Every Miraculous Moment (Hyena Heat #6)(14)
“Of course not,” she said, shaking her head with a chuckle. “That would mean they were wrong, and the elders are never wrong. My shift is screwy, too. I have odd-colored scales; they’re dark green with splotches of brown and black, which isn’t in my family’s color line. My mother is a beautiful jade green, and my father’s scales are steel blue. No dragons in my clan’s history have ever had multi-colored scales like mine.”
“Did they try to exile you from your clan?”
She didn’t say anything for a few moments while she finished the orange half. She didn’t meet his gaze, which told him that she was embarrassed about whatever had come after she shifted.
He linked their fingers. “Whatever it is, it won’t change the fact that we’re mates, or how I feel about meeting you, which is supremely lucky.”
She looked up at him with a half-smile. “The king is the head of the elders. He’s basically the boss of everyone. It’s tradition in the clan that females are mated when they’re eighteen. Because I hadn’t shifted at the right time, and my eyes and scales were screwy, the elders insisted I have a fertility test done. Much to my humiliation, it was made known to the whole clan that I was unable to carry young. The king said it was a good thing, because I was so flawed.”
Mack growled so loudly that she stopped speaking and a tear tracked down her cheek. He brushed it with his thumb. “You’re not flawed, Miracle.”
“Maybe not to a shifter group that doesn’t care about that kind of thing, but dragons do. The king attempted to arrange a mating for me with males from other clans, but one glance at the list of my…issues, and no one would look at me twice. My parents told me I should embrace myself no matter what, and that if I was single for my whole life than that was okay. I didn’t want to be single, you know? Dragons can mate with other shifters or humans, but we can’t live with the clan if we do. Although it occurred to me to strike out on my own, I didn’t want to leave my parents. The king eventually found a male who would mate me – his nephew. He was such a lousy person that even though he was related to the king, no female of worth would accept him. I was told to accept the mating as arranged by the king, or leave the mountain forever. Never see my parents or my friends again. Always be an outsider, a clanless dragon.”
Miracle explained that it hadn’t taken her long to realize that her mate had no redeeming qualities. He drank to excess, whored around with females, refusing even to hide his behavior, and took every opportunity to tell her that she was worthless.
Wolf packs in the past had arranged matings. They were often done to merge two groups together, such as when the daughter of one alpha mated the son of another. Mack’s grandfather had been part of an arranged mating, but he told Mack that he knew his father had chosen well because he’d loved his mate fiercely and his wolf had chosen her, too. Maybe arranged matings had a place in the past, but they had no place in the world today. How could a male know what a female would need in her mated life? It was idiotic to assume that one person, king or not, could make that kind of decision. And certainly, if the king knew what sort of male his nephew was, then he wasn’t worthy of the kingship title himself.
“I had to wait until we were mated for twenty years, and then I could petition the elders to free me from the mating. I had to prove that he’d been unfaithful and that he was a bad mate. He protested the mating being severed, but I had so many witnesses that the elders sided against him and with me. I was given our house in the dissolution, but I didn’t want it. I moved in with my parents, but I had to go back to the house because of my glass studio in the backyard.
“A week after the dissolution, he destroyed my studio. The king gave me the funds to restore it, and I had planned to rebuild it behind my parents’ home. Going on this vacation was my friend’s idea. She said I needed to be around males who would appreciate me. I thought she was nuts.”
Mack grinned. “She turned out to be very smart.”
When they were finished eating, she got dressed while he cleaned up the kitchen. Then he wrangled on his salt-stiffened jeans and shirt, and she followed him up to his room on the fourth floor. They made love in the shower before they both got dressed again.
“I think the girls got the better rooms,” she said as she buttoned a pretty pink top over her white lacy bra.
“Guys only care about nice rooms if there are ladies in them,” he said with a wink.
“You’re such a charmer.”
“I’m a little rusty, so I’m glad to hear that you like my skills.”
She chuckled and took his offered hand. “Let’s go meet with the director and see where the day takes us.”
“As long as we’re together, I don’t much care what else happens.”
And that was the truth. Even though the director was tickled pink to know that a couple had mated because of the resort, Mack could care less about the perks that came along with it. They were upgraded to a suite on the fifth floor, which overlooked the beach, but the best view in the whole place was Miracle’s smile.
After the bellhops moved their luggage, they checked out their new suite and were treated to a special lunch, courtesy of the director: steak and lobster, with chocolate cheesecake for dessert. She gave them a list of couples’ activities, such as a dinner cruise out in the bay, a candlelight dinner on the beach, and surf lessons, but as far as Mack was concerned, he’d gotten his prize in the form of a beautiful dragon shifter. As long as they were hanging out, they could attend a spelling bee and he’d be in heaven.