“I’ll build a fire,” I offered once I’d laid Callie to rest in the cave.

Hecate rolled up a sweater she’d found in Callie’s bag and placed it under her head as a pillow. She snorted, her face turned away. “I’d think you would be quite quick with a fire, being a dragon.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke? Do I strike you as being in the mood for a joke?” A quick mental inventory took note of the sopping-wet clothing plastered to my body, the soaked shoes, and socks which had likely pruned my feet, my general fatigue, and consternation. I even felt a chill in the air, and that was rare for those of my kind. We normally ran several degrees warmer than anyone else.

She cringed, glancing my way. “I’m sorry. Really.”

The first genuine apology I’d ever received. I decided to consider myself fortunate and refrained from pressing the matter. “As it is, no, I can’t breathe fire. I hate to disappoint you.”

“It’s not a disappointment. Truly, I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m too comfortable with nagging and teasing you, I imagine.”

I turned away from the task of gathering dry kindling inside the cave, my mouth agape. “Teasing? That’s what you call it?”

“What would you call it?”

My laughter echoed, bouncing off the cave’s walls. “Teasing would not be the word. Bedeviling is much more what I had in mind. Teasing implies… I don’t know. Friendship? Camaraderie, at the very least.”

She pursed her lips, her brow furrowed. “You make a good point.”

“Surely you haven’t been bedeviling me all this time with nothing but lighthearted intentions. Surely, you didn’t think of it as teasing. You only refer to it as such now as a way to make up for what’s already been done.”

“My, you’re clever,” she retorted, glaring at me. “Just one of the many things I happen to despise about you.”

That might have injured my pride if she had not already taken me far past the point of caring. While my dragon roared and raged and demanded justice—just what form that justice would take, I couldn’t say—I dropped to one knee with a bundle of kindling and began to arrange it far enough inside the cave to avoid the rain no matter how the wind blew it. “And just what else do you despise, then?” I asked as I worked.

“You do not truly wish to hear this. We aren’t truly having this conversation.”

“But we are, and I do truly wish to know. What do you despise about me? Besides my cleverness?”

She hesitated. Did I mean what I said? Did I wish to know? Would I take it out on her once I decided she’d said too much, once she’d wounded my pride beyond the point of return? Could she trust me?

She cleared her throat, kneeling on the opposite side of the kindling with Callie behind her. Kneeling, sitting, crouching and lying down were the most we could do, as the roof of the cave was low even for her.

“You aren’t really clever, you know. You only think you are. That is what bothers me more than anything. You have this air about you, so amusing and witty and clever. Always the first to break the silence with a comment or a quip.”

“That’s just how I am.”

“You do know it isn’t a crime to be silent, don’t you? There’s no need to fill every moment of silence with your voice.”

She was so frank, so unflinching, I couldn’t help smiling in spite of the dressing down she delivered. “I was silent for much of the flight.”

“Only after you made a fool of me.”

“You made a fool of yourself by pressing me.” This was no longer a laughing, joking matter. I put aside the pair of stones I’d planned to use for sparking a fire and looked her in the eye. “You inserted yourself into the conversation—one which did not involve you at that time—and pressed me. Teased, if that’s what you wish to call it, lass. If it eases your conscience somewhat. You did not need to do that, yet you did. You deserved to be put in your place.”

“That’s what you call it?”

“Do you have a better description?” I asked as she backed away.

“Put in my place,” she grumbled, turning to Callie. “I need to wash the blood from her hair.”

“You no longer wish to tell me everything you find wrong with me?” I asked.

“Now you are the one pressing me,” she muttered.

“You know how it feels now.”

“Shut up.”

I clicked my tongue in mock disappointment. “I’d expect better from you.”

When she refused to answer, I returned to the task of starting the fire. Within minutes, flames began to build and grow, filling the cave with welcome warmth and light.

“Thank you,” she murmured, turning her face,

I took note of her profile. She was quite striking, especially in the fire’s glow. It played off her fair hair and skin, the shadows dancing along her delicate features. One might believe her to be a person with a soul when they saw her that way.

What a pity she happened to be my mate.

No, she did have a soul. She loved her sister. I felt it. Which was what made it even more difficult to understand why she refused that which would heal her quickly, painlessly.

“How is she?” I asked as I moved about the cave, picking up more wood wherever possible. Anything we used for the fire would naturally have to come from inside—everything outside was hopelessly saturated.

“Peaceful,” Hecate whispered. “Which she won’t be much longer, I know. I can’t keep her this way indefinitely.” She moved aside, allowing Callie better access to the fire’s warmth.

“You ought to change her clothes.”

“I know. I hate to think of undressing her in this condition—or redressing her, for that matter. I’m not even certain I want to see what her legs look like under her pants.”

Her voice broke on the last word, which surprised me so that I almost stood straight up in spite of the cave’s low ceiling. Only quick reflexes kept me from a sharp blow to the head.

She bent over, elbows on her thighs, her face in her hands. Though she remained silent, her shoulders shook.

“Hecate.” I went to her, lowering myself to one knee by her side. “I know this pains you.”

“You can’t know,” she managed to choke out between quiet sobs.

“But I do.” I reached for her—slowly, hesitantly in spite of the dragon’s urging. She is ours, he reminded me in exasperation. He could not understand why I would hesitate to touch that which was mine.

He understood nothing of the way her mind worked. Hell, neither did I, but I was trying to learn.

My hand landed on her back, and to my relief, she didn’t shake me off or push me away. “I do understand,” I murmured, starting to rub in slow circles. “I do. The incident, remember?”

I chuckled mirthlessly. “Calling it that makes it sound clean, efficient. The incident. It was hardly clean or efficient. It was a horror. Bloody, unimaginable horror. My kin. Ones I’d lived with for a thousand years. A thousand years. Can you imagine it? They were dead at my feet. I couldn’t bring them back. I couldn’t stand up to the men with the guns, for I would merely be cut down as easily as Gavin and the others. So many.”

“H—how do you live with it?” she asked in a choked whisper.

“I simply do. But before I could live with it, I had to face it. There was still much more for us to get through before we could even begin to consider moving on. Just as you have something to get through now.” I patted Callie’s hand.

She nodded, rubbing her hands over her face. “I know. I love her so dearly. It’s unthinkable, all of it.”

“I know it is. I would take this burden from you if I could.”

She looked at me, her tear-filled eyes searching my face as if they sought the truth. She wanted to believe me but wasn’t certain she should. “You would?”

“Hecate, I don’t want to see you suffer. I don’t wish for your sister to suffer, either. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

She nodded slowly, staring over my shoulder. Seeing something that wasn’t there. What was there to see, after all, but darkness?

“Callie does not have to feel pain—at least, not for long. She will heal. My blood will heal her. Hecate.” I took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at me rather than staring over my shoulder. “I’m willing—eager, even—to give her my own blood if it means saving her. You can understand, can’t you, that in a situation like this I would normally be begged to share my blood if it meant healing her?”

“I understand,” she whispered, albeit with a frown.

I shook her—gently, as gently as I could—but enough to startle her. “Why is it not good enough for you? Why do you insist on refusing? Why won’t you help her?”

Her chin quivered, and her eyes welled up anew. Rather than offer an explanation, she collapsed against my chest and sobbed.

Nothing could have surprised me more. If she’d struck me, it would have made more sense than the act of her leaning against me and sobbing gustily, as she was at that moment.

I enfolded her, cradled her, allowed her to let it out, while wondering what I was supposed to do. Every protective instinct in me flared to new, blazing life in light of this shift. If only she wouldn’t refuse me.

There was no refusal at that moment, however, so I held her. It felt right. Foreign, of course, but right. As though I’d waited for this my entire life.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I murmured close to her ear. “I did not mean to.”

She shook her head, breathing in hitching gasps. “No. You didn’t.”

That was a relief, at least. “Will you allow me to help her?”

“I—I want—” She pulled back with a start, as if surprised to find herself in my arms. As if she hadn’t fallen into them of her own accord. She bore the look of a woman about to blame emotion for her actions. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right.”

I watched in consternation as she wiped away her tears and squared her thin shoulders. “You cannot mean it.”

“Why can I not mean it? Please, do not get ideas about us. I’m very upset and frightened for her. I shouldn’t have laid my difficulty at your feet.”

“You didn’t lay it at my feet. You threw it at my chest. And I allowed you to, and I didn’t push you away. I want to help you. Why won’t you allow it?”

Anything she was about to say was lost forever as a tremendous cracking sounded, followed by an ear-splitting crash. I pulled her to me and wrapped my arms about her head and shoulders, away from the mouth of the cave as a massive tree fell across it and shook the ground on impact.

Her fingers were like claws, digging into my shoulders.

“Everything’s fine,” I assured her, though the pounding of my heart said I believed otherwise. It seemed there was no safe place anywhere until we reached the mountain’s peak.

She was breathing hard, trembling. “What happened?” she asked, her voice muffled against my shoulder.

“A tree fell. It blocked the mouth of the cave, but we’ll be fine.” The thing was a monster, hundreds of years old by the looks of it, and the saturated ground and wind had been too much for it.

And still, Hecate clung to me. I couldn’t help the keen awareness of her which began to develop. How warm and soft she felt in my arms. How good it was to hold her. The scent of her skin, of her hair—even after being rained on, even tangled and damp, it brought to mind lush sweetness. I couldn’t help turning my face toward it, breathing her in, holding the scent of her inside me as long as I could.

She raised her head, eyes downcast at first but slowly, slowly moving up until they met mine. There was no pretense now. No flippant words, no snappishness. I found tenderness, vulnerability, uncertainty.

Mere inches separated us, a mere fragment of space filled with tight, pulsing energy which drew us closer…

A strangled cry from Callie pulled us apart. “

What was that noise?” she asked, then let out an anguished whimper.