1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Maeve

T he day I lost my job was the day I fell in love with the Dragon.

It’s not that I hadn’t seen it coming—the falling in love, not the job loss—but that didn’t make it any easier. Taran was everything I’d grown up to look at with contempt. My family never had a lot of money. We dipped our cookies in water, not milk, we reused and made do to stretch the meagre earnings my parents brought home from their full-time jobs at minimum wage—when they had jobs, that was. They never drove fancy cars, we didn’t go on vacations, and asking them to pay for anything new was laughable.

Taran Atax came from old wealth. The only offspring of an unbelievably rich Dragoness, he lived in a restored castle on a Highland loch. I’d searched his name on Kraken after finally deciphering it on his sleek black credit card.

I bet he only ever had proper milk with his cookies, and expensive was his middle name.

Shit, even his credit card looks like it costs a fortune.

He’d started coming into the cafe a while back. The first time he had looked more like a newborn foal trying to take its first tentative steps in this crazy world than the wealthy, established businessman he was.

“What can I get you?” I’d asked him once I got over my initial astonishment in a high-pitched voice that sounded nothing like me.

But good God, he’s so hot.

Taran was at least a foot taller than me, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist he emphasised with corsets under his tailored suit jackets. The shy smile he’d given me and his bright white fangs standing in stark contrast to the soot-coloured scales had enchanted me from the start.

“I don’t know,” he’d said. “I’ve never been here before. Surprise me?”

I always vowed not to diagnose the people around me, but I had immediately recognised him as a kindred spirit. Awkward af? Social anxiety? Newborn foal vibes? Welcome to the neurospicy club, mate.

But damn me if that didn’t make me like him even more.

My soul recognises your soul , or whatever spiritual bypassing BS my roommate Tiff would have called it. If I had told her about him. I hadn’t yet…Taran was my little secret .

And it’s not just my soul, either. Taran made me want to break all my self-imposed rules around fucking on the job. But ‘Don’t hook up with customers’ came right after barista rule number one: clean your machine.

He had returned repeatedly, and it had been the highlight of my shifts to see him find his footing. I fucking hated that it should all be over.

But hey, perhaps I’d score his number as a parting gift. I huffed under my breath as I cleaned the ducts.

“Maeve?” a tentative, rumbling voice from behind the counter asked, a voice so deep it reached the most remote corners of my body. Every single one of them.

“Hey, Taran.” Trying to at least fake a smile, I met his eyes—green with golden rings around the pupil that mirrored the ones sitting at the base of each brittle horn.