Page 24 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

“I was hoping you could help with that,” Jalen says.

Brandy lets go of her mate and squeezes my hands.

I smile at her. These women are seriously put together.

Brandy holds me out at arm’s length and runs her eyes down me. “She looks about my size.” She takes my hand. “Follow me.” Then she throws a wink at Jalen. “Don’t worry. I’ll return her to you in better shape than you brought her.”

Jalen frowns at that, and I giggle.

Jules waddles after us with a hand under her belly. “Wait for me.”

Brandy leads us past the staircase to a set of brushed metal doors set into the rock. I stand there. “Wait. You have an elevator?”

“The clan had it installed for us.” Jules beams and rubs her bump. “No one is climbing all those stairs heavily pregnant.”

The doors open, and Brandy and Jules pull me in between them.

“This is a lot,” I say.

Jules giggles and looks to Brandy.

“We know,” Brandy says. “It was overwhelming for both of us at first. But I promise you, you’ll get used to it.”

The doors slide shut, and Brandy presses the button for the third floor.

Brandy leads the way down to the end of the hall and pushes open a set of double doors twice the size of mine. I gasp, and there’s no playing it cool about it.

The doors open on a sitting room with its own fireplace and couches, and the ceiling rises into carved arches strung with soft modern light. Tall windows frame the valley going gold with the afternoon. An archway on the left shows a bedroom with a bed up on a platform, and an open door on the right shows the craft room mid-redesign, half-wrapped in fresh wallpaper, with tables of fabric and ribbon standing in the middle.

It looks like the period dramas I fall asleep to, if someone gave the castle Wi-Fi.

Brandy cuts straight through the finery without slowing down and heads for another set of doors. “Closet’s this way.”

She waits out the last of my gawking with her arms crossed, easy about it. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your own wing soon. Jules has one too.”

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

Jules giggles and settles a hip against the sofa arm. “Wait until you see the safe. You can go swimming in all the gold and money we have.”

I turn to check whether she’s joking. She isn’t.

Brandy takes my arm and pulls me through the far doors. The closet is its own room, with racks down both walls and an island of drawers in the middle. The wall of shoes at the back has its own lighting.

“Let’s get you some clothes,” she says, already flicking through hangers. “I’ve got a ton of brand-new pieces I haven’t even gotten around to wearing.”

I turn a circle in the middle of it all with my head tipped back. There’s silk, denim, and cashmere, with tags still hanging off half of it. This morning I was running Whitney’s coffee in criminalheels and praying my rent check cleared. Now I’m standing in a queen’s closet getting fitted.

“I’ll get the vanity ready,” Jules calls from the doorway. “Let’s make her look pretty for our brother.”

I scratch my head and find no comeback anywhere in it.

Brandy builds a pile across my arms one hanger at a time, silk shirts, soft sweaters, a wrap dress I’d never have pulled off a rack for myself. Every time I open my mouth to say it’s too much, she adds another piece and dares me with her eyebrows. I quit arguing and hold my arms out for whatever comes next.

The vanity in the corner has bulbs all the way around the mirror. Jules sits me on the padded bench and goes to work soft around my bruise, tutting at it while she blends.

When she reaches for the pins in my bun, I barely close my fingers around her wrist.

“I keep it up,” I say.