7. Roarke

Iwent home reluctantly after making sure that Emrie was safe with her Clan at the lodge, and shook my head at the memory of seven helpless bear shifters not knowing in the slightest how to comfort a distraught Emrie.

The only ones who seemed to remotely know how to help her were Mateo, Mathan and Riggs, and only because they were really observant, and in Riggs' case, had an insight into Emrie that—if I was honest with myself—now made me a little jealous. Because it was a deeper connection than Emrie and I currently shared.

I sighed as I pulled in front of my farmhouse-style home and sat in the car with the engine off. The mama bear and her cubs fountain in my driveway burbled, creating a shushing, peaceful melody that drove some of the tension in my body away.

I leaned my forehead against my steering wheel and closed my eyes.

Emrie was my mate.

She was my mate!

I couldn't remember how old I was—hundreds of years old at the very least. Somewhere around seven hundred. I'd given up hope that my mate would ever be found. As one of the last dragon shifters in the world, I figured the likelihood of me ever finding my mate was next to nil, and so I'd adjusted my life and my thinking around until I felt I could be happy, and then I'd just moved on with my life.

And for a time, I'd been happy. Sure, no one who knew me would probably say I'm a happy dragon. I tend to grunt and growl. I'm uncommunicative at best, and I don't suffer fools lightly. But, especially in this last few years with Emrie, I'd been happy. Content.

Emrie was a constantly unfolding joy, my work was interesting, vibrant and fulfilling, and—coupled with my work on the Council—it helped me stay busy. I had hobbies that gave me a creative outlet when I needed one, and my other friendships with various paranormals took up the rest of my time. All of these things had worked successfully for years to help fill the gap of my missing mate. A gap I never thought I'd fully fill.

It was like a gaping chest wound that never fully healed.

You just learned to kind of...deal with it.

I grabbed the bags of groceries next to me, headed into my house and to my kitchen to put them away, and got out the ingredients I needed for comfort food.

Carne Asada Nachos.

All of those females who claimed that only females needed comfort food when they were sad or distressed clearly knew nothing about the male psyche. I was a male. I'd just found my mate after I'd resigned myself after seven hundred years to never finding her, and she'd been attacked by another male. She now smelled like another male, which was beside the point, even though my dragon nature didn't like it. But most importantly, she was hurting. I'd left her to the tender, confused ministrations of her Clan, but my mate was hurting, and there was nothing I could do to make it better.

So, yes, I needed comfort. And yes, I knew it wasn't healthy to eat comfort food when you're emotional. I'd heard it so often from Draven that I could quote him expounding on the unhealthy connection people had with food and their emotions verbatim. I got it. But I just didn't care at the moment. I needed my emotional support nachos, and I needed a lot of them.

Besides, when Draven got like that I just casually mentioned that his food is blood and he has an unhealthy attachment to it on a daily basis. Also, that he gets particularly nippy and bitey when he's stressed and/or angry and/or—I shuddered—amorous, so he had no room to talk.

That always shut him up.

I wrapped my apron around my waist and tied it off, then got started on searing the meat, my hands automatically getting out the pan, adding the oil, and adjusting the heat on the burner as my mind simmered over the day's events. After I got a good sear on both sides, I turned the heat down, got out an onion and tomatoes, and went to work roughly chopping them.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I washed my hands at the sink,, dried them off, and pulled my phone out to see who'd texted. It was from an unknown number. My brow furrowed in confusion as I opened the text, and then I smiled in relief.

I could feel the tension drain from my muscles as I stared at a pic of Emrie on one of the couches in the lodge. She was in her pajamas, and the koala they were fostering was wrapped around her shoulders, nuzzling her face. Taco was leaning into the picture with a cheesy grin, and Mateo was behind the couch, his sharp, intelligent eyes focused on Emrie with concern. Drew was making some kind of ridiculously silly expression, and Emrie had been caught by the camera mid-laugh.

The joy on her face was incandescent. It was so beautiful that it literally made my chest ache.

I blamed the stinging in my eyes on the onions I had just chopped. And then I shook my head. I was too old to lie to myself. That was for the young. The truth was, Emrie had always had the ability to melt my heart.

Unknown Number: She's okay. We'll keep her safe.

Riggs, I hurried to input his name in my phone.

Thank you. I'm in your debt.

Riggs: No problem. And she's Clan, and now so are you. There is no debt between Clan members.

I saved the picture to my phone, made it my lockscreen photo, and got back to preparing my nachos, feeling lighter and more hopeful. Emrie looked relaxed in the photo and in less pain. I felt like I could finally relax. My mate was okay, surrounded by her Clan. They would keep her safe, and apparently their inept attempts to cheer her up had worked, miracle of miracles.

I finished up my baked carne asada nachos with some fresh sour cream, guacamole, and homemade salsa, my plate piled high with cheesy goodness, grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge, and settled myself in my recliner in front of my massive-screen TV, which was mounted to the wall above my fireplace. I liked to tell people who came to visit that I was mostly blind and the humongous screen helped me to see it better. Whenever I said that I loved to watch their eyes go wide in alarm at the imagery of a huge, fire breathing mostly blinddragon flying around Moonhaven.

I had a twisted sense of humor sometimes.

I didn't figure that would change anytime soon. I used to make people pee in terror by my mere presence. I was confident—Emrie called it arrogance—that a battle between me and literally most other beings on the planet would result in my victory. People gave me a lot of physical clearance, and most of them reeked of fear around me. There's a reason dragons are the apex of the paranormal world. We're terrifying.

And nowadays it was frowned on by the shifter monarch and Council to eat or even gently nibble on people, so I had to get my jollies elsewhere. We dragons, we few dragons, had to change with the times. Otherwise we really would go extinct.

After watching the hockey game, I cleaned up the kitchen, and went to check on my animals.

I'd grown up poor, hungry, and freezing in the Highlands of Scotland seven hundred or so years ago. Since I'd been old enough to make my own way in the world I'd had houses with lots of land. For one, I was a dragon. I needed the space. For two, I didn't like being close to nosy neighbors. And three—I came around the side of my rambling house and heard my rooster, Crew, greet me with a squawk—I had a million animals that took up a lot of space. Okay, considerably less than a million, but I was in the process of acquiring more.

"Crew, you're fine. Stop being a pest." My rooster was a little like that famous chicken that always thought the world was ending. But he protected his hens, so I kept him, even though he was a pain in the butt.

As soon as I opened the gate my hens flocked around me, looking for extra food and cuddles. My animals—one of my dragon hoards—were a hardy bunch. I wouldn't keep an animal that continued to be afraid of me. Most of them were at first—I didn't blame them. I am a fire breathing dragon after all—but if they didn't warm up to me, and their fear didn't go away, I re-homed them. It was cruel to keep them otherwise. They would spend their whole lives living in terror, and that was no way to live.

I picked up one of them, and she nuzzled into my chest as I checked the henhouse to make sure everything was looking okay. My hens were actually very cuddly. My rooster, not so much, but at least he wasn't afraid of me. I topped off their water and left them to roost for the night.

In the barn, I checked on my horses, Tabitha and Dimitri. Tabitha was a white quarter horse and Dimitri was a dapple grey Arabian stallion.They were both only a few years old. I'd raised them from birth—both of their mothers had died in childbirth—so they were pretty bonded to me.

My barn was spacious and warm, even in winter, because it had central heating and air. I moved Dimitri, who rubbed his head against mine and greeted me with a nicker, to the stall next door so I could clean his stall out. When I finished, I brushed him down, and gave him a cursory check all while talking in a low, soothing voice to him.

"You're a good boy," I said, as I ran my hands down his withers. "And bonus, the flies are all gone because of the cold, so you don't have to put up with them."

He nickered again, and I chuckled. He and Tabitha were both really vocal with me. Sometimes it seemed as though they actually understood what I was saying.

I made a brief pit-stop to check on my dairy cows, then cleaned and checked Tabitha's stall and talked to her for a bit before I tucked the horses in for the night. Then I shut off the overhead lights and closed the two large barn doors at the entrance. I tried to leave the doors open for a bit each day to air out the barn while I rotated my horses and cattle in between two different enclosed pastures so they got some fresh air and sunshine.

I stopped by the goat enclosure and checked on them. Seeing that everyone was fine, I tucked them in for the night, leaving the light on outside their enclosure because of predators, and made my way into my house via the mudroom.

After a quick shower, I set up a six foot by four foot canvas in my hobby room, and started penciling in tables and chairs in the foreground in an open courtyard with riotous flowers blooming along the low cement wall and wooden trellis. In the background I penciled in the Amalfi Coast in Italy, with the houses set on tiered hills and the Mediterranean Sea below. The painting was going to be my wedding gift for Draven and Mia. I'd been busy, so I was a little late on it.

I worked quickly on the initial sketch. Having been a painter now for hundreds of years, I knew my craft, and my own preferred style, well. After I'd penciled everything in, I got to work on my paints. I favored oil-based paints, but I could—and did—use a little bit of everything in my artwork.

By the end of the night, I'd gotten one good layer down, ready for the next layer tomorrow after it'd dried for a good twenty-four hours. I could see the painting begin to take shape, and I felt a deep and abiding contentment.

The whole evening as I'd been caring for my animals and painting I'd been thinking of Emrie.

This was not unusual for me. I thought of Emrie frequently. Often with tinges of desperation for her to be mine, and sorrow that she wasn't my mate.

Dragons have a unique ability called the Soul Gaze. It basically allowed us to see the character and emotions of another being, and time didn't matter to the Soul Gaze, so we could see all the way back to the beginning of their lives if we chose to.

I'd met Emrie about three years ago, but hadn't used my Soul Gaze on her until about two years ago. It wasn't something I just used willy nilly, but there'd been something about her that had stuck with me, even months after seeing her at the restaurant. But the Soul Gaze had come up because she'd pulled me aside one evening to let me know that one of my waiters had been stealing from me. She'd overheard a phone conversation between him and his girlfriend as she'd gone to the restroom. Bear shifter that she was, Emrie could hear the other end of the conversation as well. She'd discreetly pointed out the waiter.

That night two things had happened. One was insignificant: I'd fired the waiter after he'd confessed everything in mortal terror, and committed to paying me back every cent that he'd stolen from me. And two, I'd fallen a little bit in love with Emrie Fairchild.

My Soul Gaze had revealed a female that I immediately admired and respected. And then, as we'd spent time with one another, my feelings for her had grown. I loved so much about her: her gentle nature, her sweetness and empathy for the suffering of others, her ability to protect herself—except for her tender feelings sometimes—her strength, both strength of character and her physical strength. I loved how funny she was. She had such a dry sense of humor that it went over a lot of people's heads because she could say hilarious quips with a completely straight face. I knew she struggled with anxiety, and I felt such compassion for those struggles. I admired the strength it took for her to have a panic attack and then get right back up and keep pushing forward in her day and her life. She was a testament to me of the strength of the shifter spirit.

She was indomitable, in so many ways. And her magic touch with me was nothing short of miraculous. She calmed me, and brought me out of my grumpy moods faster than anyone I'd ever known before. I'd never been able to explain it. I'd just thought it was her gentle nature, but it turns out it had just been Emrie all along.

And the fact that she was my mate?

I shook my head, feeling a little lightheaded. I groped behind me, and sat gently—well, fell onto my butt—on my couch.

Emrie was my mate.

If she didn't reject me...if she wanted me...if she could see herself loving me in the future—we could be together. We could live together, go to bed together, cuddle together, wake up together, eat together, spend every daytogether...have childrentogether.

I put a palm to my wildly beating heart, and blinked the tears from my eyes.

My best friend, my heart, my soul, my fire, was my mate.

My hand shook as I dug my phone out and dialed Draven.

I needed a friend who'd known me several hundred years to chime in. He was also a certified counselor, which certainly didn't hurt when I wanted to talk things over with him.

"I think you're just flirting with me now," he said as he answered.

"I would never flirt with you. Mia would kick my butt."

He laughed. "She'd try. I don't know how successful she'd be."

"Don't let your wife hear you say that. Mia if you can hear me, I want to go on record as saying I think you're intimidating and fierce."

Draven was relating to her what I said in a low tone, with his mouth away from the phone, and I could hear Mia laughing in the background. "I didn't mean to interrupt if you guys are having an evening in or anything."

Mia stole the phone. I could hear her wrestle it away from a protesting Master Vampire.

"Thank you for giving us Emrie's information," she said slightly out of breath. "She's darling."

I smiled. Well, I thought so, but I might be slightly biased.

"You're welcome, Consort Mia."

She sighed. I could still hear her fending Draven off. I think maybe her tiger familiar Zian was involved now because I could hear him growling lightly, and the growls didn't sound friendly.

"Roarke, just call me Mia. I keep telling you."

"And I keep ignoring you. It's a matter of respect. Also of survival. Draven would drain me dry if I disrespected his wife."

"Ha! He told me if you two ever fought he's sure you would win. Nice try."

I could hear Draven protesting her sharing that last bit of information with me. "Don't make me sound like a wuss, love. It offends my manly pride."

She giggled. "Zian don't maim him too badly."

"Thanks, love. It's good to know you care."

She laughed again. I could hear Draven muttering under his breath, and a tiger yowl.

I leaned my head back against the couch and closed my eyes, content to hear my friend so happy and so obviously in love. They'd married a few weeks back, and had gone on a brief honeymoon to Italy. Then they'd come back to deal with the mess of his succession. For a whole week Moonhaven had looked like a vampire convention as the ruling vampire families had come to pay their respects to their new monarch.

But the vampire families had cleared out now, so we were back to our normal population of vampires in Moonhaven.

Which was fortunate because most vampires made me tetchy.

I mean, really, most paranormals and humans made me tetchy too. It was possible I was just a cranky individual. Emrie would definitely agree with me.

Emrie

I massaged my chest.

I missed her, and I'd only been apart from her for a few hours. This mate situation would be an uphill climb, but Emrie was worth it.

"I'm so sorry, Roarke!" Mia said abruptly, her voice sounding suddenly distressed. "You should have told me you were troubled! And I've been going on and on and stole the phone from Draven!"

Before I could protest and tell her it was fine, she transferred the phone to Draven, who got on and growled at me for upsetting his wife. "What did you do?"

"He didn't do anything," Mia protested in the background. "But he's upset. He called to talk to you."

I sighed.

Empaths.

Emrie was right. It was really annoying when people could see into your soul.

"She read my emotions," I explained. "I didn't actually do anything." I could hear Draven cover the phone and some low murmuring happening, then a door opened and shut.

"Okay, we're alone. Tell me."

"I found my mate."

"That's fantastic! Wait...is it fantastic?" he asked hesitantly.

"Fantastic isn't even a big enough word. I'm currently accepting synonyms for life-altering. But there are some problems as well. Can you keep this under wraps for now? All I need is the Council butting into my life, and the life of my mate."

"Of course."

"We just found out recently, and have pretty much confirmed it today, that Emrie's parents were murdered eighteen years ago. Tonight someone broke into her house, and before I could get to them, they tackled Emrie and ripped her necklace off. The necklace her parents gave her and asked her to keep on. It turns out it had been spelled to hide Emrie's scent. When the necklace came off, I knew in an instant that she was my mate. The problem is whoever attacked her—we couldn't catch them—stole the necklace, and it had a picture of Emrie's parents in it. So now—and I'm conjecturing here—whoever killed her parents now knows that Emrie is their daughter. I'm worried they'll come after her next."

Draven was quiet, but I knew it was because his brain was quickly sorting through all the information I'd given him and coming up with his own theories on the matter.

"Any advice?" I asked.

"You're not going to like it."

I grimaced, steeling myself. "Hit me with it."

"Until the person or persons involved are caught, the best place for Emrie is with her Clan, and the best place for you is by her side. I'm not saying you guys should get married right away. That's up to the two of you. But she needs your protection and the protection of her Clan right now."

"You want me to move in with the bear Clan?" I asked in disbelief. "With a bunch of bear shifters, with Riggs, the very dominant, very alpha, alpha?"

"You and Riggs have worked well with each other in the past. I'm sure you guys can come up with something. And, yes, with the bear shifters and with Emrie is the best place for you right now."

I groaned. "I don't play well with others, Draven. You know this."

"Is your grouchiness and aversion to being around anything with a pulse worth Emrie's life?"

I groaned again, then cursed. "You know it's not."

"Then my friend, it looks to me like you're moving in with the Moonhaven Bear Clan."

Wonderful. Just wonderful.