Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82371 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
“Oh.” Lorne straightened, bouncing and nodding. “That makes sense and I like it because I’ll get to come keep you company more and then you’ll be happier.”
And it clicked into place.
He’d come to hang out with me to make me happy.
First, that was adorable.
Second, I was going to have to watch how I answered his questions going forward.
“I appreciate all your thoughtfulness.” Kissing his forehead as he smiled, I gave him a teasing frown. “But don’t make me happy if it stops you from working or makes you unhappy.”
He scoffed, looking adorable as he made it clear he thought I was crazy. “I’m your mate, Daddy.”
Lorne seemed to think that said it all because he took my hand and looked around as he stepped back. “Do we need to lock stuff up before we go rescue our mate?”
“That’s a good idea, but as much surveillance as we’ve got around here, it might not be necessary.” It was probably the safest place in town at the moment.
Nodding, Lorne frowned thoughtfully. “But you might have someone’s hoard in here accidentally and then we’d have chaos. What if someone in the high school is barely restraining themselves over your bolts?”
He had a weird but interesting point.
“Okay, no tempting people with very little willpower. Dragons or nosy mages.” I couldn’t actually count on it just being the dragons who’d gotten caught up in the shenanigans.
“Very good point.” Lorne followed me patiently as I took a few moments to shut the bay doors and lock up my office. When everything was ready, I looked at my surprisingly relaxed mate. “Is Carrick still grumbling in your head?”
He nodded. “He knows a lot of curse words. Some of them don’t seem to be in English, though. I was trying to decide if they’re current words or if he picked up weird stuff along the way.”
Waving his hands, Lorne looked adorable. “You know, like the Old High German words that still keep popping up or the Gaelic stuff. I should’ve paid more attention in school but I don’t think they taught dirty words, just dragon ones.”
Yeah, where other kids learned Spanish or French, we learned a mishmash of words that had turned into a dragon dialect over the years since our ancestors had first ended up on Earth.
As we walked to my car, I leaned over and kissed his nose before opening the passenger door. “I’d have remembered dirty words. You didn’t miss anything.”
“Oh good.” Lorne perked up as he settled into his seat and raised his arms so I could buckle him in. “I was frustrated that I’d slept through a good lesson.”
“Nope. Our mate is just an overachiever.” In a lot of ways. “He ended up mating so good he got the two of us, didn’t he?”
As Lorne giggled, nodding and wiggling, I shut the door and went around to the passenger side. Carrick was still radiating frustration and foul language as we drove over to his place, since he was supposed to be working from home, but he was so pissed he didn’t seem to realize we could hear him.
He was also so frustrated and radiating so much energy I wasn’t sure I could hear Lorne’s thoughts yet.
“He’s going to have to tell me what that hard-to-pronounce word is. The one that sounds like it starts with a g but it’s probably not a g. He really likes that one and says it a lot.”
I wasn’t any help but I agreed the word was memorable.
“I’m sure we can get him to translate the most interesting ones but I’m hoping some of them aren’t as dirty as I think they are.” I was shaking my head as Lorne giggled. “You don’t need to be corrupted like that.”
Lorne gave a little wiggle and grinned even wider. “I like being corrupted.”
“I’m going to ignore that.” I gave him a stern side eye. “You’re my sweet boy.”
He was still trying not to laugh as he nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”
I was trying to find the best way to call bullshit when we rounded the corner and saw chaos. “Who thought this was a good idea?”
Lorne sighed like we should’ve expected insanity. “Someone at the diner.”
Nodding, I parked just down the street from Carrick’s cute house and marveled at the line of people in front of it. It looked like half the town—and not just the dragon half—had decided that it was a good idea to visit.
Or maybe to torture Carrick, judging by his frustrated vocabulary.
“What are they doing?” Lorne studied the line like he was trying to decipher complex mathematics and failing. “They can’t think this is a good idea no matter what they’re doing.”
“I think it’s safe to say that this is a very bad decision no matter what.” Clearly, some kind of shenanigans had gotten out of hand. “I think it’s time to save him now.”