Exhaustion dragged at Aria as she climbed the stairs.
Once in the room, she cracked open the balcony door and chose the bed nearest it. The cool fall night air drifted in, carrying with it scents of rotting leaves and the slightest hint of frost.
Where was Nikolai now? Was he okay? The desire to track him down nearly overwhelmed her. If it wasn’t for Lucas’s presence downstairs, she doubted she could stay.
Her longing to be with Nikolai wasn’t something she understood. Unlike the other shapeshifting species, Dragons rarely formed permanent pairings. Or so she understood. Having been raised outside of a Dragon society, her knowledge was sketchy at best. Danao had mentioned something called a soul bond, but he hadn’t elaborated on it, merely glancing toward Mervok and changing the topic.
Soul bond. It did have a certain ring to it. And there was no doubt she was strongly attracted to Nikolai. But she was also attracted to Lucas. So perhaps the reproductive cycle thing did make the most sense.
Except, of course, for the sharding dreams.
She needed to fly to clear her mind properly, but was far too depleted to do so. And here, in this virgin realm, a bright-red Dragon soaring over the city might cause a stir.
With a sigh, she set the plate on the bedside table and lay down. Careful not to squish Mai, she pulled the sheets up to her chin. Her thoughts spun away as sleep reached for her.
The moonlight painted her wings in silver and gold.
Aria spread them into the night breeze . The slip and slide of air over her wing membranes and the trailing of damp cloud vapor off her tail buffeted and teased away each worry until it all seemed insignificant.
Or that was the theory, anyway. A few stubbornly refused to leave.
She banked into a cloud, and twirled, twisting the vapor into a spiral before she looped back on it to fly straight through the vortex. She’d just completed three such maneuvers when she caught a flash of movement darting through the clouds above.
Something sleek and jet-black.
Her heart accelerated, a heady mix of lust and excitement as instinct took over. Aria folded her wings, and dove.
When she leveled out again, she glanced upward. Nothing. Disappointment flooded her—it was a visceral, painful thing. Had she been wrong?
He came at her like a lightning bolt, a shadowy gleam that dropped from the clouds. His talons grabbed her by the wings and flipped her right over before his teeth fastened on the thickened scales of her throat.
She’d never seen a black Dragon. He was gorgeous, his scales reflecting indigo in the moonlight. Lust flooded her—so powerfully she could barely breathe. She went limp in his grasp as his wingbeats carried them both upward, higher and higher, through the clouds, and then past them. Their breath turned to ice that lined their muzzles and frosted their scales.
He kept going until she thought they might touch the moon, while her body ached for a completion that was sure to follow. Then he hovered, letting go of her throat while supporting her with all four legs while he rubbed his head along hers. She inhaled a musky scent that penetrated straight to her core, before pulling back to look at him. So handsome, right up to his eyes—a black so intense they reflected the starlight, surrounded with a vivid emerald band...
Not Dragon eyes, but ones she knew. Shock reverberated through her.
“Lucas?”
He stiffened, the talons gently encircling her limbs tightened.
“Is that you?”
His jaws opened, but no words emerged. Which was when she realized she could see the stars clear through him.
He was fading away.
“No! Wait! Don’t go!”
But already the talons slipped, and she fell away from him. As she hit the bank of clouds, he vanished like smoke.
Aria blinked awake. Her body shook with a mixture of frustration and confusion. She’d been so ready to—to do what?
To let that Dragon—had it really been Lucas?—mate with her.
Something moved on the other bed in the room. Aria froze. At some point, Lucas had come upstairs and gone to sleep.
As she lay there, heart pounding, he groaned. A long, deep sound that a man would make when a woman slid her hands along—
