After the world’s longest ice-cold shower, some deep breathing, and a lot of yelling at her inner wyvern, Ivy was finally ready to face Hugh again.

And mate him, her wyvern agreed.

Ivy groaned out loud, wishing that she could shake her animal. NO. We’ve been over this five times. He can’t. We’re not going to make it any harder for him.

Don’t need to. Her animal’s eyes gleamed wickedly. He felt hard enough already.

Ivy shook her head, squashing the dirty beast back down to the bottom of her mind. It was a good thing Hugh and she hadn’t attempted telepathic communication, she decided. His unicorn would probably vaporize on the spot if exposed to her wyvern.

She finished buttoning up her epically unsexy flannel pajamas, which she’d settled on as the least enticing items of clothing she owned. Just to be safe, she threw her ratty, shapeless old dressing gown over the top, and pulled on her thickest pair of work gloves.

She examined herself carefully in the mirror. Excellent. She looked like a homeless person inexplicably prepared for a spot of arc welding. Nothing about her even hinted at sex.

Well, apart from her mouth, which still looked thoroughly ravaged. And the heightened color in her cheeks. And her fever-bright, half-stunned eyes, the eyes of someone who had just been kissed near-senseless…

She gave her arm a sharp pinch through her layers of clothing, hauling herself back from that dangerously intoxicating memory. She had to have more self-control. It couldn’t happen again.

One kiss is more than you ever thought you’d have, she reminded herself as she slipped out of the guest room. And he risked everything to give it to you. Remember that.

She headed down the corridor to Hugh’s room. The door was half-open, and she couldn’t hear running water. He must have finished his own shower.

“Hugh?” she said, knocking on the door frame as she entered. “I think we need to—“

And what she thought they needed to do radically altered in her mind, because he was wearing a towel.

He’d clearly just finished his shower. His white hair stuck up in tousled spikes, while his bare torso gleamed with moisture. The towel wrapped around his waist barely came midway down his lean, muscled thighs.

He’d frozen, his hand white-knuckled on his towel. He stared at her as if she’d entered wearing a lacy negligee rather than mismatched tartan flannel.

She should turn and run. She should apologize. She should at least close her eyes.

Instead she blurted out, stupidly, “You’ve got tattoos.”

Hugh’s throat worked convulsively. “Yes.”

Ivy took a step forward, fascinated despite herself. It was the last thing she would ever have expected, from his upper-class accent and sophisticated manner. But he was inked from chest to elbow like a dockhand.

An intricate black snake twisted around a staff in the center of his chest. Twining vines spread out across his pecs and looped over his shoulders. They curled down his arms in elegant spirals, emphasizing the hard swells of his biceps.

The design was beautiful, but oddly unbalanced. His left arm was a riot of springtime foliage, each tiny leaf exquisitely detailed. But on his right arm, the vines were mostly bare. Only a few dry, dead leaves clung to them, as if a winter wind had swept the rest away.

Hugh turned away, revealing more vines and leaves inked across his shoulder blades. Ivy knew that she shouldn’t stare, but she couldn’t tear herself away. He was a living piece of art, even more breath-taking than she could ever have imagined.

He opened his wardrobe, the leaves twining around his left arm seeming to stir as his muscles flexed. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Why?” They must have taken hours upon hours of agony—it was difficult to permanently tattoo shifters, what with their rapid healing. She couldn’t imagine going through all that, only to keep the end result secret.

He turned back a little to give her one of his sharp, humorless smiles. “Because people would ask what they mean.”

Her fingertips longed to trace the inked lines. To follow the curving black paths over his gleaming skin, spiraling tantalizingly close to his taut nipples before sweeping up toward his collarbones, over his muscled shoulders, around and down…

As he pulled a pair of trousers out of the wardrobe, Ivy abruptly became aware of just how long she’d been staring at him. Face heating, she turned on her heel, staring fixedly at the wall as cloth rustled behind her.

Our mate is naked now, her wyvern pointed out helpfully.

Ivy squeezed her eyes shut. “So, uh, guess I shouldn’t ask what they mean, huh?”

He was silent for a long moment, so long that she very nearly turned around to look at him. Then, “Come here,” he said.

She turned, and sucked in a startled breath. He’d pulled on a pair of soft jogging pants, but his torso was still bare. He met her eyes steadily, his own dark and still. She couldn’t interpret his expression.

“Come here,” he repeated, holding out his hand. “Lie down with me, and I’ll tell you about my tattoos.”

She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn’t help going to him. Gently, he drew her down onto the bed, tucking her under his arm.

“Is this a good idea?” she murmured, as her head settled onto his bare shoulder

He stroked her hair back from her neck. “How many layers of clothing are you wearing?”

She had to stop and think about that one. “Six. Including two pairs of underwear.”

His chuckle vibrated through her chest. “Then I think we’re safe.”

His arousal was obvious, but his arms were gentle, holding her without asking for more. The sweetness of the embrace brought strange tears to the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away, ignoring the longing pooling between her own thighs.

“Tell me about your tattoos,” she whispered.

He tapped the center of his chest. “I got the Staff of Asclepius during my final year of medical school. A cliché, I know. In my defense, I was blind drunk at the time.”

She traced the twisting snake with a gloved finger. “I thought the symbol for a doctor had two snakes. And wings.”

“That’s a caduceus, the Rod of Hermes. It’s the symbol used by U.S. Army medics, but it doesn’t actually have any traditional association with medicine.” He snorted. “If you come back with one of those tattooed on your body at Oxford, be prepared for excessive mockery from your more well-educated colleagues. I was drunk, but not that drunk.”

She giggled, and then stopped abruptly as what he’d just said percolated through her brain. “Wait. You studied medicine at Oxford University? And you’re a paramedic?”

His shoulder tensed under her cheek. “I never finished my training. I got the degree, but I quit six weeks into my hospital residency.”

“Really? Why?”

“My headaches,” he said in a low voice. “University was bad enough, being surrounded by hordes of horny students, but the hospital was even worse. So many people, in such a small space…I could barely function. I tried to work despite the migraines, but even when I forced myself to touch patients, there were too many I couldn’t heal. I’m best with things like wounds and burns, life-threatening injuries. In hospital, there were too many people I couldn’t help.”

I can’t cure cancer, he’d said before.

Ivy caught his hand in her own, drawing it up to her mouth. Softly, she kissed his knuckles, and the joints of his strong, clever fingers.

“Tell me more about your tattoos,” she said, releasing him again. “You can’t have got them all when you were drunk.”

He let out a soft huff of laugher. “No. Though I was badly hung-over when I got these put on.” He indicated the intricate vines curling along his collarbones. “It was a few months after I’d dropped out. I was something of a mess. Living at home, searching for a purpose. After the third time my father hid a hooker under my bed—”

“What?”

“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say that he’s a terrible human being. Anyway, I stormed out, drove randomly half the night, and ended up here in in Brighton. Spent two days getting shit-faced at the Full Moon pub and generally feeling sorry for myself. Then on the third day Rose marched over to me, said that there was someone I needed to meet, and introduced me to Fire Commander Ash. While, let me add, I was still completely plastered. Worst job interview ever.”

Ivy smirked at the mental image of Hugh being grilled by the Phoenix while three sheets to the wind. “Can’t have gone too badly, since he hired you.”

“Well, I told him what I could do, and why. Which I would never have done while sober, so I can thank two bottles of vodka for my job.” His flippant tone turned more serious. “In any event, Ash gave me back a purpose. And the first thing the next morning I went out and got the vines, to make sure I never forgot it again. To help me stay focused.”

Ivy touched one of the dry, dead leaves on his right pectoral. “Stay focused on what?”

He was silent for a moment. Then he took her hand, drawing it across his chest so that her forefinger rested on one of the budding leaves on the other side.

“John Doe,” he said. “Sword through the heart.”

Ivy drew in a sharp breath, but he was already was moving on. Following the curl of the vine, he guided her fingertip to a triple spray of leaves springing from a single stem.

“Griff. Three times. I hope he’s bored with endangering himself, because I’m running out of skin there.” Another leaf. “This was a woman in a traffic incident. Never knew her name, but she would have bled out before the ambulance arrived. Anyway. You get the picture.”

She lifted her head to stare at him, speechless. He avoided her eyes, looking down at his left arm as if it belonged to someone else.

“A leaf per life. Terribly melodramatic, I know.” His tone was light, but there was a forced edged to his self-mockery. “But once I’d started, it seemed churlish to stop. Would be rude to decide that someone wasn’t worth recording, after all.”

She flattened her hand over his bicep. Her fingers covered at least a dozen leaves just there. And the curling vines covered his shoulder, down his arm, round over his back…

“This part’s empty,” she said, following the vines down to his elbow.

“Just waiting to be filled in.” He shrugged. “I wanted the unfinished design to be there, staring at me accusingly, if I was ever tempted to stop.”

“Stop getting tattoos?”

“Stop healing,” he said softly. “Give up my unicorn. Like I said, the tattoos help keep me focused.”

Her eyes went from the half-filled vines on his left arm to the nearly empty ones on his right. Only a handful of dry, curled leaves clung there…

“Hugh.” She touched one of the autumn leaves, and he flinched. “If the growing leaves are people you’ve saved, what are these?”

He was silent for a long, long moment.

“The people I didn’t,” he said at last. “And I pray to God that side is finished.”

He kept score on his skin. Lives saved versus lives lost, measuring his worth by the slow creep of ink down his arms.

She’d thought his tattoos beautiful, until she’d learned their meaning.

She sat up, spreading both of her gloved hands across his shoulders. Her hands were too small to blot out more than a small fraction of the design. She wished that she could scrub the black marks off his skin, take away the terrible guilt and pressure he carried with him wherever he went.

“You’re more than just what you can do, Hugh,” she said fiercely. “You don’t have to keep score. I wish you wouldn’t.”

He smiled a little, sadly. “I’m not, and I do. But thank you for the sentiment.”

Oh, how she wanted to show him how much she treasured him. To hold him close and wordlessly tell him over and over that he was loved for himself, not for his talent. She longed to caress every inch of his unblemished skin, until he knew bone-deep that his value wasn’t just marked in black ink.

As if sensing her thoughts, he drew her back down again, tucked her head under his chin. She stretched her arms, hugging him tight. She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of his bare skin against her cheek, the rapid beat of his heart in her ear.

“I told you about my tattoos because I want you to understand why I can’t mate you, no matter how much I want it,” he murmured.

“You think I’d want you to give up your unicorn?” she said, taken aback that he could even have thought such a thing. “I’d never ask that!”

“Ivy, being a unicorn means shifting in secrecy and endless headaches. God, if that was all it meant, I’d make love to you here and now, and bless you for finally ridding me of the wretched beast. But that’s not all it means. I could give up the unicorn, but I can’t turn my back on the people who need me. The people who will need me in future.”

She ran her thumb over his left shoulder. So many lives owed to his powers. So many more that could be saved.

“I understand,” she said, meaning it with her whole breaking heart. “But Hugh, I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this.”

He laughed a little, his warm breath stirring her hair. “Have you seen yourself, woman? All the crap the world throws at you, and you stride through it all like a damn queen. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. Why do you think I trusted you tonight, when I didn’t trust myself to stop?”

She took a deep breath, bracing herself to reveal her deepest, darkest secret. “Hugh, I touched Hope once.”

He stilled underneath her. “I’m not following.”

“Our mother was always so careful not to leave us alone. Mom thought I was jealous, she was scared I wanted to hurt the baby…but I didn’t. I just wanted to hug my sister. Just once. And one night when I was ten and Hope was two, Mom forgot to lock my door. So I snuck into Hope’s room, and I put my bare hands through the bars of her cot, and I touched her.”

His hand came up to gently stroke her tense back. “That’s understandable. You were a child, Ivy. You didn’t know-“

“I did, Hugh. Mom told me over and over every single day how dangerous it was, how I mustn’t ever go near the baby. I did it anyway. Hope spent eight weeks in intensive care, and when she came out she couldn’t use her legs anymore. She’d been a late developer, but she’d been pulling up, she’d been starting to toddle…and I destroyed all that. She's never walked because of me, Hugh. Because I had one moment of weakness.”

“Oh, God,” he muttered, his tone bitter with self-loathing. “Ivy, I’m so sorry. I never meant—it’s not fair for me to put such pressure on you. I promise, I won’t put you in that position again.”

She was not going to cry. He’d called her the strong one. She was going to be strong for him now, no matter how badly her heart was hurting.

She forced out the words she had to say. “So you still want me to leave?”

“No!” His hands tightened convulsively on her back. “God no. I never wanted you to leave, Ivy. In case you hadn’t worked it out by now, your mate can be a damn idiot sometimes. I was scared to tell you my secret, so I pushed you away instead.”

“Well, you can’t,” she said. “I can’t go, Hugh, not when you’re in danger from Gaze. No matter how hard it’s going to be, I need to be here to protect you.”

His chest muscles stiffened underneath her. “I can take care of myself. A unicorn is fifteen hundred pounds of muscle behind a five-foot spear, not a sparkly pony.”

“All right, Stabby McStabface, don’t get your horn in a twist,” Ivy poked him in the side. “I’m talking about me, not you. I may be just a wyvern, but I’m still a dragon at heart. I can’t leave my treasure unguarded. I’d lose my mind.”

“I’m your treasure?” His voice was softer than she’d ever heard.

“You’re my mate,” she said, simply. “You’ll always be my mate. No matter what.”

Neither of them said anything for a while, holding each other in silence.

“I think it was easier,” Hugh said at last, “when you thought I despised you, and I hoped that you hated me.”

Ivy couldn’t disagree.