Page 6 of Dark Dragon’s Wolf

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.