But trust was a difficult thing. The other five women in the room avoided her challenging stare—they acknowledged her as the dominant force in the room.
That helped, a little. She might get some sleep.
Would help more if she wasn’t afraid of dreams. If they were just dreams, she could cope. But since becoming Dire, she’d understood that dreams were not always merely her brain’s nocturnal misfirings.
Rindek had promised her not only more power than she could ever imagine, but a family. All she had to do was let Remy bite her, to transfer the virus. So she’d agreed.
She hadn’t been prepared for the Dire to invade her dreams.
It seemed innocent at first. When she started dreaming of becoming a Dire, and she’d thought it was cool. They provided sneak glimpses into having four legs rather than just two and showed her what it would be like to have the senses of a beast.
Then Remy started appearing in them. Running with her and howling at the moon. But with each dream, Remy changed a little more. Became more assertive. Pursued rather than just playfully chased. Nipped at her. Pushed her around.
Thinking they were only dreams, Dani had been confused as to why her subconscious was making him into such a bastard. Then Rindek’s slave—the one named Ash—had told her the truth.
That Remy was really present in her dreams.
When she asked Remy about it, he merely grinned and said that was all part of becoming a Dire. And then he’d turned her dreams into nightmares.
Dani rubbed her face and turned her back on the other five women to hide the glitter of tears. She’d done her best to erase this stuff from her mind, but it was still there. Hiding, waiting to pop out at inopportune moments. The weeks of him dominating her dreams, and particularly the brutal mating during the full moon, haunted her.
She took a deep breath and returned to default. It was just something that had happened before her body had embraced the beast. Before she’d come into her power.
Before that bastard Remy had set up permanent shop in her brain.
Dani rolled back over. No way she’d fall asleep with her back to the room. She pulled the thin blanket high under her chin and closed her eyes.
Remy was dead. Her beast, and her power, were now her own. His memory could only haunt her dreams if she let it.
And she dreamed:
She didn’t dream of Remy. She dreamed of the Dragon.
He’d been in her dreams so often as of late that she was getting a bit freaked out by it. Why was she so obsessed with this Dragon? If he found her in real life, she’d be lucky to survive the experience.
Tonight she stood on a rock ledge, so high up in the mountains that it was dusted by snow. She was in human form, not Dire. Yet she wasn’t cold.
Dreams could be like that, sometimes.
The Dragon appeared from the clouds between her and the moon, trailing vapor from the tips of his wings. Beautiful. He was beautiful, his blue-green scales shining in the moonlight.
He banked toward her, backwinged, and landed gracefully on the ledge, his talons scraping on the stone.
“Yous ares here”—his Dragon jaws slurred the words—“again.”
“And so are you.” It was a bit crowded on the ledge with a full-sized Dragon in residence. Dani backed until her shoulders hit the rock behind her. No room to maneuver here. It made her nervous.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up. When she opened them again, a seven-foot man stood only an arm’s length from her.
This guy could shift faster than anyone she’d ever seen before. “Stay away from me.”
The arched brows drew down and the remarkable eyes gleamed. “I’ve told you I won’t hurt you.”
“That”—she hissed—“is what they all say.”
Something moved behind him—another Dragon shot from the clouds, gleaming gold in the moonlight.
The blue-green Dragon spun as though he’d heard something. His entire body went rigid. In two strides, he was at the edge, wings erupting from his shoulders. And then he flung himself off.
