Page 33 of Dallas

“Where are you going?” she called out, an edge of panic in her voice.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not when there was a roar building up inside me. The dragon’s roar.

14

“Dallas! Dallas, don’t go!” For what felt like the hundredth time since the crash, tears filled my eyes. “Please, don’t leave us!”

I knuckled my tears away and cursed my weakness. I didn’t need him. He could get lost in the woods and never return—now that Callie was healing, we’d find our way to the top of the mountain together. He was nothing. No one.

Tightness seized my chest, then moved up to my throat. I was lying to myself—and I was not doing a good job of it.

He was not nothing. He was something. Perhaps more than that, if every force in the universe didn’t seem bent on keeping us apart.

Mating with a dragon. It wasn’t meant to be. Wasn’t that always what I’d been taught? Practically from the day I was born. How was I supposed to go back on everything I’d ever known to be true?

“Hecate?” Callie’s voice from within the cave could not possibly have surprised me more.

I spun in place and all but flew to her side.

Her eyes were open, staring up at the cave roof.

“I’m here. I’m right here with you. You frightened me when you went away.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” She let out a little laugh—breathless with disbelief. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear that,” I laughed with her, looking down at her legs. The bruising—so terribly, violently purple and blue before—had all but disappeared, and the swelling had gone down until it was barely noticeable.

“My arm.” She raised it. “It doesn’t hurt.”

I couldn’t see her through my tears. “I’m so glad. You’ll be fine now. Just give it a bit more time, would you? Don’t try to get up yet,” I warned when it appeared as though she’d been about to do just that.

“Where is Dallas? I have to thank him.” Her cheeks were pink, her skin no longer cold. The old vibrancy was back in her eyes and voice. As if nothing ever happened.

The smile I wore felt tight, but I hoped she wouldn’t notice. “I’m not sure. He went back to the car, I think. But he’ll be back.”

“You’re lying. Why are you lying?”

“What makes you think I’m lying?”

She rolled her eyes. “Come now. Don’t be evasive. What really happened? Why is he not here?”

I shrugged. “It’s nothing. Truly, really nothing. We had an argument.”

“Over?”

“Many things.” I sat cross-legged beside her, where she at least remained on her back as I’d requested. No sense in taking chances. “I suppose this means you didn’t hear any of it.”

Her brow creased in concentration. “Now that you mention it, I can recall a few things—but feelings more than words. I felt something in you. I felt it in him, as well.”

“In him? You mean you reached out into his head?”

“No. It came to me when I was…” Her eyes darted away, telling me how uncomfortable the memory made her. Drinking the blood of another creature, no matter who they happened to be, was hardly a small matter.

“Go on,” I murmured, patting her hand and hoping it was enough to reassure her.

“A great many images came to me. Sensations, too, and emotions. I know what he thinks the two of you are to each other.”

Her announcement took my breath away, but then she’d never been one to beat around the bush.

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