He brushed people out of the way as he entered the gym, caught sight of Graydon and Bayne at the edge of the tumbling mats. The gryphons stood with their arms crossed. They were watching something on the floor and laughing.

As Dragos approached, Graydon caught sight of him over the onlookers’ heads and grinned. “Hey, boss. Thanks for the new toy.”

Dragos demanded, “What are you talking about?”

Graydon told him, “We’re playing pin the herbivore. None of us can figure what the hell she is, but damn, she’s fast. So far Team Gryphon is two for ten. Get her greased up and I bet we couldn’t pin her at all.”

He reached the edge of the mat and looked down.

Constantine was crouched, arms out, intent on the struggle that played out in front of him. “Get her—get her—”

Rune and Pia were in a tangle of limbs on the mat. Rune’s powerful body strained as he fought to cover hers. Pia’s smaller form twisted and flowed underneath him, her face fierce and reddened. They were both panting and slick with sweat. Pale, slender muscles flexed as she avoided his grasp. The gryphon swore as he shifted with her, into a position that was reminiscent of the very one Dragos had used yesterday morning when he had taken her from behind.

The dragon detonated.

FIFTEEN

The attack happened without warning, just as Rune said it might. One minute she was immersed in the move/countermove of her match against Rune, mind racing to strategize against his flow of intent. He’d gotten her down on the mat. Not good. It meant he was more likely to pin her. She had to get out from underneath him fast, or between him and Constantine she was done.

Then his weight vanished.

Thrown off balance, she tumbled onto her back. She gasped to catch her breath and tried to make sense of what was happening.

Constantine lay sprawled against a wall. He spat blood, rolled over and got a knee underneath him.

Bayne shoved people toward the door. “Out. Everybody out.”

Graydon knelt, slipped an arm around her and lifted her to a sitting position. He had gone pale. “You okay, cupcake?”

She said, “What happened?”

He wasn’t paying attention. She followed the direction of his gaze.

Dragos had Rune pinned to the wall, one hand at his throat. Rune held still in the larger male’s grip, arms lax and hands held open. His alert gaze was fixed on Dragos while his face darkened.

Constantine got to his hands and knees and coughed. “He’s killing him.”

Pia found her feet, avoided Graydon, who tried to grab her, and leaped forward.

There was nothing rational in Dragos. The dragon looked out of his eyes. He had partially shifted. The lines of his body and face were monstrous, all wrong. Talons dug into Rune’s neck. Blood trickled from the punctures.

She didn’t pause, didn’t think. She eased up to Dragos and touched him on the shoulder to signal her presence. She stroked his arm as she slid under it, insinuating her body between the two men. She put her hands to that alien, deadly face and stroked his cheeks.

His Power was an inferno. She tried something she’d never done before and brushed her own cooler, gentler energy against his.

“Hey there,” she said. Gentle, soothing. She took a deep, slow, controlled breath. “Dragos, I want you to look at me now, please. I forgot to tell you about the earlier part of my day yesterday. I sent my personal shopper to feed New York. The state, you know, not the city. So you’re going to get a really big grocery bill soon. Sorry about that except, well, I guess I’m not.”

The dragon blinked. He looked at her. She had never seen anything so magnificent.

She smiled up at him and smoothed his inky hair as she kept up the soft patter. “Come to think of it, I bet you’re going to get lots of grocery bills. I can’t imagine Stanford will be able to get so much food from just one supplier. Stanford is the shopper. He’s a Wyr-mink. And my new robe is beautiful. It’s black satin, very soft and elegant. I wore it this morning and thought of you when I took a shower.” She put a hand on the rigid muscles of his arm as she leaned against his chest. “Come down off the ledge now. Let go of your friend. You like him. You’re going to remember that soon and then you’ll be upset if you’ve damaged him. Besides, I want you to give me a kiss, so I can thank you properly for the robe—and for the potion you left on your pillow this morning. They were very thoughtful of you.”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. His Power shifted to wrap an invisible cloak of warmth around her.

“I’m still not right in the head,” she whispered to him. Sexuality flared in those gold raptor’s eyes. She slipped the tip of her finger between his lips and rubbed the inside of one thigh along his leg. “Come on, big guy, you know you want to.”

He slid an arm around her, took hold of her chin with those long bloody talons and tilted her head up with exquisite care. She rose up on her toes, closed her eyes and lifted her face to him in total trust. His hard mouth brushed against hers.

She could feel the quick movement at her back as Graydon pulled Rune from them. The gryphon gagged and coughed. Then the rest of the world fell away as Dragos deepened their kiss. She slid her arms around his neck. She felt his body shift and flow back into more familiar contours.

He slid his mouth along the curve of her cheek, down to her collarbone, and he buried his face into her neck.

Her gaze slid sideways. The sober gryphons had arranged themselves around the area. Bayne leaned back against a wall near Constantine, who sat on the floor with a bottle of water. Rune was farther away, near the free weights, as he blotted his neck with a towel. The puncture wounds were already healing.

Graydon stood not three feet from them, arms crossed, watching her with an anxious expression. Okay, so that was maybe a little too close when she was busy getting lost in Dragos’s kiss. She shooed him with her fingers.

He shook his head. Then he mouthed, “What the f**k?”

She rounded her eyes, mouthing back, “I dunno.” She shooed him again.

The gryphon was stubborn as a mule. He cleared his throat and said aloud, “Boss, you gotta know we would never hurt her. We were just going through some self-defense maneuvers. She turned out to be so damn good we started to have some fun, that’s all.”

Dragos lifted his head. He cupped the back of her head and pulled her closer as he turned away from the gryphons, putting his body between her and them.

Realization dawned. He wasn’t being protective. He had almost killed his First because he was jealous.

She planted her hands on his chest and shoved. He let his hold loosen. She glared up at him, but when she saw the strain on his dark face her quick flare of anger died. Maybe she didn’t understand what was going on. Maybe she would never understand.

She drooped. “Is there anything more I can do?”

“I need to talk to my men,” he said.

She bent her head and nodded. She looked around the empty gym. “Okay. I’d like to take a shower.”

He let her go. “We’ll all go upstairs.”

As he spoke to his men, she turned toward the doors.

A tall powerful woman stood in the hall, looking in on them. Armed and dressed in leather, she had a strange beauty, with lean muscles, tangled black hair and stormy gray eyes. It took Pia a moment to recognize her. She was one of the sentinels from the Tower rooftop. Aryal, the harpy.

The woman turned away as she watched, but not before Pia looked upon the merciless gaze and cold white face of judgment.

Pia, Dragos and the four gryphons went up to the penthouse. Pia took the Saks box from the bed and disappeared into the bathroom without a word. A few moments later the shower started.

The gryphons raided the wet bar for bottles of Heineken. Dragos opened up the French doors. He stood in the doorway as a sharp breeze gusted in. The fresh air was brisk and calming.

Rune joined him and stood casual and relaxed, hands on his hips as he too looked out over the city.

He said to his First in a quiet voice, “I owe you an apology.”

The gryphon searched his face. “It’s all right, my lord. I can imagine how things must have looked. You’d already warned us to take care with her.”

“No,” he said. “It is not all right. It’s clear I am not in control. I am well aware that I am not acting or thinking normally or even rationally.”

Rune’s gaze was keen, perhaps more keen than he was comfortable with. “Dragos,” he said, “we’ve all seen Wyr acting this way before, you know. We’ve just never seen you acting this way.”

He tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, think about it,” said the gryphon, a smile creasing his tanned face. “When have you seen Wyr acting too jealous, possessive and obsessed? When have their tempers become too volatile? Too irrational?”

His mouth twisted. “I’ve always been bad-tempered.”

“Well, yeah, you can be one crabby son of a bitch, especially when things don’t go your way. But you know, when you lose your temper you have a reason. There is a reason for all this too.”

His thoughts twisted and turned. He considered the drama that played out when Wyr passions ran hot. “You think I’m mating.”

His First shrugged. “The possibility occurred to me. There’s also a lot going on right now. You’ve been under considerable strain. It’s rare when you’ve been in real danger of being killed.”

He took a deep breath and nodded.

Mating. Hmm.

He was a solitary creature by nature. He might interact with others, but inside he had always been alone. He counteracted the stresses of constant socialization in modern life by escaping for regular long flights where he could lose himself in wind and sunlight.

That was the juxtaposition that perplexed him. Instead of feeling relief at escaping Pia’s presence earlier today when he had left her sleeping in his bed, he had felt her absence as a loss.

He had . . . missed her.

“I guess I’ve got a lot to think about,” he said. The irony of that statement occurred to him, coming so soon as it did after his annoyance at it being Pia’s favorite refrain. He rubbed his chin and started to pace around the large room. “Just—don’t any of you touch her right now. Not until I figure this out.”

Rune strolled to join the others on the couches around the fireplace and accepted the bottle of lager that Bayne offered. He said, “Understood. Unless, of course, her life depends on it.”

He explored the strange landscape inside himself for a moment and nodded in agreement. He changed the subject. “Still no lock on Urien’s location,” he told them. “Whatever Goblins that might have survived have scattered. The mayor’s whining, the governor of Illinois is trying to tunnel up my ass, the Elves are being manipulative, and . . .” He stopped and shook his head. “She didn’t say she’s feeding the state, did she?”

Graydon rubbed his face, covered his mouth with a hand and said, muffled, “Ayup.”

Rune and the others weren’t so circumspect. They shouted in laughter at his expression. Rune explained, “She asked the shopper to stock up all the food banks in the state. To be honest, I think the credit card freaked her out a bit. Maybe she’s more of a flowers-and-candy kind of female.”

As he scowled, Graydon added, “She liked the robe, though. Said it was real nice.”

“Whatever,” he said, dismissing the subject with a wave of his hand. “I think it’s pretty clear to everyone I can’t be around too many people right now or I really might tear somebody’s throat out.”

Bayne grunted. “It is pretty tough to apologize after the conversation degenerates to that point.”

He gave them a grim smile. He finished one circuit of the room and started another. “Another day like today isn’t going to happen. We’re going to start selling off some of the businesses and get life more simplified.”

“Maybe it would be a good idea to go upstate to Carthage for a few weeks instead,” said Constantine in a cautious voice. He referred to Dragos’s 250-acre country estate in northern New York. “You know, take some afternoons and fly out over the Adirondacks, figure out what you really want to do, let stuff settle in your head?”

“Going upstate for a while isn’t a bad idea, he said. “But I’m settled on a few things right now. Aside from the fact that Urien’s got to die, I want to downsize my life and get rid of some of the white noise. And while we’re at it, I want you guys to help me figure out what to do with all the crap I’ve got crammed underneath the subway.”

Under the cover of the shower, Pia sat on the bench with her head in her hands. A backlash from fear and adrenaline hit, and she cried until her throat hurt and her nose was clogged and she couldn’t cry anymore.

The last couple of days had been so full of extremes, she felt like she was suffering from some kind of psychic whiplash. Everything was strange, full of hidden currents and nuances, with bouts of intense joy and sudden sharp spikes in anxiety and isolation. Reality had become a kaleidoscope that kept breaking up and re-forming.

For a while when the shit had hit the fan, Dragos had been her center, her one stable point. Odd, but she had been okay with all the danger and uncertainty that surrounded them. Here Dragos was part of everything else—unpredictable and unknown.

She had moments of clarity when she felt she was connected to him in a way that went deeper than either of them comprehended. She felt like she understood him better than he understood himself.

Then all the certainty slid away and she was left clutching at air. When that happened, she felt fractured inside. Maybe she was the kaleidoscope, breaking and re-forming. Maybe she was part of everything else that was unpredictable and unknown.