Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

foot in irritation, and demanded, “Stop running away from me and let me kiss you!”
    “I’d really rather you didn’t,” he said with a wary glance at his wyvern.
    “Ysolde,” Baltic said in an even, almost disinterested tone of voice.
    I marched over to him, narrowing my glare until it could have sharpened the edge of his sword. “What?”
    “You don’t have to attack Kostya to make me jealous, chérie ,” he said, the irritation in his face replaced with wry amusement. He gestured toward Constantine. “I’m ready to fight him to the death for his audacity in claiming you. I don’t think I could get much more jealous than that.”
    “Oh.” I thought about that for a moment, then took a step closer to him, not quite touching, but close enough I could feel the heat of his body. I looked deep into his eyes, searching there for the answers I so desperately sought. “You really want me for your mate even though I’m a silver dragon?”
    “Yes.” A muscle in his neck twitched.
    “Why?”
    His eyes took on the same wary look Kostya’s had just borne. “Why?”
    I prodded his arm. “Yes, why? Why do you want me for your mate?”
    “Eh . . .” He looked from me to Constantine, who was standing watching us with a black scowl. Baltic squared his shoulders and leveled a haughty look at me. “That is unimportant. Only the fact that I have claimed you should matter.”
    “It matters to me,” I said, and put my hand on his chest, over his heart.
    Behind me, Constantine took a step toward us.
    “You are female. You do not know what you’re saying.”
    “By the rood, I don’t. Tell me, Baltic. Why me?”
    “Because,” he said, his eyes glittering darkly. “Just . . . because.”
    “Do you love me?” I asked.
    His jaw tightened. “That is none of your business.”
    I laughed; I couldn’t help but laugh at him. Love in marriage was only a dream, my mother had once told me, and yet I knew she loved my father. She had also said that some men have difficulty admitting to such tender emotions, and clearly Baltic was one of them.
    “I think it is my business. It’s important to me, Baltic. I would like to know—do you love me?”
    He stepped closer until his chest was pressed against my arms. “This is hardly the place to discuss such a thing.”
    “I think it’s the perfect place,” I said, gesturing at all the dragons, hesitating a moment when I noticed that every single one of them wore expressions of pain identical to the one on Baltic’s face. “I must know. I will not bind myself to a man if he doesn’t love me.”
    “That’s foolishness,” Baltic scoffed, and the dragons scoffed with him, murmurs of agreement rippling around us.
    “Nevertheless, I must know. So I ask you a third time—do you love me?”
    He looked around wildly before leaning in. “There are others here, woman!”
    “I know.”
    “You expect me to say it right out in front of them?”
    “Constantine did,” I said, nodding toward him. Constantine straightened up and looked noble. “He didn’t have any problem saying it.”
    Baltic growled deep in his chest, rolling his eyes heavenward for a moment before he said in a low and ugly voice, “Fine! I love you. Now get the hell out of my way so I can kill your mate.”
    I don’t know what I would have done had Constantine not attacked Baltic at that moment—probably tried to reason with them, although hindsight tells me they wouldn’t have listened. It is moot speculation, regardless, because the second the words left Baltic’s lips, Constantine’s body shifted, stretching and growing and elongating into the form of a silver-scaled dragon with scarlet claws. He flung himself at Baltic with a snarl that left my blood cold.
    Baltic shifted as well, but his form, slightly smaller and less bulky, was ebony colored, with curving translucent white claws that flashed in the air as he lunged at Constantine.
    Teodore, one of Constantine’s guards, tried to restrain me, but I shook him off and stalked forward to where the two dragons were rolling around on the ground, blood arcing in the air as one of them struck true.
    “Stop it!” I yelled, my hands fisted in impotence. I wanted to strike both of them back into their senses. “I will not have th—”
    Constantine’s tail lashed out as he threw himself forward onto Baltic, who just barely rolled out of the way in time. I screamed as I was knocked backwards several yards. Instantly Constantine was there, in