Damian sat stunned for the length of a breath listening to what sounded like Andi betraying him.
“That is your woman?” His sister turned toward him, green eyes wide and flashing with anger. She’d intuited things by the way he’d frozen the second he heard Andi speaking on their intercom. Everyone else in the SUV looked to him for instruction, one by one.
“She’s a traitor!” Ryana went on—the only one not shocked into silence, her voice rising in volume. “You have to kill her, Damian, right away. This kind of insubordination cannot be allowed to stand!”
Out of his peripheral vision he saw Austin reach out and clamp a hand down over Ryana’s mouth, stilling in her sheer surprise.
But his sister wasn’t wrong. The Hunter they’d been tracking for a few days had led them here and now they were listening in to Andi—his woman, his mate—consorting with the enemy. It didn’t matter that she was trying to refute the other Hunters. The mere fact that she was here and she hadn’t told him she was coming—she’d lied to him. He should’ve known better. He’d been so blinded by his feelings for her, but looking back, of course something had changed that night when they’d first used her as bait to lure her uncle, when he’d kidnapped her on his yacht. When Andi had pushed him away afterward and told him that she wouldn’t see him again until midnight tonight, how could he not know? Because how precise that’d been of her. Precisely when this charade would be finished.
Andi had lied to him and put him through the worst two days of his life—all of him and his dragon longing for her, and for what? So that she could betray him here, with Hunters? He felt the gemstone he’d had Mills make for her—from his own flesh!—trapped in his pocket against his thigh and it felt like it burned him.
Mills’s hand reached out for his shoulder and caught it, squeezing it tightly. “Damian,” she said, her voice low and sensible.
“No,” he disagreed. He didn’t want to hear what wise things she would say in an attempt to talk him down. He just wanted to be pissed. They all listened in to the rest of the conversation as Ryana angrily shoved Austin away.
“You fell for a human whose mother was a servant?” She made a sound of extreme disgust.
Over the intercom, Andi’s story continued. About her uncle, mother, and brother—just one big happy Hunter family.
Then the janitor they were tracing must’ve gotten closer because they could hear her uncle intone at full volume: if you could just forget whatever lies the dragon you know has told you, you would see my truth too, Andrea. Your dragon friend is secretly a beast hiding in human form. They pretend to be one of us, but when the Joining occurs, where will their loyalties lie? You think your dragon friend so noble now…have you ever seen the beast inside? You think it wouldn’t rather take the side of another monster in the chaos of a fight? It has even fewer ties to this world than the descendants that we kill do! What cause can possibly bind it to the earth when it can fly?
And Damian felt the part of his chest that he hadn’t gouged out with his teeth to make a living gemstone for Andi tighten, as though he were biting himself still. And worse yet, the janitor moved away, so he couldn’t hear her response.
Did she defend him? Or did she think what her uncle said was true?
Had her opinion of him changed?
Did it matter now he knew she was capable of lying?
“I know she loves you Damian; I see it in her aura,” Mills said.
“Love?” Ryana asked, her voice going high. “Oh no, no, no.” She maneuvered around to face him in the SUV, crouching in the wheel well, tearing a higher slit in her ornately beaded evening dress, beads scattering across the floor as she attempted to get into his line of sight. “No. It doesn’t matter how you feel—how strong you think you are—you do not love a simpleminded, weak skinned human. It would be like me saying I was in love with a puppy. Father would’ve already—”
“Ryana!” he shouted, and the SUV was quiet. “I am not my father.”
“Clearly,” Ryana sneered, then looked over at Austin. “Touch me again without permission and I’ll have Lyka peck your eyes out.”
A fire lit in Austin’s eyes—what Damian knew was the thrill of making future bad decisions. The undaunted werewolf gave Ryana a challenging leer and readied to try his luck as Zach waved his hands trying to bat the tension out of the air and stop his brother’s foolishness. “Damian, we need a plan.”
“I’ve infiltrated the rest of the vehicles here that have Bluetooth,” Jamison announced. “We’ll know where they go. I suggest that we attempt taking them one by one.”
“Why?” Ryana asked impatiently.
“Because they do have a dragon in there. We’re significantly outnumbered, and—” Zach jerked his chin at Damian.
“I do not need your pity. And right now, I would very much enjoy fucking things up.” He felt his dragon surge inside him, summoned by the thought of violence. If Andi’s uncle wanted to see what kind of monster he was, that could be arranged.
“As confident as I am that you could kill Andi’s brother, I’m not sure that’d be so good for your relationship, Damian,” Mills said, trying to calm him.
The janitor’s phone came into range again, a stranger’s voice suddenly filled the car: “Save yourself, girl. Or call a fucking friend.”
They each looked to one another again.
“Is that…Stella?” Zach guessed, and Damian watched the werewolf’s knuckles go white as he clenched his hands into fists.
“Max, start the car,” Austin quipped, as his brother looked back at him, stricken. “I’m kidding,” he reassured him. “You need me, let’s go,” Austin said, putting one hand on his gun and the other on the SUV’s door.
“I can’t untangle centuries of cruelty here, uncle. I can only say what I know is right, right now. If you hurt her, you might as well be hurting me,” they heard Andi proclaim. “I have been hurt a lot lately…and I am growing tired of forgiveness.”
There was a pregnant pause wherein they all held their breath as one.
“Very well. Release the girl.”
“You can’t be serious,” said someone else, unknown.
“Please don’t make me kill you, too,” said Andi’s uncle. Not a threat, just a pleasant suggestion.
They all heard the sound of groans and then her uncle addressed Andi again. “Andrea, the sooner you take your mother’s place, the happier you’ll be. You shouldn’t fight it.”
Andi’s voice came over, as clear as Damian’s heart was dark. “I don’t care what you think you know. You don’t know my destiny…or me.”
That makes two of us, Damian thought.
“Did they hurt you?” Andi asked the strange woman walking beside her for the twentieth time. Andi was still in the outfit she’d last worn at her mother’s funeral years ago: black slacks, black flats, and a black silk shirt, with just enough makeup on to cover up her current level of exhaustion.
Whereas the woman lightly limping beside her was in street gear: a purple sweat shirt, short-shorts, and tennis shoes, with blonde hair pulled up into a messy bun. Her shorts were so short and her skin so pale it was easy for Andi to see the large bruise spreading on one leg, even underneath the tattoos she had sweeping down her thighs, a trail of spinning nebulas and stars.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Andi pressed.
The woman rolled her eyes and straightened herself to walk normally. “I’m fine. Like I already told you.”
Andi didn’t believe that for a second. She knew the woman wasn’t human; otherwise, her uncle wouldn’t have been interested in her, so she could only imagine how hard she’d been hit to make her limp. “Who are you? How did you know who I was? Why were you following me?”
The woman stopped and whirled on her. “My name is Stella…and you’re fucking insane. People think I’m crazy? Compared to you, I’m Mr. Rogers.”
Somehow, getting roughhoused hadn’t done a thing to budge the woman’s makeup—Andi could clearly see Stella’s perfect cat-eye eyeliner by the streetlights. “Answer my other questions,” Andi demanded.
Stella inhaled and exhaled deeply as they kept walking together just slower than a jog. “I’ve been tracking them—your uncle’s group back there, including the asshole Australians who captured me—for revenge reasons, for a while now. I knew they were interested in you, but I didn’t know why.”
“Was he right?” Andi asked her. She couldn’t fully claim why she wanted to know, but she needed to hear it from this woman’s mouth. “Did you kill his friends?”
“Yes, but, he slaughtered most of my family. So I guess you could say he started it, but who the fuck knows. The ladder down into the cesspool is pretty fucking long.”
“Are you going to turn around and try to kill him?”
“Your uncle?” Stella asked, her voice rising. “Yeah. Lady, thanks, but I don’t owe you…. And if I meet your uncle in a dark alley, only one of us is coming out alive. If that makes you want to spit me back—”
Andi waved her hands. “No…just don’t tell me anymore.”
“I don’t know what world you live in where everything’s safe and shit, but that place is not here.” Stella’s eyes narrowed on hers. “But you do know Damian, don’t you.”
“If you tell them he’s a dragon,” Andi warned, feeling a wave of proprietary protectiveness. “Do you work for him?”
“No…but don’t worry. I would never sell out one of my own. Especially not someone who could pick me up and throw me to the moon,” Stella snorted.
Andi relaxed, fractionally. “All right, then. The less we know about each other, the better, I think.”
“Agreed,” Stella said, then paused. “You know it doesn’t stop with tonight, right?”
Andi rocked up onto her toes and then back again. “What do you mean?” she asked, even though she was afraid she could guess.
“Those people back there…they’d do anything to get ahold of a dragon. There’s only so much your uncle, no matter how ‘esteemed’,” she said, clearly mocking Uncle Lee’s vocabulary, “can do.”
“How do you know?” Andi asked, hugging herself, trapped between wanting to know everything and wanting to run away and hide.
“Uh, other than him or people like him killing my brother? And being willing to eat me tonight?” Stella snapped her fingers aggressively in front of Andi’s face. “Get with the program.”
“I am!” Andi said defensively. “It’s just…hard.”
Stella pretended to weigh things, an imaginary object in each hand. “Yeah, I can guess it would be. My dead family, versus your alive and wanting to kill me family. Tough decisions,” she said, and then threw both her hands up to flip Andi off.
Andi took a step back. She knew Stella’s anger was righteous, but getting hit with it still burned. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know.”
Stella looked her up and down and snorted. “I believe you.”
“Good, because—” Andi began.
“Because no one else could’ve sold them that naive line of bullshit that got me free if they’d had even an inkling of what the fuck had been happening all this time,” Stella cut in. “But I’m still not offering you absolution, lady. So, you did the right thing tonight, this one time. So fucking what? You want an award? You want me to clap for you? Where the fuck were you five years ago?”
Andi stood there and took the brunt of the other woman’s anger. “I…I’m sorry.” She felt foolish the second the words were out of her mouth.
Stella inhaled and it felt to Andi like she was going to yell a lot more, then she deflated. “Yeah. Me too.” The street they were on ended at a streetlight where it intersected another and Stella jerked her chin over Andi’s shoulder. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”
Andi nodded helplessly as the other woman turned around.
It was an extremely long way back to civilization and Andi didn’t even know what kind of state she was going to be in by midnight tonight, when she knew Damian would be waiting to talk to her, just like she’d promised him. She walked down four more long blocks of the “walk in the center of the street because cars are less scary than shadows” variety until she got to a bus stop with a run that was still working this late. She sat down inside it, still not feeling very safe, remembering the last time something like this had happened to her—when she’d been at the bus stop waiting for David—and how Damian had been there for her, trying to protect her. She couldn’t believe she’d tried to do something like this without him. But she also couldn’t believe she’d just saved Stella from being an appetizer buffet, either.
Or that, given the choice, her uncle would gladly turn Damian into a main course.
Andi wanted to put her head in her hands and cry until it all went away, but one of her hands was still bloodstained. Tears wouldn’t help, and it wouldn’t be safe to not be situationally aware. So she curled into a ball instead, hugging her knees to her chest, praying that the schedule on the bus stop wasn’t wrong.
It wasn’t. It just took forever. And then the bus almost drove by her without stopping, probably because she looked like a small black shadow since that’s the only color she was wearing. She felt infinitely relieved to be under the dim lights aboard, even if some of the other late-night passengers smelled of piss-on-their-shoes funk. She found a seat to herself and it stayed that way for three stops, her mind whirling fast enough to pull in two. Half of her was dying to see Damian. The other half knew that dying could be literal and she didn’t know what to do about that. She stumbled off the bus, looking like any other drunk aboard, heading straight for her apartment, but before she could go inside, a car she didn’t recognize drove up and stopped ahead of her. A stranger stepped out in driver’s livery, and he held up a sign like he was meeting someone at the airport. It said PRINCESS on it in all capital letters.
She walked over to him slowly, remembering the first time she’d met Damian, when he’d been pretending to be his own driver so he could meet her before he could trust her to care for Zach. Back when things had been simple and good.
Back when a relationship between a dragon and an unfortunately-well-connected-to-hunters-human had been easy.
“Are you Princess?” the man inquired. He was a hundred pounds too light to be Damian, plus two-to-six inches too small in all directions.
She gave the stranger a half-hearted smile. “Depends. Does Princess have a last name?”
The man checked his notes. “Doesn’t seem so.”
“Then yeah. You’re here for me,” Andi said. She beat him to the back door of his car and opened it for herself before pausing. “Hey, do you have any towels?”
Andi used one of the complimentary bottles of water to wash off her bloodstained hand as best she could with one of the blue car paper towels he’d offered her, well aware she was making a mess and not caring. Damian could definitely compensate this poor man for his upholstery. She glanced up to see where they were going and for a horrible moment she thought he might be taking her to work. They were definitely headed the right direction, but then the car drove past her hospital’s exit and headed to the center of the city, where Blackwood Industries’ skyscraper jostled others for position, winning out by the five floors that made it taller than the rest.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” she asked, looking out.
“Absolutely,” the man declared, weaving through streets as empty as the ones she’d just been walking on, until they reached the front of the glass-wrapped building that bore Damian’s last name.
Andi made to get out, then stopped. “So what now?”
The driver twisted. “I was told to give you this.” He handed her a gold key card.
Andi groaned. This was fifty shades of bullshit. She didn’t want a magically romantic reconciliation—or whatever the hell else Damian had spent the last forty-eight hours planning.
She just wanted to see him. She needed to touch him again and have him touch her and have him tell her everything was going to be all right, even if it was a lie.
Andi took the card with a sigh, hopped out, and walked for the building’s front door, which the card unsurprisingly opened.
“You feel confident that you can follow them all at once?” Damian asked Jamison, his hand already on the door handle.
“Totally,” Jamison promised him. “It’s just fifteen bogeys. And if anyone tries to fly out tonight, I’ll hack the airport to stop them.”
“Think about it…if we can get them checking into fancy hotels, security cameras will log them and their people’s faces, and we can branch out from there,” Mills said breathily, already lusting over the potential data.
“So when I want to do this, I’m an asshole, but when you all want to do it…” Damian began.
“We’re at war, now. We get that,” Zach said.
“And we weren’t a few days ago?” Damian muttered.
“Go take your angst out on your girlfriend,” Austin said, reaching over Damian to open his door for him.
Damian got out of the SUV and shot his werewolf friend a dark look. “Ryana’s warned you. If you misbehave and she hurts you, I’ll have no choice but to take her side. She’s a lot more cunning than you’re ready for.”
“You truly know me, brother,” Ryana said, grinning wildly at him. “Go kill the human quickly and then come back.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” Damian overheard Austin tell her as the door closed and Max pulled the SUV away with a wave.
Damian faced the empty street alone, prepared to run after Andi. She and Stella had turned the corner, and it would’ve been an easy enough thing to follow them. He was upwind, there was no way that Stella could scent him. And it would’ve been even easier to catch up to them like he wanted to, grab Andi, shake her and ask her, what the fuck? He made to do just that, then caught himself.
She told you herself the streets are not safe for her! His dragon’s concern surged inside him, intimately worried about Andi’s well-being. Andi had said as much to him the other night, and his dragon had been listening. How ironic that his cold-blooded half was apparently doing all the feeling for both of them right now.
But technically, nothing was safe—not the buses she used for transportation or the job that she had or actually, come to think of it, her personally. She’d chosen to do this alone, without him. Was it traitorous? Yes. Could she possibly be in danger right now? Also yes.
Go after her! his dragon pressed him, unwavering in its commitment, and everything in his being wanted to go with it.
But his mind knew better.
Whatever had happened tonight, this was what she’d wanted and how she’d wanted it, too. Solo, without him. Andi had known the risks. And somehow, she’d navigated a room full of Hunters so that both she and Stella had survived. She was nothing short of magnificent.
She’d also somehow lied to him easily, apparently without compunction, for days, and he was right to be hurt by that. It was a betrayal. But the reason it stung wasn’t just that she’d been a liar. No, it hurt more than that because he knew she was his mate.
He knew they didn’t have to face challenges alone anymore, so why would she do something like this without him?
Couldn’t she feel it too?
He prepared to blow up about it again when he remembered an inconvenient fact…that he’d never, ever, told her. And as she was human, she didn’t know.
Maybe Ryana was right. Maybe he was repeating his father’s mistakes, by being mated with a human. But now that it had happened, what choice did he have? It was his destiny to be with her.
Even if she was a liar.
Even if he’d been lying to her, too, all along.
He stood there, incandescently angry, both at her and himself. His emotions ground inside of him like rough stones, chipping away at one another, as he hauled out his phone to summon an Uber, and came up with a plan.
Damian was in the skyscraper named after him so infrequently that he forgot that he owned it sometimes. But there was a penthouse floor that well-paid maids kept up for him and Zach, despite neither of them hardly ever using it. He let himself in and took a cold, fast shower, trying to calm himself to think. After that, he discovered that the closet only had suits inside. He dressed himself in one, carefully removing the necklace he’d created for Andi from one pocket and putting it in the next, then took the elevator up to the helipad.
His mood was as dark as the clouds overhead when the elevator opened up. Andi had lied to him. Outright. If she could do that, what end to it was there? There’d been gaps in the conversation they’d overheard. Had she sold him out? Had she considered it, even briefly? Her uncle was offering her eternal life. Eternal beauty. He couldn’t imagine those things mattering to Andi, but what human wouldn’t be tempted?
Especially when it was him against her entire family. Her brother, her uncle, her mother, and a lineage that went back for centuries. Could he blame her if she ran to them instead? Even if it broke him?
What haunted him the most, though, was what her uncle’d said. He’d asked her what she knew of the beast inside of him. He hadn’t heard her answer, but he knew the truth—not much. She’d asked questions of his dragon through him, but her uncle wasn’t wrong. His dragon wasn’t him. And with the Heart of the Dragon on earth now—thanks to his sister—and with his curse of eventually becoming his dragon clearly back in play, Damian stood at the edge of the roof looking out at the city below, his hands tight on the railing.
He knew they were meant to be together. It wasn’t something he could verbally express, so much as it was something he felt, all the time, in his soul. Their destiny was an immutable, physical thing, as real for him as the sun in the daytime or the moon and stars at night.
But…she didn’t really know him.
Not all of him.
And if he was going to tell her that they were mates, he had to be honest with her from here on out. Never any secrets again. No matter how much it scared him, and even if she’d cut him, first.
He kicked off his shoes quickly, unbuttoned his shirt to take it off, and stripped off his pants, folding them carefully on top, knowing the precious jewelry his pocket still held. Inside him, his dragon watched, bewildered.
What are you doing?
What I probably should’ve done a long time ago. He dropped the control internally, setting his dragon free, but it didn’t rise to possess him. What? he demanded of it.
This makes no sense.
It doesn’t have to, Damian thought at it, willing himself to relax. I shouldn’t have to hide you…not now that we want the same thing.
But…each time we do, my time grows closer…and with the Heart near—
I would rather risk losing myself to you than her thinking she doesn’t know all of me. That she can’t trust all of me. And I include you. Whether I like it or not.
He stood naked on the tallest building in the city, and once more, he let go.
His dragon hesitated and then emerged, in a liquid-feeling rush, like Damian had jumped into a hot spring. Once again he was suspended in the nothingness inside the beast. Only this time, it didn’t hurt.
He’d taken the pain of being trapped inside his dragon for granted for so long now, almost all of his life, that he never thought to mention it anymore. It was just part and parcel of losing control, of letting the dragon make his humanity disappear, the equal and opposite sensation to his dragon’s “chains.” But now…. Damian tried to push his hands out, searching for the walls his dragon so often built around him, he found nothing but a welcoming, enveloping warmth.
Was that a good thing? Or was this what it would be like when his time had come? He couldn’t wonder for any longer. The elevator doors were opening.
“I am not going on a helicopter,” Andi began sternly, then at seeing the dragon, finished much more quietly, “ride.”
Damian was his dragon now.
She hadn’t seen it since it’d rescued her from the demon thing by his fountain weeks ago. Ever since then her brain had tried to trick her, whittling what she thought she’d seen down from a mind-breaking experience into a cheesy carnival freak show, convincing herself that instead of a shiny sixty-foot dragon she’d seen a sack full of boa constrictors all tied together and spray-painted gold.
But now, here it was, sitting on all fours like a sphinx, wings folded tight so as not to catch the cold night air—or more likely not to scare her.
Too late.
She gave it a low wave, before holding herself against the chill. “Hi.”
The creature’s massive head tilted in acknowledgement in return. All of its teeth were the length of her arm. She could’ve fit her entire head inside of one of its nostrils.
But the eyes…the eyes were still familiar. The same color as Damian’s. Dark gold like the last flash of sun at sunset. She felt stricken by his presence, and it wasn’t so much the dragon anymore, as it was being with him again. She put a hand over her mouth. Two days without him had been a long time.
She walked toward him and then she spotted a gouge on his chest, like a dent on a golden breastplate. She’d seen green blood in the photo he’d sent her. Was that why? It hadn’t been there when she’d last seen his dragon, she was sure. She finished the distance between them at a jog. “What hurt you?”
The dragon ducked its head down to meet her, eyes nearly going crossed to look at her, as he gently nudged her away. She danced back, not letting it touch her, though she was close enough to feel the heat of its breath.
“Is there a reason for all this?” she guessed, gesturing at him. The dragon gently snaked its head down, until its chest was hidden and it was on a level with her, watching her, its pupils reptilian slits. “Damian,” she began, and then switched gears. “Dragon.” The beast’s ears perked as she continued. “I had all these things to tell him. You… both of you, I guess. I don’t know how it works.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and finally turned off her recording app. She thought about replaying her night for him, but at the thought of holding her phone up to one of his ears, she laughed. “Look, if I talk to you, can he hear me? I don’t want to repeat myself. And, if I talk to him, do you care?” What was it be like to be trapped mute inside a fire-breathing reptile? She wished she’d asked Damian earlier. “Not like I’m talking through you, though. I guess, I mean, do you actually want to hear me?”
The dragon rearranged itself around her and she realized it was now blocking the wind as it faced her.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she whispered. Its tail snaked alongside her and she sat down on the cold cement, putting her back against his scales to warm herself. “Okay…so,” she started, and began.
Damian listened inside his dragon as Andi recounted everything. From the time on the boat with her uncle, up through that night’s fight with him. The scent of her—apples, caramel, and the sea—was intoxicating. She smelled like home, and he knew his dragon was fighting the urge to lean closer to breathe her in.
“I really was mad at you, though, Damian. And I meant what I said about this,” she said, her eyes widening as they took his dragon’s form in. “You’re a lot. And I’m just me.”
She shrank into herself more, and he tightened his tail’s wrap along her back and side.
“And I had to know what’d happened with my mother. I didn’t lie about that.” There was something about his inability to talk that seemed to let her speak more freely. “Which was why I went and saw my uncle tonight, without telling you. I knew you wouldn’t have let me, or you’d have sent an army after me. But lying to you for the past few days hasn’t felt right. I’m not a liar, Damian. That’s not me.” She stared up at him, as if willing him to believe, and then finished telling him everything else from her evening, most of which Damian had already heard secondhand. When she was done, she shook her head and spoke just above a whisper, like she was talking to herself, not him. “To think, he wants me to come help him…and my brother thinks I’m going to fight at his side.”
She was quiet after that, and Damian would’ve paid any amount of money to know what she was thinking. “I’ve put you into danger, Damian.” Her voice was low and she looked up at him with concern. “Stella told me as much, too,” she said, moving to stand. “Now that they know you exist, I don’t think they’ll stop. And if they find me and I lead them to you, I could never live with myself if I hurt you.”
His dragon did his best to give her a bemused look, at the thought of a slip of a girl hurting the hulking beast wrapped around her.
“I mean it,” she protested, reading him easily. “I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously. But you’re not invulnerable. Look at what happened to you,” she said, flinging her hands at the partially-hidden injury on his chest.
What happened to me was you, Damian wanted to say, but couldn’t.
She walked over to stand in front of his nose, folding her hands behind her back. Where was the brave girl who’d walked right up to him and touched his cheek not long ago? But Damian remembered when he’d yelled at her to not touch Zach’s wolf at the hospital and all the things her uncle had put into her head tonight.
She knows we’re different now, he told his dragon. She finally believes.
Then does she not like me?
She doesn’t know you. I’ve done too good a job of keeping you hidden.
His dragon considered this. Is she…afraid of me? it asked while watching her, poignantly wishing she’d lay hands on him, well aware of how still he needed to be to not scare her off.
Well, you are going to murder me eventually, Damian said dryly.
There are two sides to your family’s curse, human. That you are murdered, yes, but also that I must do the murdering.
Damian grunted in response. I suppose.
His dragon pondered free of him in what way it could best make its affection for Andi known, without seeming monstrous. Damian knew the beast didn’t long for her physically, that would’ve been ten different kinds of impossible, yet it did yearn for her love.
“You’ve been very quiet,” Andi said softly, a silly attempt at a joke because otherwise the only sound up on the skyscraper was the whistling of wind…and now a phone alarm. Andi startled, then focused on what was beeping—his pile of folded clothing. She cast a glance back, then went over to dig through his pockets and find his phone. “It’s midnight,” she said, turning the alarm off. “Do you want to turn into a pumpkin, or shall I?” Another small object fell from her hand and started rolling away—the necklace he’d had Mills make for her, from his own flesh, bitten from his chest. He lunged for it with a paw and she shrieked and closed her eyes, going completely still, like if she couldn’t see him he might forget about her too.
Like he could ever.
His dragon nudged her thigh softly, so softly, with the tip of its nose, and watched her eyes open back up. And then it gestured to the ground where it was carefully rolling its paw up to reveal the ember of a gem beneath. She gasped at seeing its strange light and knelt down to pick it up, finding it strung on a necklace. “Is this for me?” she asked him, showing it to him.
His dragon blinked slowly. She inspected the stone in her hand and his dragon tried to content himself with the fact that even if she wouldn’t touch him, she would be keeping a piece of him near, as she clasped it around her neck.
“It’s lovely. Thank you,” she said as she pressed it to her throat with a hand.
A brisk wind struck up and his dragon thwarted it by flicking out a wing to protect her. Damian watched her eyes travel the length of it with something like awe, and then his dragon acted before he knew what it was thinking.
It put its paw up for her. Clearly offering.
No! They are looking for us now! There is no way we can safely get away with this!
The night is clouded and I’ll be careful, his dragon said, pushing his concerns and him aside.