Page 25 of Darkhan

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Something like stomping preceded Scott’s voice shouting away from them. “I need someone with muscle, a first-aid kit, and a goddamn sheet!”

Harmony tried to squirm, at least enough to see the room, but Zeno lowered a hand to her shoulders and held her in place.

“Patience, Little Dove.”

All she could do was push out a breath, listen to the increased sounds of movement, and wait. At least, with Zeno’s arms around her, she felt safe. Even her new pains were a faded memory against his warmth. Best of all, she could hear his steady heartbeat beneath her ear. She could feel his strength in his hold. He was alive and well.

She knew now how much the idea of him being anything else distressed her. She didn’t know how she would have handled never seeing him again. Probably that meant he wasright about the whole destiny thing.

Chapter Eleven

“Let me see your foot, Little Dove,” Zeno said, his voice full of all the things Harmony felt as though she was lacking at the moment—gentleness and patience, primarily.

“My foot’s totally fine,” Harmony said. She obediently bent down and unfastened her cute shoes enough to slip her feet free anyway. “I haven’t even limped in days.” He was way too overprotective. He hadn’t let her put any weight whatsoever on her foot for three whole days, and even a week after she’d insisted on doing her own walking again, he never went far.

Zeno planted his hands on her hips and hefted her onto the countertop. “I was away for most of today, and rumor has it you finally went shopping. Indulge me.”

She pretended to pout. “Roland’s such a tattletale.” Not that she’d thought for a second he would do anything different. “It was only a couple of stores. I felt a little ill looking at those price tags. I don’t think I’m used to that part yet.”

Zeno chuckled and swept his hands down her leg, cupping her calf as his fingertips teased up the top of her foot. “Yet, hm?” He crouched down, adjusting his grip as he moved.

“What are you even looking for? It can’t still be visible.”

He gently ran his thumb over the pad of her foot. “Signs of infection. You didn’t get proper initial treatment.” He gave her foot a squeeze, lowered her leg, and stood. “You were lucky.”

Harmony smiled. He’d been so worried about her foot and her mental state after everything that she’d felt a little awkward trying to tell him what she’d realized that day in the SRA office. He had probably been right that she needed at least a short amount of time to process the damage. But in a lot of ways, her relationship with her family had been strained at best, so losing it completely wasn’t hard to adjust to. And she was tired of waiting. “Is it better now?”

“It looks much better, yes,” Zeno said, leaning toward her for a kiss.

She leaned up to meet his lips with hers, just a passing brush, and hopped from the counter before he could pin her in place again. She did love the way he took control, the way he touched her and kissed her, but she wanted to tease him just a tiny bit. So she took advantage of his surprise, slipped past him, and darted for the glass partition that led to the balcony.

As always, it was windy out, making the otherwise sturdy structure suddenly feel a little less secure. Her hair whipped immediately across her face and the knee-length skirt of her overpriced dress tangled around her legs.

“Are we playing tag, Little Dove?” Zeno asked, having followed her to stand at the doorway.

Harmony turned to face him, smiling wide. “No. We’re playing catch.” She put her back to the rail and reached behind her, curling her fingers around the cool metal.

“Harmony,” Zeno said cautiously, his amber eyes narrowing. He took a step forward.

“The game is simple,” she said, her smile unwavering. She carefully pulled herself up only so that she was perched on the edge, her grip strong despite the relentless tug of the wind. “You have something I want, I have something you want. So, you will catch me, and in doing so, we’ll both get our something.”

He didn’t look at all reassured. “I would give you anything—”

“Yes. Yet in nearly two weeks, I haven’t once seen the other side of you. How can I possibly tie myself to you for the rest of my life if I don’t even know what you look like half the time?” She let her words linger, waited until his eyes widened with the beginnings of understanding. “Catch,” she said, and threw herself over.

Trust falls were hard. But she doubted anyone at anyconcert or rave had anything on her and her trust fall from thirty-whatever stories up. Certain death awaited her if she had miscalculated or if her dragon hesitated too long. She knew all of that before she’d put the plan into motion, just as she’d made sure nothing stupid was in her way, like a lower-level balcony or any sort of pole-like protrusion.

There really hadn’t been any planning ahead for the way the wind ripped by too fast and too hard to even breathe, let alone scream. It was intense. Terrifying. For a long second, her gut twisted with the fear that she’d made a mistake.

Her eyes shifted to the side with a blur of dark movement in her descending peripheral vision even as a rush of contradictory heat surrounded her. Something like a cushion of air pushed up at her from below, slowing her gravity-induced plummet, and the next thing she knew she had landed on a solid surface. A solid, almost slick, surface of dark blue accentuated with the deepest black wings and a thick mane of matching ebony just above her. A surface that moved.

Harmony gasped for breath and scrambled to grab hold of the mane, rolling her body enough to straddle the ridge of spine between the wings as she did so. No sooner was she settled, her eyes wide at the cityscape view now beneath her that she hadn’t really thought to imagine, than her fantastical steed veered to the side.

She cried out in surprise but kept hold, tears from the bite of the wind pricking her eyes. Laughter was pulling up from her belly by the time they were lowering again.

Then, with a start, the hair beneath her fingers receded and her dragon practically vanished in favor of a gloriously naked man. They dropped as he twisted in the air, catching her in his arms as he landed squarely on their previously departed balcony.

Harmony drew a deep breath. “That was—”

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