Dragon Blood

Seventeen: Handsome

Skylar scoffed. "It had better not be. They don't know me."

Orion chuckled. "Lucky them," he teased.

"Hey!" she protested and gently elbowed him in the ribs as they walked. "Did you and your father figure out what to do about the cage, while Nana taught me all about her favorite herbs?"

"Yeah," he said slowly. "He thinks it's best to use the pressure point option. His reasoning is that there's no telling if it'll hurt no matter what we do."

"Okay," she replied, although there was a slight hesitation in her voice. "He knows more about this than I do."

"Dad likes to think he knows everything."

"I see he passed that on to his son."

"Yeah, Olly's a know-it-all too."

Skylar laughed at his retort, making his chest swell with pride for amusing her. It was so insignificant, but he couldn't help but feel something for making her laugh like that. It was a beautiful sound, very carefree. He wondered if he could get her to do it more often.

He led her over to the landing pad, intending on taking her over to the cliffs to force the shift. He couldn't let her participate in the full moon ceremony if she couldn't fly, and that was where all the hatchlings learned. It was a sink or swim technique, and it worked most of the time.

"Did you and Nana have a good time?" Orion asked her as they passed through the Square.

Skylar grinned. "We really did. She is such a wonderful woman. Very funny, too. She talked about the most interesting things."

"I wouldn't take most of what she has to say to heart. Nana is full of stories, most of them crazy."

"I don't know, she seemed very confident about them."

"She always does," Orion chuckled. "What did she talk to you about? Other than her plants, of course."

"Oh, about the first dragons, a little more about Wildlings, True Mates-"

Orion didn't let her continue. "She told you about True Mates?"

"Well, yes. But I asked her, she didn't bring it up. I heard Laura and Fiona talking about it, and I was curious. It didn't seem like a bad thing."

"It's not, except that it's nothing more than a tale to help children sleep at night."

"You don't believe in True Mates?" she seemed truly bewildered by this. "You don't believe there's one person out there who was meant for you, who was made for you?"

"I believe that those stories cause us to miss out because we're waiting for something that just isn't possible. We aren't made for one another. We find someone we're compatible with, and simply mate with that person. It isn't about destiny or fate or anything of the sort."

"Huh," Skylar eyed him carefully as they came to a stop at the landing pad and he prepared to shift. "So you believe in compatibility, not love?"

"Precisely."

"Nana seems to think that her mate, your grandfather, was her True Mate."

"Nana has been off her rocker for years. She cared very much for my grandfather, that's all."

"I would love to see you try to tell her that the man she devoted her entire life to wasn't her True Mate. I have a feeling you wouldn't come out of that in one piece," she told him. "What about Leo and Victoria, or even Percy and Laura? It's quite obvious they love one another. You don't think they were meant to be?"