Pia Saves the Day (6 page)

After a moment, he said, “Your mate was at this building site.”

The question took her by surprise, and she had to swallow before she could reply. “Yes,” she whispered. “He’s disappeared.”

“You think I know where he is.”

She shook her head. “No, but I believe you can help me find him.”

“And you claim you’ve healed me before.” The very lack of expression with which he said that indicated the depth of his skepticism.

“That must sound pretty outlandish to you.” She tried to smile. “I guess it is pretty outlandish. It’s been an outlandish kind of a year.”

If he had such a hard time believing she might want to heal him, just wait until he found out about Peanut. She could imagine how well that conversation would go down.

“I don’t remember you,” he said.

Her head drooped. Of course, she knew that, but the clinical, dispassionate way in which he said it was every bit as devastating as the actual reality. All the passion she felt for him, this tremendous, consuming storm of love…

None of it was returned. None of the need, or his own love for her, manifested in anything he said or did. Here he was, as strong as ever, living and breathing in front of her, and she felt as if someone immeasurably precious to her had died.

“I wish, so very much, that I could find some way to convince you to let me heal you,” she said unsteadily. “I wish it for your sake, so that you can feel better, and maybe—just maybe—your memories might return to you. But most of all, I wish it for my sake, because I miss my mate with all my heart, and I would do anything or give anything to get him back again.”

“The wound is already healing.” He added deliberately, “I don’t need you either.”

Maybe he was only speaking the truth as he knew it, but that seemed unnecessarily cruel, and it took everything she had not to lash out at him because of it.

Her voice hardened. “Maybe you don’t need me, or maybe you only think you don’t. You still don’t remember what happened to you last week, or the week before, or the week before that. You don’t know which of your old enemies might be close by, or what new enemies you might have made. You’re vulnerable, Dragos, in a way you’ve never been vulnerable before, and I’m the only ally you’ve got who’s offering you any kind of help.”

Silence fell between them, and it was just long enough for her to castigate herself again for pushing him too hard when she had promised herself she wouldn’t.

He stirred, shifting his long, bulky body, and by his very restlessness, she knew she had scored a hit.

“What is this healing you would attempt?” Dragos tilted his head to watch her more closely. “Do you really think it would help my memories return? I will not tolerate any kind of spell.”

The surge of hope she felt was almost as unbearable as everything else had been in the last twenty-four hours. “I can’t tell you how much I hope it will help you get your memory back, but the truth is, I don’t know,” she told him. Unable to resist any longer, she laid a hand on his muzzle and stroked him. “I can promise you this—I would never hurt you.”

A part of her thrilled to note he didn’t pull back from her gentle caress, but then he had to go and spoil it.

“Of course you wouldn’t, not if you have any hope of me helping you find your mate,” he said, the cynical tone back in his voice.

She nearly smacked him on the nose, as she snapped, “Of course.”

“Do it,” he told her.

For a moment she could hardly believe her ears. Before he could change his mind, she dug into the front pocket of her jean shorts and pulled out her penknife. Under his sharp, distrustful gaze, she sliced open her palm.

“There’s no spell,” she told him, her voice tight with nerves. “It’s just my blood. Bend your head to me.”

Slowly, still watching her, the dragon bent his head down farther. She laid her bleeding palm lightly against his wound.

Power flowed out from her palm. Dragos sucked in a breath and shuddered. After a long moment, she pulled her hand away and inspected his wound in the failing light.

It had already been half healed, and as she watched, the wound faded into a bone white scar.

Dragos released a long sigh. She asked, “How do you feel?”

“Better. The headache is finally gone.” The dragon met her gaze. “But I still don’t remember you.”

A
s he said
the words, Dragos watched the light that had brightened her eyes dim. Her eyes were quite beautiful, he realized. Large and expressive, they showed her every emotion. Her shoulders slumped, and her head bowed.

“Okay.” Her voice had turned dull and flat, matching her dejected expression. “At least we tried.”

She turned to walk away.

He frowned. He didn’t like the sight of her walking away from him. The realization seemed to echo in his mind, almost as if he had thought it once before. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“It’s getting cold. I’m not like you. I don’t have your kind of body heat. I’m going to gather wood for a fire.” She didn’t look around at him as she spoke. “I should have done it earlier.”

His frown deepened. While his presence deterred other predators in the immediate area, the ground was rocky and steep, and the gathering dusk would make traversing it dangerous for someone who was so much more fragile than he.

He said abruptly, “I didn’t say you could leave me.”

Her stride hitched, and the angle of the back of her head seemed to express… exasperation? When she replied, her words had turned edged. “And I didn’t ask you.”

At that impudence, he growled a low warning, but she paid no attention and walked into the tree line. How dare she ignore him?

A new realization sidelined his burst of anger. While it was true he didn’t remember her, the lack of pain and the absence of the fiery wall in his mind allowed something to surface—a single word that carried a huge concept.

Wyr.

Certainly she was unlike him, as she wasn’t a predator, but still, she was like him in a fundamental way. They were both Wyr, both two-natured creatures.

Like him, she had an animal form that was somehow tied to her cool, witchy moonlit Power, the Power that had cascaded over his hot pain, easing and healing it.

And, like her, he had a human form.

Instinctively, he reached for his other form. It felt like flexing a familiar, well-toned muscle… and he shifted.

After the change, he regarded his body. In his human form, he was still much larger than she, taller and broader, and more heavily muscled. He was clad in jeans and a T-shirt, and sturdy boots, all of which were grimed with dirt and blood—his blood.

On his left hand, he wore a plain gold ring. As he stared at it curiously, he realized there was something attached to his wrist.

Holding up his hand, he inspected the thing on his wrist in the fading light.

It was a braid of gleaming, pale gold hair.

He sucked in a breath. No matter how suspiciously he might inspect the braid, the only touch of Power he felt on it was his own, and that felt like a protection spell. The braid of hair was just that, a simple braid.

And he had wanted to protect it.

The gold hair looked quite familiar. In fact, it looked like the exact shade of hair on the head of the woman who was even now stubbornly climbing around the steep mountainside in the growing dark.

Galvanized, he leaped after her. She had managed to travel much farther away from the clearing than he had expected. His gaze adjusting to the darker shadows under the trees, he tracked her by scent and instinct.

She crouched beside some deadfall, stacking sticks into the crook of one arm. As he approached, she pointed one stick toward him like a sword without looking up.

“Stay back,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, clogged with emotion. “Leave me alone for a few minutes.”

Distress seemed to bruise the air around her, and he could smell the tiny, telltale salt of tears. Scowling, Dragos folded his arms. He disliked the scent of her tears, and he had no intention of going anywhere just because she told him to.

“You’re wasting your time,” he told her abruptly. “Those little twigs you’re gathering will burn to ash within a half an hour.”

She snapped, “It’ll be better than nothing.”

Brushing past the useless barrier of the stick she brandished and bending over her, he closed his hand carefully around the tense curve of her slender shoulder. She shuddered at his touch, her head tilting sideways as if she might lay her cheek against the back of his hand.

He waited for her to do it, and in the process discovered he savored the anticipation, but she didn’t follow through with the gesture. Disappointment darkened his thoughts.

“Go back up to the clearing,” he said. “I’ll bring firewood.”

Carefully, she pulled away from his touch and straightened. Still without looking at him, she told him stiltedly, “Thank you.”

He lowered his head, watching her shadowed figure as she climbed back up to the ledge, still carrying her useless bundle of twigs. If he didn’t like her walking away from him, he liked her pulling away from his touch even less.

They would have words about that. They would most definitely have words.

For now, he turned his attention back to the pile of deadfall. The frame of the fallen tree lay underneath a scatter of forest debris. With a few strong kicks, he splintered the dry wood and gathered several sturdy pieces. When he carried his load back to the clearing, he found that she had gathered rocks into a circle for a makeshift campfire ring.

Wordlessly, he stacked his load a few feet away from the ring, and went back for another load. When he returned and added the second armful to the stack, he found her squatting in front of the ring. She had stacked the sticks she had gathered, and she worked at lighting a handful of dry leaves with a small, handheld lighter.

Folding his arms, he watched. Even though he could have lit the fire with a single glance, she didn’t ask for his help, and he didn’t offer it. If she wanted to do it by herself, so be it.

After a few minutes, she had a small fire started. Tiny flames licked eagerly at the sticks, and the growing circle of light contrasted with the darkness around them.

Only then did she look up at him. She appeared calmer, more composed. She said, “It’s a good sign that you remembered your human form. It’s promising.”

“Is it?” He tucked his chin and considered her from underneath lowered brows. “I suppose it is.”

A powerful cascade of emotions made his mood uncertain, and apparently she picked up on it, for her gaze turned wary. “Don’t you think so?”

The delicate skin around her eyes was shadowed with dark smudges, and she looked exhausted. Still, the firelight loved her, burnishing the warm, healthy tan of her skin. The pale gold of her hair shone.

Her hair.

He didn’t look at his wrist.

“Perhaps it is a good sign,” he conceded. “I find I have more questions as time goes on, thus more frustrations.”

Feeding another stick to the fire, she nodded. In profile, her expression was grim, settled. She looked as though she were set upon a long journey requiring endurance.

Deciding to test her, he said, “I’m surprised you’re still here. Once you realized I had no knowledge of your mate, I would have thought you’d have given up by now and left.”

Anger flashed in her eyes, a deep, pure sapphire violet. The very best sapphires had that same intense, almost purple blue. “If you think I would give up searching for my mate, just because I’ve had a bad couple of days and a few setbacks, you’re badly mistaken. I didn’t mate for those times when it was convenient or easy for me—because, believe me, none of it has been convenient or easy. Not since the very first day.”

The fire in her response was delicious. He wanted to bask in it, to eat it all up. And not once, since she had arrived, had she ever spoken a lie. Everything she had told him was the truth.

Still standing with his arms crossed, holding himself at a distance, he heard himself ask, “Tell me of this time before, when you claimed to have healed me.”

There was a slight pause, as she adjusted to his change in focus. She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t just claim to have healed you—I
have
healed you, three times now. The first time, last year, you were poisoned.”

He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t that. He drew in a breath between his teeth, on a slow hiss. “How?”

She paused, clearly searching for words. “It was a complicated situation, and I take a lot of responsibility for it. It was when we had first met, before we had grown to trust one another. Essentially, I provoked you into breaking some border treaties with the Elven demesne. They shot you with a poisoned arrow so that you couldn’t shapeshift into the dragon while in their territory. You still have a scar on your chest where the arrow struck.”

Reflexively, he rubbed the broad flat, muscled area of his right pectoral. Immediately, as if his fingers remembered more than he, they found a small indentation in the flesh. “And the second time?”

A dark expression shadowed her delicate, triangular face. “The second time you almost died. Again, the story is complicated, but basically you, along with some allies, fought a battle against an invader, one of the elder Elves who had come from a place called Numenlaur. You had several broken bones, and probably sustained other internal injuries. You couldn’t defend yourself against the attacking army. Luckily, I was able to get to you in time.”