Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(25)

She flinched but did not back away. “Yes, Dragos,” she said. “They are your enemy. They are not mine.”

He said between his teeth, “That is a foolish attitude. My enemies are yours. You are my mate—if you die, I die.”

“Just because our lives are linked together, I do not believe that makes the Elves my enemy too. When Beluviel made the invitation, she was clearly trying to help.” She pushed to her feet, and he rose too. She lifted her gaze, and the hurt, anger and disappointment in her eyes speared him. She said with quiet bite, “Now I am going to figure out how to wake myself up, and I’m going to turn off my phone. That should give you more time to think, because we have also had this conversation before. I am NOT your employee, NOR am I your servant, and I never promised to obey you. And what’s more, Dragos, you should not speak to your employees or your servants like that anyway. If what happened with Rune taught you anything, it should have taught you that.”

He sucked in a breath. Maybe to roar, or maybe to apologize. Not even he knew what he intended. Perhaps both. Whichever it was he was too late, for she turned away from him.

His mate turned away from him. As she did so, she faded from the dream.

The dragon woke up with a growl. He lunged to his feet, then glared at the bed.

It was so appallingly empty he took hold of one end and threw it against the wall.

SIX

“You look like something a cat coughed up,” Eva said in a helpful tone of voice.

Pia gave Captain Psycho a dirty look as she tied the laces of her new boots. “Have I told you yet how much your witty repartee means to me?” she said between her teeth. “No, wait. I believe I haven’t.”

Beluviel had told her that the Elves would provide for her group’s needs, but she had still needed to get a few things suitable for horseback riding and a stay in the Wood. She had brought only one pair of jeans, the ones she had worn on the trip down.

The group had stopped at a superstore directly after leaving Lirithriel House so that she could buy a couple extra pairs of jeans and the boots. She had brought enough sweaters, and although they seemed a bit dressy, they would do. She packed one nice slacks outfit to meet Calondir in, left her fine wool dress coat in the wardrobe and threw the more serviceable anorak she had worn on yesterday’s car trip on top of her pack.

Eva crossed her arms and lounged against the doorway, watching Pia’s final preparations. “You sick?”

“Nope.”

“Deranged?”

She gritted her teeth. “Just didn’t sleep well.” She had, in fact, lain in a furious, hurting clench for hours after she had woken up. After a brief, horrible struggle with herself, she did exactly what she told Dragos she would do, and she turned off her iPhone. Then she glared at the damn thing for the rest of the night.

She wanted to turn it on. So. Badly.

But it would be truly awful to turn the phone on only to find out he never called or texted. And it might actually be just as awful to turn it on and find out that he left a terrible message of some sort, something cold or hateful about disobeying him.

And it would be especially awful if she turned on the phone to find out that Dragos was remorseful and apologetic. In pain. If he did something horrendously unusual like beg her not to go. Because then she was afraid she would totally cave in, and what’s more, she might gallop back to New York, and that wouldn’t do anybody a lick of good, not the Elves, not the Wyr demesne, not Dragos and especially not her, because this was a line she had to draw that she could not back down from.

He simply had to acknowledge and treat her like his partner, and work with her to figure out what that meant. He could not give lip service to the subject only to revert whenever he lost his temper or he didn’t like how things were going, and sure, he was a dragon and a man, and that meant he had all kinds of communication issues, but this one time, he had to be the one who gave in.

“So,” Eva said. “There’s no reason to call off this trip.”

Pia froze as an especially, super-duper terrible idea added itself to the litany of terrible possibilities. “Why?” she bit out. “Did somebody ask you to try to stop it?”

Eva stared at her like she might have lost her mind. The other woman might have a point. “Just thought I’d double-check.”

“There are lots of reasons to call off this trip,” she said. She stood and walked over to Eva, and looked into the other woman’s eyes. “I just happen to think all the good reasons to go outweigh the others. Got a problem with that?”

Eva cocked her head. “You got a touch of bitch-goddess sexy too, don’t you, princess?”

She twitched a shoulder. “I guess I do.”

One corner of Eva’s mouth lifted an insolent notch. “Your goddess ain’t as sexy as mine though.”

“Who cares?” said Pia. “Because you’re my bitch now.”

Surprise flared in Eva’s gaze, then she burst out laughing. With that, they both went down the stairs to load the SUVs, and the group drove out of Charleston.

The early morning was cool, damp and gray. Low-hanging clouds blanketed the sky, dark and lowering. They might be in for a wet, uncomfortable day’s ride. Pia flipped her cell phone over and over in her hands, scowling at it for the duration of the trip. She only looked up when they drove the final approach to Lirithriel House. As they pulled up to the front doors, an Elven male stepped outside to direct them to follow the drive around to the back of the property where they could leave their SUVs by the stables.