It was hard to sit there perfectly still when he wanted to drop his head into his hands and curl into a little ball. So much of his life, the isolation of his clan, had been built on the idea that dragons were evil betrayers. If that wasn’t true, what was?
Rage washed through his veins, leaving him gritting his teeth. He didn’t know what to believe, who to trust. Well, that answer was easy and obvious. He could trust only himself. He needed to research more. The dragon could be telling the truth, or this could all be an elaborate lie. He just didn’t know anymore.
Baldewin slid his phone back over to rest in front of him. “Hmm. Odd, come to think of it, we had to teach the others the same history. Do they just gloss over the reason in school when they teach it?” Baldewin scratched at his chin and drank some coffee. “I feel the sudden need to go investigate this.”
“No skin off my nose if you want to leave now, but pay me first.” The sooner he was rid of this dragon, the sooner he could conduct his own research. There had to be a library around here somewhere. Libraries were always free. Websites were easy to create. Books took longer. Books were safer.
“Nein, I still have thirty minutes with you. I plan to use them.” Baldewin tucked his phone away and leaned forward, both arms resting on the table. “Now, you’ve read for yourself we weren’t the bad guys. Does that make you trust me a little more?”
“Not one iota.”
Well, sort of.
Fuck! He didn’t know what to think any longer. His clan lied to him and treated him like shit. Dragons were supposed to be evil. He’d grown up believing that. He couldn’t suddenly stop and trust a dragon without real proof. Right?
Of course, Tori wasn’t about to give Baldewin the impression he suddenly had a leg up. “I still don’t understand what you want from me. I’m not a girl, I can’t give you kids, so why pursue me?”
Baldewin blinked at him as if he’d spouted something nonsensical. “Of course having children is important, but it’s only one reason why we cherish our mage spouses. Our mages bring joy and magic to us. Without them, we’d be lost.”
That sounded more poignant and sincere than Tori had expected. It was almost as if Baldewin spoke on a personal level. It disarmed him enough that he didn’t immediately counter with some sort of sarcasm. “Even a male mage, huh.”
Oops, sarcasm slipped out anyway.
“Is that what you have been taught? That male mages have no value?”
“Yes,” Tori hissed, anger and frustration bubbling up beyond his control. “Everyone knows that most dragons are males and you need a female mage. I’m a male mage. I can’t give you a baby. You can’t impregnate me, and I can’t give you a baby dragon. Besides, dragons aren’t gay.”
“Pansexual, actually,” Baldewin snapped, his grey-green eyes narrowed to an almost warning look. “We’re generally born pansexual, but if a dragon was born gay, we wouldn’t have a problem with it.”
Tori’s mouth dropped open, and he swore his chin nearly hit the table. Was Baldewin getting snippy with him? Did he think Tori was actually homophobic?
The dragon continued grumbling under his breath. “I wish I knew who drummed it into your head that male mages have no value.” He grabbed his phone, unlocked it again, and swiped through it. “They’re a damn fool, whoever they are. Here, look at this. This will show you better than any words I can offer. The man on the right is Alric, my king and my best friend in the world. The one on the left is his mage-mate, Cameron.”
Tori stared at the picture on the screen, and for a moment it felt like he was almost having an out of body experience. The king of the Fire Dragons was handsome, in a darkly-colored way with hints of grey at his temples and laugh lines around his eyes. His husband was very attractive, dark hair falling around his face in a gentle wave and a bright smile that bordered on an outright laugh. They looked both confident and happy, the king standing in the circle of his mate’s arms.
“A…a male mage is your king’s mate? Are you fucking serious?” Could he even believe it? A male mage would never have achieved this kind of power in his own clan. Males were only good for producing more female mages and assisting with spells.
Was this real? Could Alric and Cameron be just close friends? It would be an easy way for Baldewin to pull a quick one over on him.
But as soon as he thought it, he discounted it. The two men were so comfortable in each other’s space. There was an intimacy captured and preserved in that image. It was a closeness he’d seen only a couple of times in his life and always between a heterosexual couple.
“We really don’t care what gender our mates are. I don’t know who told you otherwise, Tori, but they lied. Or they didn’t know better. All mates are welcome and celebrated.”
Tori’s fingers itched to snatch Baldewin’s phone away from him. He wanted to stare at the photo, to study every tiny detail. His brain argued that he wanted to uncover how it was a fake, but his heart was screaming for it to be true.
The silence stretched at the table, and Tori fought to keep his eyes lowered. Did Baldewin know the truth about him? Did he suspect that he was gay? According to his own words, he wouldn’t care, but maybe this was all a trick.
To his relief, Baldewin moved on. “I know this is a lot to take in, and you probably have so many questions. I’m happy to answer, but the important one is why Warin and I are here. We came to Helsinki to find you. We want you to come with us and join our clan because you’re out here alone, which is dangerous. And I truly believe you’re possibly a mate to one of my clanmates.”
A mate.
A dragon of his own.
Tori hadn’t even let himself daydream of such things in years.
But he couldn’t let himself get lost in that fantasy now. He wasn’t sure if he could trust every word out of Baldewin’s mouth, either.
At least part of what he said was truth, and Tori had been able to verify that. But the very best liars mixed in a little truth to make the lie more palatable.
And he had been taught so many things growing up that contradicted what Baldewin shared, he couldn’t just accept this new story.
He needed to sit on it, think about it, process all of it. Definitely do some more reading and figure out how much of what he’d been told growing up was wrong. A library was his next stop after this. If he was going to start a new life, the life he wanted, then he wanted to start it based on the truth. Even if he never went with Baldewin to find a dragon mate of his own, he wanted to know the truth as the rest of the world understood it.
Baldewin put the phone away. “Can I ask what clan you came from?”
“I’d…really rather not answer that question. I left them. I don’t want to be associated with them.”
Baldewin’s eyebrows did that twitching-frown thing, as if Tori said something deeply disturbing, but he was trying not to let it show. “You’re truly out here alone?”
Shit. He probably shouldn’t have said that. But it wasn’t like Baldewin hadn’t likely put it together yet, if he’d been following Tori around. “I can still work magic out here, so don’t think that makes me a soft target.”
“I’ve seen that firsthand, but I’m also glad to hear it.” Baldewin’s tone was transparently sincere again but also worried.