“Nothing is settled,” the First Dragon felt obligated to point out. “I have not agreed to your suggestion. Nor do I have any intention of doing so.”

Ysolde gave him a long look. “You wouldn’t be afraid of us, would you?”

His eyes widened at the brazenness of her comment. “You forget to whom you speak, child of light.”

“Not in the least. I didn’t mean to slight your courage, but I do think that perhaps you’re hiding from the possibilities of finding another mate because of your memory of Baltic’s mother.”

“Which we totally understand,” May added.

The other mates nodded and murmured platitudes.

“Even if that was true, I am the First Dragon,” he said, allowing them to feel the weight of his words.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings like the rest of us.” Ysolde smiled. “What was Baltic’s mother like?”

He was mildly taken aback by the question. “She was gentle. She enjoyed embroidery. She had a great love of nature, and liked to weave in the garden quite a bit.”

“Right. Crafty, nature girl, more crafty,” Ysolde said, making more notes. “What else?”

He rummaged through his memories. “She was very social. She loved to have kin visit. She once said that without dragonkin, she felt lost and alone.”

“Extrovert,” Aisling said with a nod. “So no bookish introverts for you.”

He allowed a little smile to escape. “She definitely was not one for books.”

“That gives us something to go on,” Ysolde said, and the other mates nodded their agreement. “We can start looking right away.”

“I am the First Dragon,” he reminded them. “I have existed for centuries without a mate. There is no reason I need one now.”

“Uh-huh.” Ysolde looked thoughtful for a moment. “How about if we put this in terms of a wager? We, the collected mates of your wyvern descendants, are willing to place a wager that you cannot stay in the mortal world.”

“And live like a modern dragon,” Aisling said quickly.

“And learn about modern women,” May added.

“A wager!” He allowed them to see his disfavor. “I do not wager.”

Jim the demon dog made chicken-clucking noises until Aisling swatted it on the head with a pillow.

“We wager you that you can’t live like a modern dragon—modern wyvern—and get to know modern females of a dating age for a year,” Ysolde said, the other mates murmuring their approval.

The First Dragon thought about his life, and unexpectedly found himself saying, “A day.”

“Six months,” countered Aisling.

“Two days.”

“We will naturally settle on a month,” Ysolde said with blithe indifference to the fact that his gaze was quite pointed. “You live here, with us, for a month. No magic, no demigod stuff, just be a normal dragon who meets and interacts with females like any other dragon, and at the end of that time, we’ll know you well enough to find you a woman, or you will have found her yourself.”

“That is not a wager,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“Not in the strict sense, no, but it is a challenge.” Suddenly, Ysolde smiled, and he saw again why Baltic, his most fractious child, was so smitten with her. “And I don’t think you’re one to back away from a challenge any more than we are. Do we have an agreement?”

He thought for a few moments. Perhaps such an interlude would be sufficiently amusing to keep the increasingly frequent feelings of disquietude at bay. “Very well, I agree to your terms.”

“Excellent,” Ysolde said over the voices of the other mates as they declared their approval. “I think you’ll find this will benefit us all. We’ll get to know you better. You can see the children all you like, although to be truthful, I can’t imagine why you would want to. Brom is going through moody teen years, and Anduin is a little terror, while Aisling’s twins are—”

“Horrendous little monsters in adorable four-year-old form,” Aisling said calmly.

“But assuming you did wish to see the latest generation, you can. And more, you will see how dragons fit into the world today.” Ysolde’s smile grew broader. “All the while we can be finding someone perfect for you.”

He smiled a long, slow smile, one that said without words just how unlikely that would be.

Chapter Two

“Are we there yet?”

I buried my head deeper under my jacket, and counted to myself. Five. That was the fifth time in an hour that Cassius had asked if we had arrived in the small Hungarian town where our next gig was. Five wouldn’t seem like a lot, but it was when you were desperately trying to get some sleep, or risk losing the ability that paid your rent. I thought of pointing that out to the boys, but didn’t want to get into another argument about why sirens needed to rest before pushing a crowd.

Starting with my toes, I made a concerted effort to relax my muscles, moving up my legs to my thighs, stomach, arms, and on up to my neck. By the time I was mentally chanting singsong meditative phrases, I was on the verge of sleep.

“Are we there yet?” Whomp. Someone kicked the back of my seat, instantly snapping me out of my relaxed state. I pushed off my jacket and sat up, snarling at Cassius’s face, “I was almost asleep!”

“What?” he asked in his thick Austrian accent. A little sneer curled his lips. “You sleep too much. You are always sleeping. Every time I look, you are sleeping.”

“No, I’m trying to sleep, something that’s impossible with you knocking the seat around. Cheese and crackers, do you not understand how sirens work?”

“Oh god, now you get her going again,” Rina said from the front seat, turning around to purse her lips. She was Russian, had red hair, and bore an insufferable expression that always made my palm itch. “Now we hear lecture of how to pull.”

“Push,” I said, sighing as I swung my legs off the van’s bench seat, and turned to face front. “What I do is called a push, which you’d know if you listened to me instead of playing video games all the livelong day.”

“What is livelong?” Rina asked, glancing up from her gaming device.

“It means you’re always staring at that stupid Game Boy,” Andrew answered, sending me a quelling look in the rearview mirror.