When Dagmar feared she’d embarrass herself by her silence, she finally found her voice and opened her mouth to speak. But the words stopped in her throat again.

Only this time they stopped … because he was laughing. At her.

It wasn’t mere laughter either. Not a muffled sound behind his claw. Nor a brief snort of disbelief. These were things she experienced on a daily basis and had grown quite used to. No.

This overgrown … child was rolling around on the ground like he’d never seen anything more amusing than she. Massive dragon legs and arms flailed while his guffaws echoed over the courtyard and around the countryside.

Some scaly lizard was laughing at her! The only daughter of The Reinholdt! And he was having this moment on Reinholdt land, no less!

Any awe and admiration Dagmar had were wiped clean in that moment, and she felt that distinct coldness she hid so well from outsiders. It swept through her like ice from an avalanche. The men behind her began to murmur amongst themselves, feet shuffled, and her father cleared his throat. A few times. It wasn’t the dragon that made them uncomfortable. Not directly anyway.

Dagmar waited until his laughter turned into chuckles. “Are you done?” she asked, keeping her voice even.

“Sorry, uh … Beast.” It snorted out another laugh.

“Dagmar will do. Dagmar Reinholdt. Thirteenth child of The Reinholdt and his only daughter. I asked your queen here,” she continued, “because I have news that may save her life and the lives of her unborn whelps.”

The dragon’s expression of humor quickly changed to a scowl. Apparently it did not appreciate the term she’d used, but she was past caring. All her dreams of building an allegiance with the Blood Queen faded as soon as that woman sent this idiot to represent her. No, Dagmar would have to find other allegiances for her father. The Blood Queen of Dark Plains simply would not do.

“Tell me, sweet Dagmar,” it sneered, rolling back to its belly and lifting its head a bit. “And I’ll tell her.”

Dagmar remained silent for one very long moment, then answered simply, “No.”

The dragon blinked in surprise and abruptly pushed itself up a bit so that its snout was barely inches from her nose. Its gold eyes were locked on hers, and she wondered how she ever saw them as pretty. They were as ugly as the rest of the dragon. Ugly and mocking and absolutely useless.

“What do you mean, no?” it demanded.

“I mean, you’ve insulted me. You’ve insulted my kinsmen. And you’ve insulted The Reinholdt. So you can return to your bitch queen and you can watch her die.”

Confident she’d made her point, Dagmar Reinholdt turned on her heel and walked away from it. But she did stop a few feet away and glanced over her shoulder.

“Now that, dragon”—she happily sneered back, mocking the creature’s tone—“that’s funny.”

Without another word, she returned to her father’s fortress. But before she disappeared into its mighty embrace, she heard her father ask, “You are a bit of a dumb bastard, aren’t ya, dragon?”

And it was times like these when she truly did appreciate her father’s coarseness.

A woman! The Beast was a woman! Why didn’t anyone tell him that? Why did everyone keep claiming he was a man? If Gwenvael had known, he would have handled the whole thing quite differently.

But he hadn’t known and his first reaction at seeing her … well, it had not been his finest moment. Even he’d admit that. Yet how was that his fault when everyone kept telling him that The Beast was some mighty giant warrior spit up from one of hell’s many pits?

Pacing restlessly in the abandoned cave he found high in the Mountains of Sorrow—a rather fitting name at the moment—Gwenvael tore at his mind trying to figure out how to fix this.

His first thought, naturally, was to seduce the woman. She had that look of a spinster, didn’t she? A bitter, unhappy virgin who didn’t trust men enough to allow them in her bed. In the past, he’d had great success with women like that. And yet …

He sighed, rubbed his eyes.

And yet this one didn’t seem like that at all, did she?

She was plain, that was true enough. But not hideous. He didn’t feel the need to scream and run away at first sight of her. And she had those eyes—steel grey and cold as the top of this mountain. Eyes like hers could go a long way if managed correctly, but she wore a drab, grey dress that did nothing for her. No adornments on it, no low-cut bodice, teasing of her bosom. Nor was there a painfully high and prim collar up to her chin so that one demanded to know what she was hiding. The girdle was a boring brown leather, when a silver weave would have been much nicer. The eating dagger she had tucked into it was nice enough, but so? The boots on her small feet were grey fur as well. And she wore that head scarf tied over her hair as if she were about to go off and scrub a kitchen.

No, it wasn’t looks that had gained her a name like The Beast. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t such a gorgeous animal that men were devoured in her bed.

Nor was she a raving lunatic, which one would think a woman named The Beast by Northmen would be.

The coldness in those eyes ran through her entire body. Without a thought to what a powerful dragon could do if angered, she’d kept the information about Annwyl to herself. To be honest, Gwenvael wasn’t even sure the Reinholdt men knew what she held.

The Reinholdt himself seemed to be completely clueless unless he had a war ax in his hands. Surprisingly short for a Northlander, The Reinholdt made up for it with width—his shoulders and chest disturbingly large, his muscles near busting from his clothes. Yet beyond his appearance, the stumpy Northlander reminded Gwenvael a bit of his own father, Bercelak the Great. His father was never as happy as when he was killing someone or something in battle—politics absolutely bored the older Black dragon.