Alistair's head pounded and he had to squint against the faint sunshine as he walked to Finn's place.
Drugging a dragon silent was never easy, but after the mental battle he'd had with his beast the previous night, his brain felt as if it were full of holes. Stringing two thoughts together was difficult.
Coffee hadn't helped, nor had breakfast. He only hoped seeing Kiyana would jumpstart his neurons. Otherwise, he'd never be able to convince her to forgive him and be his mate.
He reached Finn's cottage, took a deep breath, and knocked on the front door. Arabella answered it. She didn't waste time saying, "I hope you're the male I think you are."
"I am."
She studied him a second before bobbing her head. Arabella stepped aside and motioned down the hall. "Kiyana is in the kitchen."
"Don't you want to announce I'm here?"
"You may be a quiet man most of the time, but your voice carries enough for even a human to hear you. I'm sure she knows."
Under normal circumstances, his dragon would've teased him.
But his brain remained silent.
For all the times he'd complained about his beast, Alistair missed him when he was absent. And the only way to get him back sooner rather than later was to convince Kiyana to forgive him.
So he nodded at Arabella and went toward the kitchen. The second he entered, he instantly zeroed in on Kiyana sitting at the table. Her back was to him, but even without his dragon's lust coursing through his body, he wanted to lift her hair and kiss the back of her neck. Then he'd tug her up and against him before giving her a proper kiss.
He wanted her, pure and simple. Alistair just had to win her first.
After he cleared his throat, Kiyana whirled around, a chocolate biscuit in her hand. "Alistair."
Her voice washed over him, and in the process, wiped away the exhaustion and fog of the morning. "Kiyana. May I join you?"
She studied him a second, and he expected her to tell him to sod off. She had every right to do so.
However, she motioned to an empty chair across from her. "Sit and start explaining things. I just want the truth."
He couldn't help but smile. He loved how direct she was with him.
Once he took the proffered seat, he placed his hands on his knees under the table. Otherwise he might reach across and try to take Kiyana's hand before she was ready.
He hoped she'd be ready at some point.
Not wanting to go down that tangent, he looked into her deep brown eyes and said, "I trust Finn and Ara told you some of it?"
She swallowed the last bit of biscuit. There was a crumb at the corner of her mouth, and he wanted to lick it away.
However, he made himself focus on her words instead of her lips. "Well, I know your dragon was drugged silent temporarily. And Finn seems to think there's a bloody good reason for how you treated me last night. However, that's all I know."
What he wouldn't give to smooth away the frown between her brows. "It's true, my dragon is quiet right now. And as for the reason…" Alistair took a deep breath and forced himself to continue, "While she wasn't my true mate, I had a female I loved named Rachel. She died just over three years ago, from a disease affecting her inner dragon that no one in the UK or America knew how to treat. However, we thought maybe someone in South America might. The problem was that there was no way to reach them." He stopped a second, not wanting an image of Rachel pale and wasted away to flash into his mind. "It was on her deathbed I made the vow of no sex until I found a way for dragon clans to share information more easily, to prevent other unnecessary deaths."
He went into the finer details of the possible cure, the lack of communication, and his spending all of his free time researching ways to fulfill his vow. Then he added, "So when kissing you kicked off the mate-claim frenzy, I panicked. I was convinced that if I carried it out, broke the promise I'd made to myself and Rachel, and accepted your offer to be in the frenzy with me, I'd become someone I didn't recognize."
She asked quietly, "What changed?"
Alistair rubbed his legs under the table. "Finn. He has a way of making you see the truth when you can't see it yourself."
"And what's that truth, Alistair?"
He didn't look away. "That you're the second chance I never expected to have. And not just because of some random act of fate, either. You're bonnie, intelligent, funny, and so much more. You weren't born a dragon-shifter, yet you're not afraid of us. Not to mention I'm positive you're more interested in helping us than exploiting us. So I'm sorry. Sorry I rejected your offer when it had to be a scary thing to process so quickly. I'm sorry I made you cry. And most of all, I'm sorry I forced you into any of this in the first place."
"It's not really forcing me, though. I mean, I was all set to be your pretend mate for six months. This way, I'd at least get sex, too."