His head throbbed, and he tasted blood. Fuck. Another nosebleed.
And something was still calling him.
Mayah?
He used to sense it sometimes, when she was having a bad dream. But now his brain was so scrambled he didn’t know what he was hearing.
Tristan…
He got up, almost without thinking.
“Tris?” Trish asked. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m just going to go check on Mayah.”
Emon frowned. “Is she all right?”
“Probably.” She was probably fine. She sure as hell didn’t need him. But his wolf was scrabbling at his insides. We go.
Zakerek, typing on his computer, said, “He’s still hoping she’s going to do the boinkety-boink with him, and he’s not going to have to fill out an online dating profile in order to get his dick—”
Before Tristan even thought about what he was doing, he’d tipped the red dragon’s chair over backwards and had his foot on the asshole’s neck. And he was snarling. “Shut. The fuck. Up. Or I’ll rip your throat out.”
Zakerek hissed at him.
Then Emon was on his feet, hauling Tristan back. “Don’t kill him, for fuck’s sake. Do you know how hard it is to find atherias miners?”
Atherias, a magical mineral, was the cash cow that financed this whole place. And Zakerek and the other red dragons were some of the few who could magic it out of the ground.
“I love you too, your fucking Majesty,” Zakerek said, picking up his chair and giving Tristan and Emon an evil glare. “I’m glad to see this clan is held together by bonds of caring and brotherhood.”
Emon snorted.
No one mentioned that Zakerek could have burned Tristan’s whole leg to a crisp with one fiery breath, even in human form—and he’d chosen not to.
Tristan should have cared about that, but he didn’t. He’d pick a fight with Zakerek or Cazbek or the Darkwing Dragon himself, the mood he was in.
We can take him, his wolf said.
Not even. Emon’s dragon could squash him like a bug.
“Well, keep your mouth off my sister,” Emon said to Zakerek. “Or I’ll be the one with my foot on your throat.”
Zakerek’s eyes went fiery red with slit-pupils, but he just flung himself back into his chair and pulled it up to the computer.
Emon turned to Tristan. “And you. Also keep your mouth off my sister—literally and figuratively. Or I’ll bite you.”
“Nobody’s biting anyone,” Trish said. “Sheeyit. What is wrong with you guys?”
“Says the woman who threatened to bite my dick off,” Cazbek said.
“She still might,” Emon darkly, sitting down again and glaring at everyone. “I could probably get over her wolf lips touching your dick if she bit it all the way off.”
“What the hell did I do?” Cazbek asked the room at large.
Tristan just turned and slammed out of the room. He really, really wanted to kill something. Maybe he should Change and hunt.
But something was pulling him in the other direction, something he couldn’t turn away from.
Tristan…
Chapter 3
Mayah woke, alone in the dark, sweating and panting as if she’d run miles.
Dammit. That was a bad one.
She made a small gesture with her fingers to light one of the glowing magical globes they used for lamps, and looked around the room.
Discarded outfits tossed over the chairs. The remains of a bedtime snack on the table. A clutter of Earth makeup on the dresser, that she’d gotten from her sister Kira—or rather, from the other women in Kira’s crew, who, unlike her sister, actually were into the whole girly makeup thing.
It was all nice and messy and homey.
There was no blood. No tragedy. No damaged Elf-Lord lying on her floor.
Not damaged. Dead.
She wasn’t going to think about that. It was a dream, and she was stronger than a dream. She was a dragon, a warrior princess. Badass and brave. Even if she couldn’t exactly find her inner dragon just at the moment.
“Okay then,” she said out loud. “Up side: this is the first time I’ve woken up actually happy that Tristan wasn’t here.”
Instead of wishing he was. Here. In her bed. Naked, if possible.
Not that he felt that way about her. He laughed when she flirted with him. Kept a professional distance, like a healer was “supposed to.”
Yadda yadda yadda rules.
Mayah didn’t believe in rules. When you were raised in an interdimensional bubble that didn’t technically exist—by an evil wizard who basically ignored you until you were old enough to do sick experiments on—well… what rules?
Except for Emon and Kira, her family and her clan were dead. Their customs and rules didn’t matter anymore. She and Emon made their own rules.
Mayah really wanted to make a rule about how she and Tristan could have wild naked sexcapades and he could still be her healer.
Or not. Because he hadn’t been doing much healing lately. His excuse was that they wanted to make sure she was completely detoxed from the drugs that Emon’s former Head Steward had been slipping into her food to make her crazy, before he tried to kidnap her. Fucker.
But she knew that was only part of the truth. During their recent battle with her wannabe kidnappers, Tristan had used his mind as a freaking weapon. It was amazing, and scary. And she had a feeling it had done something to his brain—something seriously not good. And that for some idiot reason, he was trying to hide it.
Because that’s what Tristan the white wolf did. He kept everything inside like her brother Emon did, only he didn’t go all silent and broody like Emon. He just pretended everything was fine.
Everything was not fine.
She had to find out what was wrong with him before he went all berserker from stress and did something everyone would regret. She could fix him—she knew she could.
Mayah had the Al-Maddeiri healing powers. She’d healed Tristan from a near-fatal wound a while back, before Gen-X came.
She’d felt a powerful connection with him then—almost like they were part of each other. She fought back a little stab of hurt that he’d rather suffer and fake being fine than come to her now, and let her help him.
But then, testosterone and pride made men stupid.
Mayah sat up. She was wide awake now, and she didn’t really want to go back to sleep—not if the ghosts were waiting.
She also didn’t want to think about Tristan avoiding her.
She took the iPod and speaker Kira had given her and went up to the roof. The main part of the castle had a huge, flat roof, big enough for a whole crowd of dragons to land on at the same time. It was surrounded by a parapet, a waist-high wall designed to keep anyone who couldn’t fly from falling off.
She turned on one of her favorite playlists and jumped up on the parapet. It was two feet thick, made of stone, solid and comforting under her feet.
Then she turned toward the sky.
The castle was built into a cliff, with a view that stretched for miles. And a sky that went on forever.
Whirls of stars and galaxies, sparkling rivers washed with faint colors—pink and blue and gold and green. The valleys below were in deep shadow, with the faint dark shapes of mountains in the distance.
Home.
She loved it, but she yearned for more. Adventure. Escape.
Mayah looked out at the night, opening her arms, feeling the breeze and letting the music take her. It was a song about love and hope coming out of the darkness, and Mayah wanted to feel all those things.
She wanted someone to feel them with her.
So she danced alone on top of the parapet, letting her soul call out her wishes to the night.
Mayah sensed Tristan coming. She knew the feel of his presence, as well as the sound of his footsteps.
When she was crazy and he was
trying to heal her, she used to sit in her room in the dark, and listen for him. Totally out of it on the drugs Grange had been slipping into her food. Haunted by ghosts. Depressed and despairing.
But the minute she felt him coming, she’d start to feel better.
Brock, her other healer, was a sweet little boy, and Mayah loved him. But…
Tristan was special. He was the one who’d pulled her out of that dark place.
She turned around when she heard his footsteps coming toward her. He stopped about ten feet away. “Whoa,” he said quietly, as if trying not to spook her into falling off the parapet. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
He looked so good. He always looked amazing. Lean and rugged and ripped with muscle you could see under his shirt, under the way his jeans hugged his legs.
Six feet two of wolfy goodness.
His hair gleamed in the starlight, wrapped in a loose braid.
“It’s awesome,” she said, opening her arms to the sky. “The next best thing to flying. Come on up!”
“That would be a hell no,” he said, not moving from where he was standing. “I’m a wolf. I like my paws on the ground.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” She spun around, and heard his sharp intake of breath. She grinned at him. “You’re not scared of heights, are you?”
“Clearly you’re not.”
“Of course not. I can fly.”
“Not at the moment,” he pointed out. “And I would really hate to see you go splat into the courtyard. It’s like five stories down.”
She turned and looked down, feeling the loss of her wings like a constant ache. She could taste the night, feel it silky on her skin. She wanted that night sky with a desperate longing.
“Sometimes I wonder,” she said. “If I just jumped off, would my dragon come out? And save me?”
She heard him take another step forward. She’d scared him. She was almost glad she had. At least it showed he cared.
“Let’s not try that, okay?” he said.
“Do you ever feel trapped?” she asked, staring into the darkness. “Just sick of everything? I do. Trapped by Ragnor. By my dragon leaving me all alone in this little human body. By all this shit that keeps happening in my head.”
She looked out over the valley. Faintly, against the starry sky, she could see the mountains that ringed their domain. Barely twenty miles away. And after that…nothing. The nothingness of an interdimensional void.
She was trapped here, too.
“I just want to—to live,” she said. “I want to go out in the world—in the worlds—and experience everything. I want to go to Earth. Ride a roller coaster. Eat in a restaurant. See the ocean. Dance all night.”
“I know,” he said. He came up next to her and leaned on the parapet. “Damn, I know.
“I used to dream about that,” he said softly. “I grew up in this small town in the middle of nowhere. I always wanted to be somewhere else. And then my parents were killed by hunters, and my sister Terin and I went on the run. I managed to lead the hunters away from her, but they finally got me.”
She started moving slower, listening hard. Tristan hardly ever talked about himself. The times he did were precious to her.
“I was held captive for ten years by guys who were no better than Ragnor. The only break I got was when I escaped and got to live on the run for a while instead. Got my mind fucked with, like you. Bad. So bad I wanted to either destroy myself, or destroy everyone around me.”
She reached down, and Tristan took her hand. His was big and warm and comforting. She tried to send some comfort back, for all he’d been through.
He went on, “Now all I want is some kind of fucking normal life. To see something that isn’t the Silverlake territory or the inside of a cell.” His voice grew soft. “To maybe take you to ride your roller coaster, see your ocean.”
Did he really want to do that? Seeing all those things with Tristan would be amazing.
He stepped back, still holding her hand. “So would you please come down? I hate heights, and you’re scaring the fuck out of me.”
She turned and looked down at him. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt myself. Not after everything I’ve been through. I’m going to live forever, and piss on Ragnor’s grave every single birthday.”
Tristan grinned. “Good plan. I’d still feel better if you were on the ground.”
“Scaredy-wolf.”
He shook his head. “I just care about you.”
As a healer. As a friend. Could he possibly care about her as more than that?
She looked down at his shoulders, the way they filled out his t-shirt, and she couldn’t resist. Because no rules.
“Only if you catch me.”
She reached for his shoulders and jumped into his arms. His body was solid as a rock, and he was so strong she didn’t even begin to knock him off balance.
He smelled amazing. Like pine forests, and warm skin, and a hint of vanilla bodywash. Yum.
She slid down his front until her feet touched the ground. She was a bad, bad dragon girl, rubbing up against her healer, and she didn’t even give a fuck.
His arms felt so good, and she was getting one minute of fantasy. Just one.
Chapter 4
The minute Mayah slid into his arms, Tristan was done for.
She was way smaller than him—unusual for a Draken—and she had amazing soft tits that were now pressed against his chest. He’d had to grab her perfect ass when she jumped into his arms, and it was ridiculously hard to let it go.
She looked up at him with that heart-shaped face surrounded by wavy dark hair, and he wanted to kiss the fuck out of her right then and there.
More than that. Back her up and have wild wolf sex right there, her sitting on the parapet with her legs wrapped around him, and the starry night behind her.
But he couldn’t. That would lead straight to the crazy, and broken hearts for them both.
Want. Ours, his wolf said.
Can’t. She wasn’t for him. She’d been stuck here all alone with her brother for her whole life. She didn’t need to be saddled with another broken crazy guy.
He wished he could give her all the things she’d talked about, and more. A life. Good times. Happiness. But it wouldn’t work.
Even knowing that, he couldn’t let go. He should be taking her hands off his shoulders, but he wasn’t. They felt like they belonged there.
He wished he’d succeeded in healing her, in bringing out her dragon. So she’d be safe, and protected, and able to do anything she wanted.
He wanted to give her back the stars, and her ability to fly.
She reached up and touched his face, running her fingers lightly down his temple, his cheek.
He saw a flash of light, and with breathtaking suddenness he was somewhere else.
A cave. Dark and shadowy, so he could hardly see even with his wolf vision. And then something moved, and there were twin green lanterns hanging in the air not ten feet away from him.
No, not lanterns.
Eyes.
Bright green eyes with slits for pupils. Dragon eyes.
They stared at each other.
He knew immediately what—who—it was.
Mayah’s dragon. He just didn’t know where or how.
All this time, him tracking neural pathways in her brain, Brock Reilly trying to talk to her dragon, coax it out, and nothing.
Now, just like that, Tristan was inside her head. Or somewhere. The place where the dragon lived.
Cautiously, he glanced around. He didn’t know much about dragons, but he knew you didn’t come into their lairs uninvited. That led to flames and probable death.
She might not be able to hurt him here. But he didn’t want to bank on it.
And he couldn’t waste this opportunity to talk to the dragon directly. Ask her to come out, or find out why she wouldn’t.
He could see the cave mouth—a slightly lighter patch. With bars on it, he rea
lized. Like a cage door. Was she locked in? And what were the dark, shadowy shapes piled around the edges of the cave?
Not a hoard. There was no gleam of gold or jewels, just lumpy dark forms that seemed to move in the periphery of his vision, but stilled when he looked directly at them.
Like that wasn’t creepy at all.
“Um, hello?” he said.
He heard the answering voice in his mind rather than with his ears.
Mayah’s wolf? What the hell did that mean?
“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “I just ended up here.”
“Neither do you.” Crap. That just slipped out. But the dragon didn’t seem offended.
Okay. It seemed she felt at home here. “Um, so that cage door is locked from the inside?”
The eyes blinked slowly. He could feel her hesitation.
“Yeah, but Mayah’s out there,” Tristan said. “She’s not safe. Not without you.” Dragons liked flattery. Whether they liked logic was something else again, but he decided to try. “And if something happens to Mayah, you won’t exist either.”
Whoa. Okay. That was not what he expected. Ghosts and spirits lived in the spirit world, but they’d recently learned that other creatures could exist there too—in physical or spirit form. Dragons. Ki-rin, which were horses with wings, serpent heads, and very powerful mojo.
But a dragon who left his human half to hang out in a spirit lair? That was a new one.
“Don’t you care about Mayah?” he asked.
“But?”
Hoard? Others? What the fuck?
“What is her hoard? Is it this?”
He started to walk towards one of the lumpy shadows, but the dragon growled. Smoke came out of her nostrils.
Dark Dragon's Wolf Page 2
