He landed, not gently, but caught himself up before he set her on her feet, which he did with deliberate care. Then he whirled away from her to pace.
She said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her walk to her pack and settle in the shade of the tree, with her back braced against the trunk.
Tilting his head toward the sun, he considered leaving her and taking a solitary flight. But if he had truly wanted to be alone, the dragon would have left her back at the house, and she was clever enough to let him find his own way through his uncertain, surly mood.
At last, he gave in to the summer sun and stretched out his great length on the hot stone.
He said into the silence, “I am well aware of how crazy I sound.”
He glanced at her sidelong. She had curled onto her side, knees tucked to her chest and head resting on her pack, watching him. Her expression was accepting, even compassionate. How could she look at him in such a way? She, of all people, should know that he was dangerous.
He demanded, “You do know that I am not that man, don’t you?”
Finally, she spoke. “I believe that you are not the man you think you were.”
Scowling, the dragon snapped, “What does that mean?”
“If you look at the details of his life without having his memories, I think it would be easy to get the wrong impression of who that Dragos is,” she told him. Sitting up, she crossed her legs and toyed with a blade of grass. “The handmade suits, the contracts and negotiations… He didn’t do all of that because he was civilized. He did it because he was playing the game.” She met his gaze. “And you are very, very good at it.”
Tapping his talons on the stone, he considered that. Playing a game. Yes, he could understand that.
Rising up on his haunches, the dragon crawled over to her, bringing his head down until his snout came close to her face.
“I snapped at you,” he whispered.
She cupped his snout and smiled up into his gaze. “I’m drawing a line right now. We have to agree to get over that. I know you’re dangerous. I’ve always known you were dangerous. I was not naive about your nature when I mated with you the first time, and I am certainly not naive about it now. You never broke faith with me. You would never hurt me. What you did when you were injured and you couldn’t recognize me is not anything we are going to worry about again.”
A sense of peace threatened to take away his bad mood. He whuffled at her.
“I’m not ever going to be a good man,” he warned.
She pressed a kiss to his snout. “We talked about that once, and I told you then—maybe you’re not a good man, but you make a truly excellent dragon.”
He muttered, “Maybe over time I can make peace with that other Dragos.”
“If you give it a serious try, I think you’ll be surprised at how well you do.” She lifted a shoulder. “And if you can’t adjust, maybe we’ll go somewhere else and do other things. We’re going to live a long time together, and things change.”
The last of his tension eased away. Heaving an immense sigh, he shapeshifted and laid his head in her lap. She stroked her fingers through his hair, and for the first time since the accident, he fell into a truly deep, restful sleep.
* * *
The sun traveled across a blue, cloudless sky as Dragos slept.
After a while, she grew sleepy too, until finally she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and she nodded off, her hands laced protectively over the back of his head.
Sometime later, he began to stir, and she came awake with a jerk. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. They had dozed the afternoon away.
After nuzzling her thighs, he yawned and rolled onto his back. She gave him a smile as she flicked bits of grass off his skin.
He never got sunburned, no matter how long he stayed out in the sun. Instead, the dark bronze of his skin grew more burnished and rich. After a moment, all the bits of grass were gone and she gave up on that small excuse to touch him and simply stroked his bare chest.
He watched her, his expression more peaceful than it had been in some time. It would always break her heart a little to look at the new white, jagged scar on his brow. She touched it with a finger, swallowing hard.
He’s mated with me, she thought, not once, but twice.
I am so lucky. I am the luckiest woman in the world.
The smile she gave him twisted, because it was simply too small of a gesture to contain the enormity of the emotions inside her.
“I love you, you know,” she told him.
He cocked a sleek, black eyebrow at her. Coincidentally enough, it was the same brow that now carried the scar. “You surely must, woman.”
She chuckled. “Yeah.”
Stomach muscles flexing, he sat up and twisted to give her a lingering kiss. “One of the craziest things that has been running through my head,” he muttered, “is how goddamned jealous I’ve been of that other Dragos.”
She put her arms around his neck. “Maybe I tried too soon to make you feel better about him. I could have used the threat of him to keep you under control.”
Maybe that wasn’t a very funny joke, but she was pleased with the effort. Every time they talked, every joke, every revelation, meant they put one more step between them and what had happened.
He must have agreed because he smiled briefly against her lips. Putting a hand at the back of her head, he deepened the kiss, and it escalated swiftly—a hot, explosive flash fire of emotion.
Coming up on his knees, his face taut and flushed with need, he yanked her clothes off. She was a willing participant, wriggling out of her top before he could figure out the complexities of undoing the buttons.
When he kicked off his jean shorts, his hardened penis bounced as it came free of the material. He pulled her down onto the grass and covered her with his body.
They could find time for foreplay and finesse later. Much later, after the first wave of the mating urge eased, or perhaps, for her, after the memory of the fear and pain over the last two days faded.
They weren’t there yet. For now, he took her in a blaze of heat, and they coupled like the animals they were. Words tangled with motion, and it all became one thing.
I love you, love you.
I’ll never let you go. You’re mine. You’re my mate.
They burned each other out, until at last they could rest quietly in each other’s arms.
At last, he pulled away from her. She watched as he went to the pile of wrapped gold and jewels. Unceremoniously, he dumped the sapphires into her pack, took the cloth that the jewels had been wrapped in and dampened it at the spring.
When he returned, he washed the inside of her thighs gently. She stroked his arm as he did it, marveling at his intent expression. Sometimes he wanted so desperately to get something right, the sight of it shot like an arrow right through her.
After he finished, they dressed. The sky was darkening by the time they packed the rest of his treasure into the pack. He shifted back into his dragon form, invited her into the curve of his paw, and after she had settled comfortably, they flew back to the estate.
Once the buildings came into view, he banked and wheeled overhead, not suspiciously, as he had the day before, but in a more leisurely fashion, as he took a good look in the last light of day.
She glanced without much interest over the scene. They had flown over many times, just like this, as they talked about plans for renovations and the new buildings. Most of her attention remained on him, as she gauged his reaction to the things he saw.
Which was why she noticed the small hitch in the rhythm of his flight.
He said, curiously, “We never talked about that building.”
She looked down again at the focus of his attention.
It was the house of the estate manager, some distance away from the construction site, along the curve of the lake.
A pang struck. Although she wouldn’t trade her memories away for anything, it was hard to reme
mber their time together all by herself.
She told him, “It’s the estate manager’s house. His name is Mitchell. He used to live here full-time when the main house was empty, but he’s taking a vacation right now, as we figure out how to restructure his job.”
Dragos folded his wings and descended. Even though she knew he would never drop her, the abrupt change in altitude made her clutch at one of his talons.
Landing on the shore of the lake in front of the house, he set her down and shapeshifted. He wore a strained, listening expression.
Watching him, she said, “We spent our wedding night in that house.”
He whispered, “You gave birth there. In that room, with the big window, while we looked over the lake. We were all alone.”
Her breath stopped, and her heart began to race. “Yes.”
He turned on her, with the swiftness of fresh outrage. “You stole one of my pennies!”
She wasn’t sure what pure joy looked like.
But she knew what it felt like, shining out of her own face.
Chapter Ten
While his first breakthrough was nothing short of miraculous, his recovery was not quite so simple or easy.
They took two more days together, partly so that he could gain some control over the volatility of his mating urges, and partly to see if he might regain more of his memories before they began to deal with the outside world again.
After hours of patiently talking between long bouts of lovemaking, he recalled most of their time together. A few odd bits and pieces still remained missing, but he lost the sense of competing with the other Dragos, especially when he recalled the intensity of mating with her the first time.
She was right. She was in his bones. One morning, as they lay exhausted and entwined, he whispered into her hair, “I’ll always mate with you.”
He could hear the smile in her voice as she whispered back, “I believe you.”
Pia managed to convince him that he should have at least one consultation with Dr. Kathryn Shaw, the Wyr surgeon who often treated sentinels when they were injured. Because of that, the doctor was privy to certain confidences.
Although he finally agreed, Dragos was reluctant to do even that. Secretive by nature, it went against a very strong instinct in him to reveal to anyone the fact that his memory still remained impaired.
The morning of the consultation, Graydon brought Kathryn to the house. She was another avian Wyr, a falcon, and they flew in to land in the clearing, shapeshifted into their human forms and stood talking together for a few minutes before walking up to the front door.
They were the first people to return to the estate. Their arrival had been carefully choreographed, with nothing left to chance, so that Dragos could observe both of them from a distance.
When he laid eyes on Graydon’s brawny figure, Dragos said immediately, “Of course, I know him. He is a good friend of mine—one of my best friends—and we’ve worked together for centuries.”
Pia’s expression lit up all over again. “You absolutely have.”
When Dragos switched his attention to Kathryn, his frustration returned.
Like most Wyr falcons, the doctor had a nervy, slender form. Her large, honey brown eyes were sharp with intelligence, and she had thick chestnut hair, which she wore pinned away from her narrow face with a plain tortoiseshell barrette.
At Pia’s inquiring glance, he said, “I’m supposed to know her too.”
She responded as though he had actually asked a question. “Yes. She’s part of our extended inner circle, and she’s one of the few people who knows what my Wyr form is. Between her surgery skills and my healing ability, we managed to save Aryal’s wings after she’d been badly hurt earlier this year.”
Aryal was one of his sentinels, the contentious one. He and Pia had gone over everything she knew about the sentinels the night before.
His mouth tightened. “I’ve got nothing.”
“That’s okay.” Pia laid a hand on his arm, and he calmed. He always calmed when she touched him. “Will you still let her examine you? Please?”
If the doctor knew about Pia’s Wyr form, Dragos could deal with her knowing about him too. “Yes.”
She leaned out the front door and waved her arm in invitation, and Graydon and Kathryn approached.
As they drew close, they slowed. At their uncertain expressions, Dragos said to the doctor, “Not you.” He looked into Graydon’s familiar gray eyes and smiled. “Yes, you.”
A broad, relieved grin broke over Graydon’s rugged features. As the other man stepped forward, Dragos pulled him into a quick, hard hug.
After letting him go, Graydon made as if he might hug Pia too, but she stepped away nimbly with a warning smile, at which he caught himself up with a sheepish expression.
Dragos had room to be grateful for her quick thinking at maintaining some distance between her and the other man. Wyr could be dangerously volatile when they were in the middle of mating, and in so many ways, he was still a stranger to himself.
Dragos and Pia had cleaned up the broken glass in his office and taped the open window with a covering of thick plastic, so the doctor examined him there.
Graydon went to the kitchen to wait, while Pia remained close by Dragos’s side as Kathryn shone a bright penlight into his eyes, tested his reflexes and balance, and asked him a series of questions.
She took care to ask before she did anything, which helped. After getting his assent, she also examined him magically.
Gritting his teeth, he endured the sensation of alien magic sweeping through his head. She was clearly adept at handling injured Wyr with uncertain control over their more violent impulses, and she finished that part of the examination quickly.
Afterward, the doctor perched a hip on the edge of the nearby mahogany table and regarded them with calm, intelligent eyes.
“You already know I’m a surgeon and not a neurologist,” Kathryn said. “So my first advice is, we should find you someone who specializes in treating patients with amnesia.”
“No,” Dragos said. Beside him, Pia stirred. They held hands, and he clamped his fingers tightly over hers. He told her again, “No. It’s hard enough for me to trust Kathryn with this. I will not consult with a total stranger.”
Pia’s shoulders slumped, and she sighed, although she didn’t look surprised.
Neither did Kathryn. “Let me know if you revisit that decision,” the doctor said. “In the meantime, treating memory loss is as much an art as it is a science, but we do know some things. For example, different types of memory are stored in different ways. Your procedural memory, which involves skills and tasks, appears to be undamaged. You know how to take a shower, how to fly, how to get dressed, etc.”
Unexpectedly, one corner of Dragos’s mouth quirked. He said, deadpan, “Or how to ride a bicycle.”
He felt, rather than saw, Pia’s attention flash to him. An exhalation of laughter escaped her, as she shifted in her chair.
“Exactly,” said Kathryn. “Then there’s declarative memory, which has two parts—semantic and episodic. Semantic memory contains facts and concepts. Episodic memory contains events and experiences. From what you’ve said, most of your semantic memory appears to be undamaged, but not all of it. You retain many concepts and facts, but the more closely those are tied to your episodic memory—or your events and experiences—the more likely there might be some impairment.”
As wordy as that was, it was starting to sound a lot like Pia’s complicated concepts.
“Explain,” he ordered.
“Okay.” Kathryn’s reply was easygoing enough. She exchanged a glance with Pia and shifted into a more settled position. “You know there is the Wyr demesne here in New York.”
“Yes, but I didn’t recall that a few days ago.” He thought of the wounded dragon resting on the ledge while waiting for a suicidal fool to climb up to him. “I was pretty deep into my animal nature.”
“You’ve done a lot of healing since
then.” Kathryn hesitated and glanced at Pia again. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to respond quickly, without giving it too much thought. How is the relationship between the Wyr demesne and the Dark Fae demesne?”
“Not bad,” he said instantly, then he paused and frowned. “But that wasn’t always true, was it?”
“No,” Pia said. “It wasn’t.”
He looked at her from under lowered brows. “What happened?”
Her expression turned wry. “You and the Dark Fae King Urien didn’t get along. Urien kidnapped me, and you killed him. But we love the new queen, Niniane.”
Kathryn held up one slim hand. “So, on the one hand, you have the semantic memory, or the facts and concepts—which is, the Wyr demesne and the Dark Fae demesne haven’t always gotten along.” The doctor held up her other hand. “Here, on the other hand, you have episodic memory, or your events and experiences—which is, you killed the Dark Fae King. Both of these are housed in the declarative part of your memory. The damage you’ve sustained is in that area.”
Frustration welled again. Letting go of Pia’s hand, he raked his fingers through his hair. He said, “What you’re really saying is I might not remember certain facts and concepts if I’ve got some sort of personal event attached to it?”
“Yes,” replied Kathryn. “I think that’s likely.”
Which meant he might not remember old enemies or secrets that had been hidden long ago.
Inside, the dragon roused as he realized the world around him had gotten that much more dangerous.
Clearly thinking along the same lines, Pia muttered faintly, “Dragos has lived for millennia. He’s witnessed and interacted with so much history.”
The doctor said again, “Well, yes.” Kathryn looked at Dragos. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not sure how much a specialist could help you anyway. You have a… unique and capacious mind.”
“I’ve got to get those memories back,” he growled. “All of them.”
“I’m sorry.” Kathryn frowned. “There’s no easy way to say this. You did sustain brain damage. It’s real and discernible, and I could sense it as a shadowed area when I scanned you. It’s very possible the only reason why you’ve made as much progress as you have is because Pia is the one who healed you. I’ve seen the kind of miracle that can come from her healing.”