her?

As if he heard my thought, Kael stepped back.

"Rest. Wash. There are clothes in the chest. They belonged to... a previous guest. She left them. I will bring food."

He turned to leave, his tail brushing the doorway.

"Kael," I called out before I could stop myself.

He paused.

"If you protect the valley... why do you let them think you demand a sacrifice? Why not just tell them you don't want one?"

He did not look back. His shoulders were tense.

"Because if I told them I wanted nothing, they would come for my hoard. They would come with swords and fire. Humans always want something from a dragon. If I demand a bride, they fear me and leave me alone. It was... an arrangement with your great-grandfather. He was a clever man. He knew a story about a monster is more powerful than the truth."

And then he was gone, the stone door flowing shut behind him, leaving me alone in a room that was warmer and more beautiful than any place I had ever been.

I sank onto the furs. They were soft. They smelled like Kael, like smoke and snow.

I was supposed to be dead. Instead, I was in a dragon's library, with a hot bath and a choice no girl before me had ever been told she had.

Outside, I heard a deep, low rumble. Not a growl. He was purring. The whole mountain vibrated with it.

And for the first time since I was chosen, I was not afraid of the monster.

I was curious about the man.