Page 7 of Dark Dragon’s Wolf

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.