Breck furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “I can’t think of anyone but her,” he said slowly. Then he tried to imagine Darla as a man, and what they might do together. “Nope, definitely still bisexual,” he grinned.
“You’re kind of baffling,” Liam said, shaking his head.
“It’s mutual,” Breck agreed without judgement.
But he realized that it didn’t mean anything about their ability to be friends, and, differences aside, he suspected he’d have a strong friend in this man. He was already grateful for the dragon shifter’s friendship with Darla, and admired his generosity with the rest home.
I told you he wasn’t our rival, his leopard reminded him.
“I think there’s someone out there for you,” Breck said confidently. “And this island sure seems to have a way of introducing mates to each other. Maybe they’ll show up at Shifting Sands someday and sweep you off your feet.”
“Without the sweeping, maybe,” Liam said.
The housekeepers were looking pouty and disappointed as they returned to the edge of the dancefloor, and Chef stole Darla before Breck could cut in, grinning at him over her shoulder.
Alison was standing there and Breck gave her a courtly bow. “May I have this dance?” he offered.
“I’m not very good,” she warned him, but Breck gave her his most charming smile and insisted.
She was better than she had given him reason to believe, and became comfortable enough with Breck’s lead that they could even converse.
“I owe you an apology for stealing your son’s wedding,” Breck said sheepishly.
“Pish,” Alison said smartly. “You and Darla were clearly meant to be, and I’m not sorry not be saddled with Darla’s mother for family.”
They laughed together over that, and Breck asked cautiously, “Did you... know that theirs was a marriage of convenience?”
“Oh yes,” Alison said easily. “I knew Liam was asexual before I knew he was a dragon shifter, and he was quite frank with me about their arrangement.”
“He says it was a big surprise for you when he first shifted,” Breck said leadingly, suspecting a humorous story he could use as leverage later.
Alison laughed. “You know what a teenager’s bedroom looks like? Perpetually messy and filled with stuff? Now imagine a very confused dragon stuffed in there, folded floor to ceiling in shimmery coils, with no earthly idea how to get back to human form. We were expecting something a lot smaller.”
Breck coaxed the story from her, and they laughed together. “It was a crash course in everything about dragons,” Alison admitted, as the song came to a close. “Mrs. Grant went on and on about how she researched dragon custom, but she can’t hold a candle to the months of study we went through figuring out how to cope with a several hundred foot flying serpent who couldn’t put a toilet seat down to save his life.”
Breck would have laughed, but he was watching Darla being grimly shuffled to the bar by Graham, and he was utterly caught up in a wave of confused emotion: she was so utterly dear to him, she filled him with longing and fulfillment all at once. He wanted to show her off and hide her away to be only his. He wanted to spend forever unraveling the complexity of everything he felt for her, and he couldn’t believe that she was his.
He was busy watching her instead of minding his feet, and he stumbled into Alison before he realized he was still dancing and the music had stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely.
“Your wrist is glowing,” she pointed out.
The dragonrunes were pulsing with light, and Alison frowned at them thoughtfully.
“Unbroken line,” Breck said, rubbing it. “It never did make much sense.” He hadn’t even been thinking about sex.
“Is that what Mrs. Jubilee Grant said?” Alison scoffed. “Amateur. That doesn’t say unbroken line, that says unbroken bond.”
Breck looked down at it, and then across at the gleam on Darla’s wrist across the room. She met his gaze through the dancers and smiled sheepishly down at her wrist.
Someone was cl
inking on a glass in the silence from the music, and Alison gave Breck a little push to start walking to Darla as the others parted between them.
The touch of her fingers as they met in the center of the floor was like magic, and the marks on both their wrists gleamed like moonlight.
Scarlet was standing with her glass raised, and she gave everyone time to find their drinks and join her in a toast.
“We are celebrating a union today,” she said warmly. “Even if it’s not exactly the union we were planning to celebrate.”