Stronger as One (#1, Completed)

25. The Beta🌶️🌶️

AIDEN

I left the guys at the Old Oak and made my way to the restaurant where I was meeting Rebecca. She was a fox shifter, and we had been hooking up for a few months now, indulging in each other's company when we wanted sex or simply an enjoyable evening with no strings attached.

Rebecca understood our arrangement way better than Caroline, the bear shifter I was seeing before, did. When I was with a woman she could be sure that she would be satisfied not only in bed but also in my treatment of her. But I drew the line at relationships. There were no romantic feelings involved in my engagements with women. Did I care about them? Of course. I was not a bastard,  fucking them and messing around with them.

Dragons, for most parts, were not like that. It was in our nature to act classy, even regal. We appreciated the finer things in life, which is why it was no wonder that dragon shifters usually worked with arts and jewellery. There weren't many dragon clans in the world- we were kind limited edition shifters- but the clans that did exist were so ancient that many of them had accumulated generations of treasures, money and titles. This allowed us to live the lifestyles that suited our needs- fine clothes, expensive homes, acquiring originals of masterpieces, jetting off to Milan to attend the opera at La Scala, popping over to Berlin to taste the refined food in the city with the most numerous of Michelin star restaurants in the world. You name it, dragon shifters did it.

Appreciating the beauty and finesse of women was amongst the many indulgences in life that dragon shifters had so it was my pleasure to treat women, irrelevant of what our involvement was. Yet, no woman would ever be treated like a queen that I would worship, aside from my mate. My mate will be granted all the love, trust and respect that I had inside of me. She would be cherished and adored, never doubting even for a second how special and loved she was. And yet, despite being my everything, the one that I would give my life for and put above everything, my mate would be my equal, my partner, my teammate. I might wish to dominate her in bed, but her word would always count in everything we do.

I was no hopeless romantic though, even though I had romance deeply instilled in me. I knew that if I was to ever find my mate, I would give her the world. But I was also realistic enough to know that this was unlikely to happen. There were not many dragon shifters in the world and the Fire Dragons clan here in Scotland was the only clan around, consisting of male shifters only. A clan of warriors, which was rare amongst my kind. All of that was part of the many things that pissed my parents off when I decided to join it but I was young at the time and finding my mate was the last thing I thought about. My parents cutting their ties off with me because of joining the clan did not deter me from doing it either.

Now I was 35 years old and despite enjoying the life I was living, my mind inevitably turned to the idea of finding my mate at times. Having Rafe and the clan was great, and I was certainly not lacking beautiful women and great sex, but I felt the there was something still missing. I longed to have the unique connection that only two mates could have. Until that happened though, I knew that I was at no risk of developing any significant feelings for the women I was with. That didn't mean that I couldn't show them a good time.

I finally reached the restaurant where Rebecca was already waiting for me. She was a beautiful, tall woman with strawberry blonde hair and chocolate brown eyes. I liked that she shared my passion for fine food and had an insatiable sex drive. We had not been able to meet up much recently as I had been busy with investigating the recent cases of traps set up for shifters with the Council, even though Cyrus was against our involvement in the matter seeing as the traps didn't affect us due to our ability to fly when shifted.

This was something that neither I nor my dragon understood. As a kind, dragon shifters were always noble- defending others was, therefore, something that we often felt strongly about, very much like the bear shifters. And yet Cyrus was refusing to help, forgetting perhaps that our clan could never be an island. Shifters needed to work together against common threats and to progress in this ever-evolving world.