At some point during the evening, they’d retreated to the bedroom. They’d made love again, this time slowly, almost dreamily. The bedroom was a small loft, but Jack’s father had put in an oriel window above the bed when he built the house, and as the clouds scudded across the night sky, the moon occasionally made an appearance, bathing their bed with a brilliant, cold light.

As much as Ellie didn’t want the night to end, she eventually fell asleep in Jack’s arms. She wasn’t sure what woke her—if it was the absence of the heat from Jack’s body, or some slight sound he’d made in getting up—but she opened her eyes suddenly, conscious of a loss. Disoriented at the strangeness of her surroundings, it took her a second to remember where she was. As soon as she knew, she immediately scanned the room for Jack.

She didn’t have to look far. The moonlight came in through the window, washing the room in a silvery glow, deepening the shadows and bringing out objects in sharp relief. The light was so bright, so clean and crisp, Ellie could have read by it. Jack stood with his back to the bed, leaning on the railing to the loft. The moonbeams turned his skin to marble; he could have been a statue by Michelangelo or Cellini. The light loved the planes of his hard muscles, and the curve of his ass as he stood with one foot back, resting his weight on his hands. His head hung between his shoulders, so that every broad muscle there was highlighted. His posture was one of loss and pain.

“Jack?”

He lifted his head slowly at the sound of her voice. Even when he pushed himself upright, he didn’t turn to face her, but instead continued to stare down into the darkness of the cabin below.

“Is everything all right?” After the scare of the attack the night before, she wasn’t sure he hadn’t heard something that had awoken him.

“No.” He growled the word softly, and then turned. “Everything about this is wrong. I can’t let you go to Coreldon.”

“You can’t let me. You can’t make me, either. Shouldn’t it be my choice?” She couldn’t help the tartness in her voice, much as she didn’t want to fight with him now.

He shook his head sharply. “You know what I mean. I was hired to get you safely to your grandfather. And you won’t be safe until he acknowledges you publicly as his heir. We have to see this through, one way or another.”

“All right, you have a point. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be together. Come with me.” She held out her hand to him.

“I can’t. There’s no place for me there. And you’re promised to another.”

She let her hand fall to the bed beside her. “Well, screw that,” she snapped. “I’m not going to marry someone for political reasons.”

His soft chuckle almost made her smile. “I know you won’t. But regardless of whether or not you marry the man currently betrothed to you, it’s expected that you marry a prince, someone of equal rank, and I’m sure as hell not that.”

“You can still come back with me. You can be my bodyguard.”

His laugh was louder this time, and tinged with bitterness. “Oh sweetheart. No one’s going to let me do that. You’ll have a whole security squad to protect your Royal Highness.”

“Don’t call me that. What if I don’t go back at all?”

“And have assassins chasing you the rest of your life? It’s no good, Ellie. Can’t you see that?” His fist clenched briefly, then unfolded again. “I don’t have the pendant on me. I left it downstairs with my clothes. You could command me to take you away from here, and I bet I’d be powerless to resist.”

“If I’m all that powerful, how is it I’m just a waitress? Why haven’t I taken over the world already?”

This time his laugh was soft, scarcely more than an exhale, and somehow painful to hear. “I don’t pretend to know how your dragon abilities work. The de Winter clan isn’t exactly forthcoming with such details. I’m guessing your parents put the pendant on you because they didn’t want you to accidentally turn into a dragon until they could come back for you. They never meant to leave you forever, of that, I’m sure. Calling the animals the way you did in the alley last night, that’s something the women in your family are known for doing. But as to whether or not you can bend the minds of people to your will—I suspect you can influence emotions without it being outright mind control. That’s what it seems like to me, anyway. Of course, if someone’s natural inclination is to do what you ask…”

“Is that what you want? For me to force you against your will? I can’t do that, Jack. I’d never know if you came because you wanted to or because I coerced you.”

Jack crossed over to the bed, seating himself beside her to take her hand. “It’s the same thing. You’ve bewitched me, Ellie West. I’m yours to command, Ariel de Winter.”

She entwined her fingers with his. “You know I don’t really believe in all that magical crap, right?”

He snorted and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “I hear you. I didn’t believe in the ‘fated mates’ thing either. I’d been hearing about it my whole life but thought it was just an old wives tale. Then I met you, and I don’t think my head’s been screwed on right since.”

With her free hand she lightly bopped him on the back of the head. “Very romantic. Thanks a lot.”

She could make out the whiteness of his wide smile in the glowing moonlight. “You know what I mean. Besides, if you don’t believe in your power of persuasion, how is it you were able to calm Seth and his henchmen down so easily?”

“The way many women do: a lifetime of learning to appease men so they don’t take their anger out on you.”

His fingers tightened and his smile vanished. “There’s nothing more in this world I want than to have the right to protect you always. You realize I had to play along with the ‘we’re only here to meet my mother’ thing in order to defend both you and the clan, right?”

She nodded. “Of course. And don’t think I didn’t notice that it marked me as off-limits as far as he and his men were concerned. As well as making you off-limits for Jolene. Nicely done.”

“I wanted to kill him. Like I’ve never wanted to kill anyone in my entire life. I wanted to claw that smirk off his face and shove his nose up into his brain.”

“Because of what he’s done to you and the clan?” Jack’s sudden animosity should have scared her but instead something within resonated with approval and pride.

“That, and because he treated both you and my mother like the dirt between his toes. And then he touched you.”

In the moonlight, Jack’s green eyes briefly flared gold, and his teeth seemed longer and sharper. Supreme satisfaction surged through Ellie, and a part of her she’d never acknowledged before would have liked to have seen Jack challenge his uncle.

The moment passed, however, and he continued. “It’s not for much longer.” Jack still absentmindedly stroked her skin. “As long as we keep to ourselves and stay out of sight, we should be safe here until your grandfather arrives. Anyone looking for you would have to be insane to take on the entire clan to get to you. They’d wait for us to leave before launching an attack, so as long as we sit tight, as soon as your grandfather gets here, the threat to you should be over. It’s why I brought you here in the first place.”

She placed her hand on his cheek. “It was a brilliant plan.”

He leaned into her touch, and then kissed her palm. “I did the best I could under the circumstances. Once you’re safe, I’ll have it out with my boss. I have to know where the breach in security took place.”

She couldn’t help it. She had to ask. “And us?”

He let out his breath slowly, and pulled back slightly. “Ellie—”

“Don’t you say there is no ‘us.’” She touched her fingers to his lips. “I swear to God, Jack, if you—”

“You should get some sleep.” His voice was so gentle it brought tears to her eyes. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

He started to rise, but she clutched his hand and held on tightly. In the moonlight, the stripe across his arm from the gunshot looked black. To see the damaged skin made her feel as though she’d taken something precious and valuable and had marred it by her presence. She wondered if the injury would scar and realized she wasn’t really thinking about the external wounds. She tugged him toward her. “Not without you.”

His hesitation was for the briefest of moments, but then he pulled back the cover and slipped under the quilt to lay beside her.

As he curled around her, she said, “You should shift. So you can heal.”

“I don’t want to miss a single moment of this evening.” His words ruffled the hair beside her ear.

Her last waking thought was of Eponine, and how the ill-fated street rat never got her night with Marius. Ellie would take this night with Jack, even if it was the last one she ever had.