“She’s awake,” I announced when I strode into the sitting room on the first floor, which had become a gathering spot since the clan took over.

At any time of the day or night, there was bound to be a handful of us passing the time here.

In a tall cupboard lived a collection of games which had all been played at least once by each of us.

Ainsley and Isla looked up from their checkers, smiling radiantly. “She is? How is she?”

I shrugged before sinking into a leather chair, affecting a carelessness I didn’t feel. “I don’t know. She didn’t say a word.”

“Is she mute?” Isla wondered, eyes wide.

“How would I know? She didn’t speak,” I reminded her, and I had to chuckle.

She had always been slightly scatterbrained, somewhat gullible, but with a good heart.

Ainsley’s auburn curls bounced as she shook her head. “It’s probably the shock. She doesn’t know where she is or who we are. Poor thing. Imagine, expecting to wake up dead, then waking up here, instead.”

“If she’d expected to die, I don’t guess she would’ve considered waking up at all,” I grumbled.

Was this what they did? Sitting around, guessing about the mystery girl? It had been days, but we’d found nothing to help us.

A Jeep was left on the cliff, close to the spot where she’d jumped, but Tamhas had found nothing inside to identify her. No purse, no wallet. As though she’d intended to stump anyone who came across the vehicle.

“She didn’t want anybody to know who she is,” Isla whispered with a sigh. “How terrible it must have been for her, then. The poor dear.”

That was another thing which managed to get under my skin. The way they all insisted on referring to her as the “poor dear” or “poor lamb.” As though they knew her or understood anything about her reason for jumping.

“Maybe she was on the run from the law,” I suggested, more irritable than ever. “Or she smuggles drugs for a local kingpin and has been keeping part of the proceeds for herself—but he’s on to her now, and she decided that jumping from a cliff was preferable to what he had in mind for her.”

“Oh, you.” Ainsley waved me off. “Watching too much television.”

“Just the same, it’s perfectly possible. She might not be the unblemished flower you all insist on making her out to be. I think it’s a good idea for all of us to maintain a degree of realism. This way, when we learn more about her, it’ll be easier if what we learn is unsavory.”

They blinked, silent for once. Ainsley cleared her throat, throwing a glance at Isla before asking, “When did you become so cynical?”

“How can you not be?” I retorted. “After everything that’s happened recently. How can either of you allow yourselves to be overtaken by flights of fancy when it comes to this girl?”

“She’s… interesting, is all,” Isla murmured, blushing.

“She’s a human being,” I snapped. “Which means she’s far more complicated than a tragic heroine from a film. She didn’t fling herself from a cliff over a broken heart or terminal illness. That would be too easy. Nothing is really that easy.”

I got up, suddenly restless, and stalked from the room.

The girls whispered about me as I left—no surprise there.

Within an hour, every living being at the resort would know that I’d been acting strangely.

Even Mary’s men, who loved their gossip just as dearly as a group of old ladies in a sewing circle.

I supposed they needed a way to pass the time, the same as anybody, but would’ve preferred I not be one of their methods for doing so.

“What was that all about?” Gate jogged to catch up with me as I strode down the wide corridor.

The shining floors gave voice to my footsteps, which echoed off the high ceilings.

“What was what?” I asked, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. “Coming up for air, are you?”

He smirked at my joke. “Yeah, well, even our endurance has its limits.” He touched my arm, signaling for me to stop when we reached the lobby.

It was empty for the time being, though I knew better than to believe we had privacy there.

Even so, he lowered his voice and continued, “I was just walking up to the door when you were arguing with the girls.”

“I wasn’t arguing.”

“You berated them as if they were children.”

“They were behaving like children.”

“Much the way you’re behaving now.”

I stiffened. “If that’s the way you see it, perhaps I should leave.”

“You don’t want to leave,” he called out to my retreating back as I walked away.

I paused, reflecting on the truth in his words. No, I didn’t want to go. Not until I at least heard her voice. That was what disturbed me most.

He must have taken my silence as the response he was waiting for, since he said, “I didn’t understand it at first, either.”

“Understand what?”

“What my dragon wanted. It made no sense. Martina was a nuisance—headstrong, impossible, and very likely a grave liability to our mission.”

“Putting it mildly,” I muttered, remembering how close I’d come to throwing her bodily from the boat.

“And yet, something was in my head, telling me not to be foolhardy,” he went on, crossing the lobby to stand by my side. “I didn’t like it. I didn’t want things to turn out that way. I felt as though I had no control over my own destiny.”

I remained silent, though my dragon did just about everything he could to tell me Gate was right. That I had no control because he was the one who ultimately decided what we would and wouldn’t do, who we would and would not create a future with. He wanted the girl in the bed, the girl without a voice or a name or a past.

“I don’t know who she is,” I reminded him.

“You do. Or, rather, he does.”

Meaning the dragon.

“What if that isn’t good enough? I mean, suppose she’s really the sort of person I described back there? A criminal, a thief, someone whose presence in my life could spell danger for us?”

“What do you think the odds of that really are?” he asked, not unkindly.

He could’ve grilled me mercilessly, told me I was acting like an old woman—and I would’ve deserved all of it, and more. Instead, he was my friend, as he’d always been.

“Sincerely, Miles. What do you feel?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do—or, you would, if you’d just let yourself feel it, rather than trying to understand and dissect and determine what the future will look like with her in it. The fact is, there’s no way to tell what the future holds. We can only take what life hands us, and life handed you this girl. Are you going to waste time pushing her away, telling yourself the situation isn’t quite right? Or are you going to embrace her and let her in?”

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” I chuckled in an attempt to cover up the roiling, raging conflict in my head.

“I think you’re deliberately putting up barriers because you’re not accustomed to the dragon demanding something like this,” he replied. “It’s one thing for him to demand you let him stretch his wings, but another to give in when he demands his mate.”

“How did you stand it? I mean, is this what you went through?”

“Raking myself over the coals? In a way, yes,” he replied, shaking his head ruefully. “It was misery.”

“I’m sure I didn’t make it any easier for you.”

“She didn’t make it easy,” he replied with a shrug. “And nothing worthwhile ever is.”

“There you are!”

Speak of the devil, and she shall appear, I thought to myself as Martina, and her mother approached from Mary’s office.

She slid her arms around Gate’s waist and flashed me a smile. “I heard our patient is awake.”

“News travels fast around here, doesn’t it?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. It amazes me that we manage to keep anything confidential. How did she look to you?”

Beautiful. Intoxicating. Mysterious. Could give voice to those thoughts. “Alert. Pained, but alert.”

“We can bump up the pain meds a bit more, now that she’s awake,” she suggested. “It was necessary to dial them back in order to allow her to clear up a bit.”

“She won’t need them for long though, will she?” Martina asked, directing the question to Gate and me.

I recalled what Phillip told me after he’d set her breaks. “This is a bit more complex than the wound you received. There was damage to the muscle and ligaments when the bones broke through the surface. Even so, it shouldn’t take more than a week for her to mend completely.”

“What do you think she’s going to make of that?” Mary asked, raising an eyebrow.

She was merely voicing a question I’d asked myself dozens of times during my long, silent vigils over the sleeping girl. What would she think? How would she react?

“I think we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do,” I decided.

“We?” Gate snorted. “I think you mean you will. You’re the one who saved her.”

“Phillip saved her,” I reminded him.

“Which he never would’ve been able to do had you not kept her from crashing into the rocks. Don’t you think she’s going to want to know how she didn’t die on impact? I think that’s the first explanation she’s owed. Which should come from you. It’s only fair.”

“Fair,” I groaned.

Since when was any of this fair?