Page 67 of Dark Dragon’s Mate

His dragon growled.

Grange looked slightly alarmed at the growl. “Begging your pardon, but I really think you should go, Your Highness,” he said. “I’m sure, with your dragon’s might, it won’t take more than a day or so to put things right.”

Somehow that whole ‘Your Highness’ thing, along with Grange’s subservient sucking up, turned Emon’s stomach. Or maybe it was just that he hated everybody right now.

“I’m on my way,” he said to Grange. “Let them know I’m coming.”

Grange nodded, looking abnormally relieved, and headed out the door.

Had he really thought Emon was going to just let his people struggle through on their own? Asshole.

He turned to Trish. “Do you want to come with me? I—”

He stopped, getting a good look at her face. “Are you okay?”

She looked pale, her eyes a bit unfocused.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel kind of… sick? I’m not really sure. Shifters don’t normally get sick.”

He knew the feeling. With his magical Draken healing and immune system, he’d never been sick either, until his wound. The toxin…

Fuck.

Emon said, “The toxin. Is there any way it could have gotten into your system?”

Trish shook her head. “I’m always careful. And anyway, it’s keyed to dragons, not wolves.”

He knew that. He knew that, but he still didn’t like this. “Get Tristan to check you out. Okay?”

She nodded. “Stop worrying. It’s probably just Layla. Or some weird food from this world, that doesn’t agree with me.”

“I still don’t like it. Maybe you should come with me.”

“You’ll be too busy to babysit me. I’ll be fine. Go.”

Emon hesitated, but he really was needed out at the mine. And Trish was better off without him right now.

“Promise me you’ll get Tristan to check you out. And you’ll call me on the communicator if you need anything.”

She kissed his cheek. “I promise, worrywart.”

He hugged her tightly, and then made himself leave.

After Emon and Grange left, Trish went back to her research. She kept thinking about what Mikah the red dragon had said, about royal Draken needing a purpose.

Not having one could eat away at them.

Was that what she’d missed, in this toxin? Had Ragnor somehow managed to find a toxin not just for a Draken’s body, but for their soul? Intensifying Emon’s feeling of hopelessness, purposelessness, and turning it into a physical wound that wouldn’t heal?

Draken were magical creatures, after all. Could magically attacking the essence of who they were be just as deadly as attacking them physically?

Trish went frantically back through Ragnor’s notes again, and his list of ingredients for the last versions of the toxin, the ones he’d tested on Emon.

There was one that had been in the last few versions, and she still couldn’t figure out what it was or what it did. Dahshi.

She looked it up again in her database, and did a keyword search through the research team’s notes and documents. Nothing. Then she remembered the new database, the one from Tyr Greystone, a Wild Dragon healer on Earth. They’d received it just before everything went to hell.

There it was. Dahshi. Nightmare weed. A hallucinogenic native to the Dragonlands that caused horrible nightmares and, in larger doses, induced long-term psychosis and/or suicidal depression in humans. Could also affect shifters and even Draken, when combined with certain spells or magical substances…