Tipping The Scales: Knox (Mate Craze)(29)

That ought to do it.

“And I’m your mate?”

“Yes.”

“What if I don’t want to be your mate?”

Well, that stung.

“Then you choose not to be my mate. It is your choice.”

She sat silent for too long. I knew what was coming. “Show me. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“Remember that I would never hurt you.”

“Yeah? What about… it?”

“My dragon recognizes you as his mate. He couldn’t even find a way in his DNA to ever hurt you. You ready?”

Her attitude had changed in the last few seconds. She was defiant and absolutely against believing what I had to say.

“Yep. Show me.”

I stripped as fast as I could, well aware that her eyes were on me every step of the way. I willed my dragon, who was completely eager to comply, to come forth. He wanted to show her, he wanted her to see, to show off.

My ribs cracked as the change wrought its way through me. The first thing we did was breathe a gust of fire into the space between the mountain we were on and the next. While we flew around her, soaring high and low, her mouth was open wide. Her eyes almost as big as my beast’s.

After a few minutes, I landed back next to her. I tucked my feet back so I didn’t accidentally hurt her with my talons of steel.

“Is this fucking real?” she asked the night, standing up and approaching us. Most humans would’ve run or pissed their pants at the sight of such a thing, but my mate didn’t falter. She took what seemed like an eternity touching my wings, waving me forward so she could touch my mouth and nose, even ran a hand over one of my teeth.

“Let me see your eyes,” she said and then giggled when I snorted, nearly knocking her off the mountain.

“They are the same color as Knox’s. I thought they would be different. Can you change back to Knox now?”

I did as she bid, slowly changing back. My dragon was okay with the change now that Kallie was close, but the scales remained on my human skin and probably would until we were mated. I slipped my pants on, forgetting the shirt.

“Hey,” I said, hoping she would continue to look at me like she had before.

“Hey. Damn, that was no joke, huh?”

My female was formidable.

“No joke.”

I needed to be nearer to her, to feel her heartbeat, kiss her lips.

“Knox?” I imagined all the things I wanted her to say to me. All the things I needed to hear from the mouth of the only one I would ever truly love. “I’m going to need some time.”

That’s not what I wanted to hear.





12





Kallie





I’m going to need some time. What kind of an idiot was I? I didn’t need time. I needed to wake the eff up. It was a dream. It had to be. Except I knew it wasn’t.

It. Was. Real. All of it from the being an Alpha to transforming into a freaking dragon. My gorgeous, beautiful, graceful warrior of a beast. Mine. Everything in my body sang with the truth of it. He’d dropped me off at the B&B less than three minutes ago and my body was already missing the warmth his touch brought.

Letting him leave was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The pull to jump in his arms made it nearly impossible to part, but I had to. There were too many things to process, including something I wasn’t ready to share with Knox yet. Sure, I knew his big secret, or secrets as it were, but this secret wasn’t mine. Heck, it might not be anything.

When he mentioned I was his mate, I had a flash memory of my grandmother near the end of her life. It wasn’t unusual for her to cross my mind. She was my first actual loss that I remember, and that hits a girl hard, even if the loss was someone who was less than “there” long before they left this world. This. This was different. Worse in a way because it had me second guessing her actual dementia.

One of the very last times I saw Gran, she had dozed off in front of the twenty-four hour news channel, once again. My mom and I often conjectured that it was part of the reason she was so hostile near the end. They never showed anything positive, and whomever the politician they were discussing was, they were evilness personified trying to make your life worse.

I quietly went to leave, knowing she was a light sleeper, when she suddenly woke up screaming at me.

“It’s all your fault!” She was shooting venom. Gran had never been a sweet, docile, old lady you would expect to be donning an apron and baking cookies, but I had never heard her like this before.

“Gran, it was just a dream.” I rushed to her side, hoping to calm her. Her breathing was bated and sweat poured down her face. I grabbed her hand which she immediately pulled from me as if I touched her with acid. “I’m here in your room at the nursing home and everything is fine,” I lied. If she kept this up, she was going to throw herself into one of her breathing attacks and each one took her longer and longer to bounce back from. Everything was far from fine.

“It will never be fine because of you.” At that, she spit in my face. Not on accident, but an actual I’m going to spit in your face spit. It took all I had to be calm and to not show my disgust. It wasn’t like she was in control of her actions when she was like that, or so Mom repeatedly told me when I got assigned Gran duty after her guilt finally hit for not having visited in more than a week. Apparently for my mother, I was an easy replacement.