I opened my mouth to say something, decided it was incoherent, and contented myself with saying simply, “I’m confused.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” Aisling said, putting an arm around me. “It happens to all of us, dragons being what they are. Present company excluded, Ysolde.”

“I’m still more human than dragon,” Ysolde said with a little shrug, although she managed to give me a fairly shrewd look at the same time. “Would you mind if I asked you something, Bee?”

“That depends on the question. You can ask anything you like, but I won’t answer unless I want to.”

“Smart girl,” Aisling said.

Ysolde nodded. “Rightly so. I wanted to know what you think of Constantine.”

“That’s not what you want to know,” Aisling told her, whapping her gently on the arm.

“It is, too.”

“You said they were an item, so it’s pretty clear what she thinks of Constantine. What you want to know—what we both want to know—is whether she’s Constantine’s mate.”

“You don’t just blurt something like that out!” Ysolde said with a frown at Aisling. “You work up to it, gently, cautiously.”

“Pfft,” Aisling said, waving away that idea. She turned back to me. “We don’t have time for that. What we want to know is if you’re just shacking up with Constantine or if you’re his mate. Have you taken his fire?”

“Taken it where?” I asked.

Both women wore identical expressions.

I sighed. “Look, I’m a Charmer. I like Constantine. A lot, as it happens, and yes, we’re an item, or at least I think we are, but beyond that, I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care.”

“She’s taken his fire,” Aisling told Ysolde, who was studying me with intensity.

“Fire does not a mate make,” the latter said, and possibly would have grilled me more but at that moment Istvan and another redheaded man entered the room, along with a dark-haired fellow who moved over to Baltic.

“That’s Pavel,” Aisling told me, pointing to the last man to enter the room. “He’s Baltic’s friend who just got into town. The other man is Pal, who with Istvan is Drake’s elite guard. Kostya doesn’t really have any guards. They were mostly killed by the red dragons, but I assume he’ll appoint some out of the handful of black dragons who are left.”

The dragons did something odd then. All three of the wyverns fetched chairs and set them next to each of the chairs at the table. Aisling and Ysolde, with knowing looks at me, took the additional seats next to their wyverns. Aoife evidently knew what was going on as well, because she sat next to Kostya without a word.

Constantine watched them all, then cocked an eyebrow at me.

I raised mine back at him.

He gave me a little nod, went to the wall, and grabbed a chair which he set down next to his, and proceeded to stand beside it, obviously waiting for me.

I didn’t know what the others would think about me taking a place at their dragons-only discussion, but after a moment’s thought, I decided I didn’t care. If Constantine wanted me there, then I’d sit there and be supportive. It was the least I could do for a man who was as thoughtful as he was.

The other men present took up spots behind their respective wyverns, and Baltic aside, all the male dragons reacted with surprise when I took the seat Constantine held for me.

“Is there something you wish to announce?” Drake asked Constantine, nodding toward me.

“Yes.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed.

Constantine looked at each person there before speaking again. “Bael is my father. He is also the son of the First Dragon. I have sworn to destroy him, and will do so with or without the help of the weyr. Also, I wish to know the surnames of all your guards. I dislike not knowing them. That is all.” He sat back with the air of a job well done.

All hell broke out around us, verbally speaking. I ignored the outbursts of surprise from the dragons who hadn’t known the truth about Bael, giving Constantine a little smile.

“You’re a troublemaker at heart, aren’t you?” I said softly, taking his hand.

His fingers were warm and strong, and they sent little shivers of delight skittering down my back. “I do what I can to keep things interesting. I have a system awarding points for how much I can irritate Baltic on any given day.”

“I like that you don’t say what I expect you to say. Will me being here create a problem for you?”

Two lines appeared between his brows. “I don’t understand why you would think that. I’ve told you that I welcome your help with Bael—”

“I meant with the dragons.” I nodded toward the other end of the table, where Kostya was arguing with Baltic. “I can see that they’re letting you join in the fun because you used to be a wyvern, and you have a tie to Bael, but I’m just a simple mortal Charmer. I’m not your mate.”

“Do you wish to be? I could name you so in front of the weyr, although Kostya did that with a naiad—before he met your sister—and it did not end well.” He looked thoughtful, ignoring the chaotic conversation around us. “Still, if it would make you happy, I would tell the others you were my mate.”

A little pain zinged through me at his words, and I realized that what bothered me most about that statement was not the offer to be considered a dragon’s mate… it was that it would be pretense and not real.

Since when had I wanted to become part of the dragonkin? I shook my head at my foolish thoughts, but Constantine interpreted it as a negative answer. His eyes lost a bit of their brightness when he turned away with a murmured, “I would never force you to do anything you did not wish.”

“That’s good, because I wouldn’t do something I didn’t want to do,” I managed to tell him before Kostya, with a loud exclamation, leaped to his feet.

“I don’t care if he helped the Charmer lift the curse; he is no longer a wyvern, so he should not have a place at the table. Especially with the mortal at his side.” Kostya shot an angry glare our way. “The curse is lifted, yes, but we have much work to do. We must discover if there are any red dragons left who have been untainted by Asmodeus. We must rid the world of the demon-dragon hybrids, or at least confine them so they can do no more harm. We must form the weyr again, and for that, we need the First Dragon.”