She launched toward Dragos, who was lying on his back. Darkness appeared on one white-clad shoulder. It began to spread. She fell to her knees beside him.

“You shot him!” she shouted. She stared at the stern-eyed Elves encircling them. “Do you know who he is?”

One of them stepped forward. He was a silver-haired male, beautiful in the way that all Elves are, with a gracious light that somehow made all other creatures leaden by comparison. Despite his slender build, he not only looked powerful, he carried more Power than anybody else in the clearing except for Dragos.

“We know who he is,” said the Elf. He stared down at Dragos, his beautiful face cold. “Wyrm.”

She turned back to Dragos. Even though he lay wounded, he looked utterly without fear, his raptor’s stare turning from the Elves to focus on her. She tore open his shirt to stare at the bleeding hole over his left breast. Her uneven breathing sounded loud in her ears.

“I don’t get it. None of you are carrying guns. Where’s the arrow?” she asked. She tore off her hoodie and pressed it to the wound.

“Elven magic,” Dragos responded through gritted teeth.

“No simple arrow could mark him,” said the Elf. “But this one has already melted into his body. It will continue to release poison into his bloodstream for a number of days.”

“What did you do!” she shouted. Her face contorted. She clenched her fists and started to her feet. Dragos grabbed her wrist.

“Pia,” he said when she fought against his hold. “It would take a lot more than this to kill me.”

“We have disabled him,” the Elf told her.

“You don’t understand,” she told Dragos. “I called them. It’s my fault.” She tried to pry his fingers open. It was like trying to pry open a steel shackle. She looked up at the Elf.

He had shifted his attention to Dragos. “You entered our lands without permission. Treaties have been broken. There will be consequences. For now, the poison will keep you from changing into the Great Beast. Since we have clipped your wings, we will give you twelve hours to get beyond our borders. If you are not gone by then, there will be more than twelve of us who will come for you.”

“I broke his law,” Pia said. “He was just coming after me.”

“His law is not our law,” said the Elf. “And he broke ours. Wyrm, release your hold on the female.”

“She is mine.” Dragos bared his teeth, gold eyes flaring to lava. His growl shivered through the ground at her knees, and long fingers clenched on her wrist. He tensed and began to rise.

The other Elves sighted down their longbows at him. “You will release her now or forfeit the twelve hours’ grace,” their leader said.

Pia flung her free hand out at the Elves, fingers spread and palm out. “Stop!” She leaned over Dragos. Bending close to that feral face was one of the braver things she had done in her life. Some instinct she could not have verbalized had her gentling her voice. “Dragos,” she murmured. Calm and quiet, like she would speak to a wounded animal. “Can you look at me, please? You know how normal people say ‘please.’ Pay attention to me, not them.”

That lava gaze turned to her, burning and alien. He may not be able to change, but he was immersed in the dragon.

“Thank you,” she breathed. She dropped her free arm and stroked at his black hair. Dragos tracked the movement and then looked at her face. “I know you’re very angry, but I promise you, this is not worth fighting over,” she whispered. She tugged just a little at the inky ends. Inspiration struck. “And you promised me you wouldn’t put me in harm’s way. Just a few minutes ago. Remember?”

His dangerous face clenched. “You’re mine,” he told her.

For a blistering instant, she had no idea what to say to that. Then hey, another lightbulb moment came along and she was on a roll. “Letting go of my wrist doesn’t change a thing,” she murmured. She mimicked what he had done to her earlier and stroked a finger down the side of his face, then laid her hand against his cheek. “Please.”

His fingers loosened and he let her pull away.

She got to her unsteady feet, somehow managed to stay upright and turned to face the Elven leader, who gave her a slight bow. He stared at her. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

Interior alarm bells started to ring, but all the lightbulbs had left her high and dry. She shook her head and said, “We’ve never met.”

“I’m sure I’ve seen you before. You look—” The Elf’s sea-colored gaze widened. “You look exactly like—”

Dragos curled a hand around her ankle.

“Yeah, I look like Greta Garbo,” she interrupted in a loud voice. A pulse of dread dampened her skin. Shut up, Elf. “I get that a lot.”

“My lady, I am so honored to meet you,” the Elven leader breathed. He bowed low to her, his previous generic respect turned to reverence. When he straightened, his face was alight with joy. “You have no idea how we hoped and prayed that something of your mother still remained in this world.”

All the other Elves stared at them, their faces alight with curiosity. She scowled at the Elven leader. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she told him.

He seemed to start and come to himself. His joy became muted but she could still feel it beating in him. He smiled at her and said, “Of course, forgive me. I am mistaken.”

Then his telepathic voice sounded in her head like deep bell chimes in the wind. My name is Ferion. I knew a woman once who looked much like you. Meeting her was one of the greatest gifts of my life.

I am honored that you would share that with me, she said. But it is dangerous for me that we talk of this, and I am not that woman. In fact, I am very much less than that woman.

Not to my eyes, he said. Please allow us to offer you sanctuary. I know our Lord and Lady would greet you with joy every bit as deep as my own. We would treasure your presence among us.

She hesitated and for a moment, oh, she was tempted. The thought of such a welcome wrung at her lonely heart. But Ferion’s reverence brought her up short. She didn’t think she could bear to live with such regard. Not when she was so much less than what he thought she was, nothing very special at all, just a glow-in-the-dark night-light and a stupid parlor trick and a big mouth that got her into too much trouble. Living with the Elves, where she would feel like a fraud while she aged and died and they remained forever the same, would just be a different kind of loneliness.

The jealous hand on her ankle tightened. She looked down at Dragos, who was watching her with a narrowed gaze.

I thank you for the offer of sanctuary. Perhaps one day I may take you up on it, she said to Ferion. While she couldn’t accept, she couldn’t bear to say no, either, to what might be the only home ever offered to her. In the meantime, I have a debt to pay.

Ferion said aloud, “Lady, I beg of you, come away with us. Do not stay with the Beast.”

She squatted by Dragos and dared to peek under the hoodie covering his wound. It had stopped bleeding. She mopped the blood streaks from his shoulder as gently as she could, wiped her hands on the material and folded the bloodied part into the rest of the hoodie.

“This train wreck all is my fault,” she said. “I have to do what I can to make it right.”

Dragos’s grip on her leg eased. His fingers slid along her calf in a subtle movement.

It annoyed her so much, she snapped at him. “But no matter what ridiculous thing you say, I am not yours. You wouldn’t be here except for me so I will see you to the Elven border. I know you lost your head, and you got all scary and obsessive and territorial, and you want to get back your property and all that, but come on. All I took was a freaking penny. Besides, I already gave you another one.”

One corner of his long, sexy, cruel mouth lifted in a smile.

The Elves refused to touch Dragos, so she had to help him as much as she could. By the time he had pushed himself off the ground and she had gotten herself insinuated under his good arm, the Elves had disappeared. She knew better than to believe they were gone.

“You took a 1962 penny,” Dragos said. His teeth were gritted. “You left a 1975 penny. It’s no replacement.”

She stared at him. “Oh my God, it’s scary you noticed that.”

“I know everything in my hoard and exactly where it is,” he told her. “Down to the smallest piece.”

“You could go to a doctor, get checked out for OCD,” she panted. “There might be medication for that.”

His chest moved in a silent laugh.

She focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He leaned on her as little as possible—otherwise they both would have crashed to the ground again. He still felt like a Volkswagen had been hung around her neck.

They got inside. He collapsed on the couch. He draped an arm over his eyes and stretched out one leg until his boot hung over the end. He left the other foot planted on the floor. Between the blood and the buttons she’d popped when she ripped it open, his Armani shirt was ruined. She eyed his chest that went both wide and far, narrowing to an eight-pack that rippled into his jeans.

For God’s sake. The male was injured and here she was ogling him like a pervert in a  p**n  store. “I’m just not right in the head,” she muttered.

He said from under his arm, “I’ll pursue that comment later.”

She turned to the kitchen. “I’ll get you some water.”

“Scotch.”

“Okay. And water.”

She brought the bottle of scotch along with a jug of water and a cloth. He swiped the scotch bottle from her, uncapped it and drank half without pausing. She waited until he came up for air. Then she sat on the wood-framed coffee table and used the washcloth to wipe the blood off his chest. The entry wound was already nothing more than a white scar.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked, anxiety gnawing at her.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Your voice is too loud. Shut up,” he told her. She bit both her lips as she finished washing him. He sighed and shifted. While he had lost none of that lethal animal grace, it was obvious he was in pain. “Keep doing that with the cloth. It feels good.” He paused. “Please.”

After freezing for a moment, she said, “I’ll get a clean one.”

She dropped the bloodied cloth in the sink, grabbed another and hurried back. He hadn’t moved. She began to smooth the dampened cloth over his chest and shoulders. If he had felt hot before, now he was an inferno. She took the arm draped across his washboard stomach, pushed up the sleeve and bathed it. Then she put it down and reached for the arm he had covering his eyes. He let her, eyes glittering under half-closed lids.

“It was the phone call,” she said. “For the steaks. I didn’t call a number from the phone book. I had memorized a help line number somebody gave me.”

“I got that.” His reply was very dry.

She nodded, dipped the warm washcloth in the water from the jug to cool it down and started over again. The words kept pouring out of her. She said, “I was scared when I called them. I thought you were going to kill me.”

“Got that too.”

“I’m sorry,” she burst out. She grabbed the scotch bottle from him and took a deep swig.

As she lowered the bottle, she caught him smiling. “Good,” he said. “You should be very sorry. In the last two days, you have cost me an untold amount of manpower, tens of millions of dollars in property damage—”

“Hey. Let’s keep the record straight. I wasn’t the one who threw a hissy and hollered fit to wake the dead.” Her spine straightened and she glared at him.

His smile broadened, a slash of white in the room’s gathering darkness. “You’ve caused me all kinds of broken treaties with the Elven community, and now I’m sick as a dog.”

She pointed at him. “You broke those treaties. You weren’t supposed to come here. How crazy is that.” A pause. She looked at him with sad eyes. “Are you really sick as a dog?”

“Pretty much.” He gestured for the bottle and she handed it over. “My body’s fighting off the poison. It’s better than it was. In a little bit I’ll be able to move around on my own.”

She turned and sat with a small grunt on the floor. She leaned back against the couch facing away from him. She drew up her legs, put her elbows on her knees and pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Her headache had grown. “I’m not sure where the Elven demesne ends, but it won’t take long to drive it. Couple hours. We’ve got some time.”

He dug his fingers into her hair and lifted up the strands. “I want some of your hair.”

She lifted her head. “What?”

“I said I want some of your hair. Give me a lock and I’ll forgive you for breaking and entering.”

“Oh-kay. Sure.” She squinted at him. “So I give you a lock of my hair, take you to the Elven border and drop you off?”

He laughed. “I never said I was letting you go. I just said I’ll forgive you.”

“I knew that had to be too easy,” she muttered. “You’re just not a straight road, are you? Okay, so why will you forgive me but not let me go?” Her shoulders sagged. “Never mind. I’m too tired for this conversation.”

He kept running his fingers through her hair. “Did you ever give your boyfriend any?”

Her eyes tried to close. The gentle tugging on her scalp was making it all but impossible to keep her head upright. “Ex,” she mumbled.