Page 25 of Dark Dragon’s Mate

Spots of blood on the desk and the file drawers were smeared, as if someone had touched them. And the mess in here didn’t look quite the same as it had before. Things had been moved.

Fuck. That meant Trish had been telling the truth. Someone else had been in here. And they’d come back after he and Trish left.

They were looking for something specific—he just hoped to hell his idiocy in leaving the room open hadn’t let them find it.

He cleaned up the blood in the room and reactivated the locking spell on the main door. Then he added another spell layer, dripping a bit of blood on the lock and sealing the spell with his thumbprint.

That should keep intruders out—assuming his magic wasn’t totally fucked up. He picked up Trish’s clothes and left through the not-so-secret entrance, double-locking that too.

Then he took Trish’s things to his private room—one just below the roof that used to be a guard station. He tucked them in a cupboard to give to her later.

Now there was no evidence that anything had happened, except for the fucking window in the Great Hall.

He sighed, running his hands through his hair. In his state, doing that big a restoration spell was going to need a power enhancing artifact—and a lot of luck.

And he couldn’t get it done before people found out about it—Grange or the staff were probably down there now, wondering what the fuck had happened.

He shook his head. Three days of virtuously ignoring Trish, and now they were neck-deep in each other’s shit regardless. And he was still bleeding.

Heaving another sigh, he went to the sink in the corner of the room and unwrapped his arm. The wound was red and angry. Despite the continued bleeding it was healing faster than he thought it would, considering how much the toxin usually compromised his healing abilities.

He washed it out, welcoming the pain. He’d fucked up.

What was he thinking, kissing Trish like that? No good would come of it. Evidenced by the fact that she’d instantly gone rogue.

Kisses were supposed to turn monsters into princesses, not the other way around.

Apparently he was nobody’s Prince Charming. No surprise there.

Either that, or his kissing technique sucked.

But now he understood what Trish had been hiding. Not just a monster wolf—but one with no Trish inside. This was who Nightmare Wolf really was.

A killer rogue with nothing to rein her in.

Since his sister Kira had mated into the Bad Blood Crew, he’d learned something about the things that could happen to animal shifters when they were traumatized. And on Earth, if they were so out of control they couldn’t be stopped from killing, or they risked outing shifters to the humans, they were ruthlessly destroyed.

Emon felt like a ball of ice had splintered his chest.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen to Trish. No wonder Tristan was protecting her.

Except Emon had the sick feeling that Tristan couldn’t help her now. That something was wrong, and he needed to go to her.

What if she couldn’t Change back? What if she got hurt or lost? Her wolf didn’t know this territory, and neither did Tristan’s.

What if she killed Tristan?

The towels were too fluffy to make good bandages, so Emon conjured another t-shirt, tore it apart, and bound it around his arm.

He knew he shouldn’t get involved. He’d been telling himself that since the first night she arrived. Her wolf was crazy; they were both crazy, and he didn’t know much about relationships, but he was pretty sure two crazy people shouldn’t be together.

But he wanted to kiss her again.

He wanted to tell her not to be scared, to coax her back from the Nightmare Wolf, to hold her and keep her safe.

He wanted to feel the way spending time with her made him feel, just a little longer.

And he wanted her to be okay. Something inside him needed to make sure she was okay. He didn’t want to think too hard about why that was.