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“I know. That’s why I don’t stopyou.”
“You just mutter about it like ajerk.”
“Hey.” He bumped his nose against mine. “Youhavebeen known to place heroics a little too far over your own safety from time totime.”
I smiled. “Hmm. Well, if we’re comparing irrational behavior, where do we put ‘making up for being a jerk by acting like an even bigger jerk’ on thatscale?”
“I’m not sure if ‘bigger jerk’ is a fair assessment. I was trying to ease off onyou.”
“Funny how easing off included an awful lot of snarking. And, you know, there was always the option of saying how you actuallyfelt.”
“Before or after you were done getting yourself almost killed,again?”
“Either would have been fine.” I poked him in the sternum, peering up at him through my eyelashes. “Of course, given your usual fluency at sharing feelings, I might have ended up thinking you were telling me to jump off a cliffinstead.”
West caught my hand. With a growl, he rolled on top of me, pinning both my wrists above my head. “I think I can make my intentions a little more clear than that,” he said, the gleam in his eyes both amused andheated.
I squirmed beneath him, the playful hold getting me all kinds of heated up too. My breath caught at the hardness I felt pressed against my thigh. In an instant, I was twice as wet. “Already up and at ‘em again?” I said, wriggling a little more to the side so his cock could settle against mycore.
The contact made us both groan. West grinned down at me. “I do have a few impressivequalities.”
“Mmhm?” An ache of need was already spreading up from low in my belly. “Then by all means, go ahead and make full use ofthem.”
The heat in his eyes turned blazing. “Oh, believe me, Iwill.”
He bent to kiss me as he slid back inside me, and we gave ourselves over to pleasure for just a little whilelonger.
* * *
After a quick detour back to my rooms to find a dress that didn’t look as if it’d recently been torn off in the throes of passion, I headed back through the mansion’s halls to see where I was needed. I couldn’t keep drifting along in the bliss of having finally consummated all of my mate-bonds for the rest of the day. The vampire threat hadn’t gone away just because West and I had gotten iton.
West’s kin and the others who’d taken shelter here were already hard at work laying down more firewood in the protective ring. Others had ventured farther away to scout out where the vampires might be holing up during the day. If they’d found temporary shelter somewhere, maybe we could turn the tables on them before night fellagain.
If only it would be that easy. Somehow I doubted the bloodsuckers would have suddenly turned thatcareless.
I was just veering toward the common areas when the outline of a closed door snagged my attention from the corner of my eye. A jolt of anticipation I couldn’t explain shot through me. Iturned
The hall around me fadedaway.
I was standing in front of a simple door, this one painted the same pale moss green as the walls on either side of it. A circle of dimples marked its surface just above my eye level. It had no knob, no handle. A faint ringing filled my ears, and the certainty rose up in my mind that I could open that door if I wanted to. That it was meant for me to open—for me and mykind.
A familiar smell, like sweet clover and sunbaked stone, wrapped around me.Home. Then vision washedaway.
I stumbled backward, my still-sore back hitting the oppositewall.
The door I was looking at now, here in the canine estate, was light yellow-gold. It had a perfectly ordinary knob where a knob should be. But it had stirred something up in my memory—or maybe not my memory, but something deeper, that ran down through my dragon-shifter spirit. Excitement jittered through mynerves.
I’d come fully into my role. I was bonded with all four of my alphas, and through them with their kin. Maybe there’d been a lot more that came with being a dragon waiting for me than I’d ever evenrealized.
Maybe enough to stop the vampires attacks forgood.
I spun away from the door and hurried the rest of the way into the common rooms. My gaze halted on the first attendant I saw. I caught her arm. “Can you find all the alphas and ask them to meet in our lounge? I need to see themimmediately.”
She bobbed her head. “Right away, dragonshifter.”
I knew Nate was already in the lounge area that was just for me and my alphas to share. He’d left his healer room cot so he could make some calls to his kin without disturbing the other injuredshifters.
When I burst into the room, he looked up from the armchair where he was sitting. His eyebrows rose. “Is everything okay,Ren?”
