“I really must insist—” The door opened behind Rowan, banging him on the back. “Aha! I knew it! Just look at the wrinkles you’ve put into the bodice by grabbing her on the waist like that. Rowan! Let her go!”

Reluctantly, Rowan released me, his eyes lit with love and laughter, and everything I had ever hoped for. “It’s not my fault. She was standing there looking impossibly lovely, and I couldn’t resist her…”

Gary herded him out of the door, returning almost immediately to say to me, “Oh, mercy, look at the time. Three minutes! Everyone, we are at T minus three minutes! Where’s Jim? Is he harnessed to the carriage? For the love of all that’s holy, people, it’s show time! Let’s get this done right!”

The door closed behind Gary as he scattered orders left and right.

Fifteen minutes later (there was a slight issue with the little carriage that Gary rode in, drawn by Jim, and which had an automatic petal-scattering device), Aoife, Bee, and I gathered outside the closed doors of the palace’s ballroom.

“Well?” I asked the ladies, waiting for the music cue Gary had insisted on before the doors were thrown open and we would march down the aisle. “Are we ready for this?”

“We are, but it sounds like the men are in pretty poor shape,” Aoife said with a little laugh. “Honestly, if Kostya wasn’t so adorable, I’d brush these dragons off and never look back. Imagine fighting on the night before your wedding.”

“Constantine says it was your adorable Kostya who started the whole thing,” Bee told her sister.

Aoife immediately took issue with that. “Kostya is the mildest of men! Okay, he likes to frown a lot and make dramatic statements, but that’s just part of his charm. It’s Constantine who’s always picking on him. And then Baltic has to come nosing his way in, and now Rowan, who we all know is still trying to get a grip on his dragonness, and… and…”

She stopped and bit her lip.

Bee’s mouth quivered.

I sighed. “I think, ladies, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives keeping our respective menfolk from beating the ever-living tar out of each other.”

“I think you’re right,” Bee said when Aoife laughed aloud. She gave me a smile that may not have been the warmest on earth, but which at least recognized that we were all in the same boat. “Welcome to the family, Sophea.”

“The dragon family or the Dakar family?” I asked as the doors opened, and the music swelled.

“Both,” Aoife answered, and as the youngest member of the bridal trio, started her walk down the aisle, preceded by Jim drawing Gary’s carriage. Black, white, and red petals scattered ahead of Aoife. Bee lowered her veil and swept forward next, her long dress scattering the petals. I paused at the door, looking past where the ladies were proceeding, my gaze finding that of Rowan.

One corner of his mouth quirked, and I was filled with an immense sensation of joy.

This dragon I would keep.