Ari.
A shadow faded into the blue fog, a man…then not a man…then something massive…something…
Noise crashed down on her, loud and familiar—cars, people, traffic.
She stumbled to a halt, blinking. Bright light and colors assaulted her. Her eyes stung. Where was she?
Head thrumming, she gazed around her, confused. When had she come down to the street below her apartment? Why was she down here?
“Jilly?”
She jerked her head toward the voice. Derek stood in front of her, squeezing her wrist. She frowned. “Derek, what…what are you doing here? I don’t…”
A gust of cool wind streamed over her and she gasped, looking down at her naked body. “Where the fuck are my clothes?” She grabbed at the edges of the jacket she wore—whose jacket? Derek’s?—and yanked them tight around her torso, pressing her thighs together. God, was it long enough to hide her—
The sound of glass shattering high above her head made her look up. Just as a whole row of windows on what looked like her floor exploded outward.
A screech split the air, deafening, furious. Inhuman.
“What the hell?” she whispered, stumbling back a step as glass rained down around her. “What the hell is going on?”
A hard hand shackled her wrist, not tight enough to hurt, but determined to hold her nonetheless. Her fingers went numb. “We’ve got to go,” Derek damn near snarled in her ear, a second before dragging her toward a waiting taxi.
“Derek,” she burst out, clawing at his grip. “What the fuck is going on? Let me go!”
He ignored her, pulling open the back door of the cab before saying something to the driver.
Jilly dug at his fingers, pulling against him. Her bare feet slid and scraped on the sidewalk. She heard surprised gasps and more than one “Is that woman naked?”
Yes. She was freaking naked. And clearly trying to get away from a man just as clearly about to shove her into a taxi. So why the hell wasn’t anyone doing something about it?
And more to the point, why the fuck was she down here in the first place and what had happened to…to…
Her brain fumbled against an emptiness where she knew there should be something. Something…
Ari.
“Ari,” she screamed, twisting to look up at her apartment.
Another screech split the air.
Around her, people squealed and clapped their hands to their ears, ducking and scanning the sky, terror on their faces.
“Ari,” Jilly screamed again. She didn’t yet know who Ari was, but the name—the belief Ari was the only thing that mattered—pounded through her.
“Enough!” Derek shouted, yanking on her arm. “Get in the cab, Jilly. Now!”
The screech came again, louder this time.
Jilly snapped her stare to Derek’s, yanked her clamped wrist up to her mouth with a strength she didn’t know she had and sank her teeth into the back of his hand.
“Damn it, Jilly.” Derek grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking his hand—and her wrist—away from her mouth. “Stop that.”
The distinct taste of copper seeped onto Jilly’s tongue. She glared at him, still fighting. “Let me go, Derek. I don’t know what’s going on, but—”
He raised his hand and blew at her face, and a deep blue fog engulfed the world.
And then there was nothing.
How Ari stopped himself shifting was beyond him.
The urge to transform into his dragon tortured his body, his self-control. Pain racked him, muscle-crippling and absolute. He didn’t know what Garrison had attacked him with, what had imprisoned him, paralyzed him for who the fuck knew how long, but the druid would be nothing but cinders when Ari caught up with him.
He sprinted from Jilly’s apartment, shattered glass and furniture crunching beneath his feet. He hadn’t meant to destroy everything around him with the furnace blast of his anger, but it had been the only way of clearing the air of whatever fucked-up druid-shit magic Garrison had thrown at him.
His wild screech after the blast had been an attempt to appease his dragon’s rage. It had barely succeeded. The need to shift still burned through him as he began his pursuit of Jilly and the druid.
Why the hell Derek Garrison had appeared at his Fire Mate’s home was a matter for a later time. Where Garrison had taken her—and why he’d said Jilly was his—were the first things Ari needed to address.
And by address, he meant track Garrison down and beat it out of him.
Slamming into the stairwell door, Ari allowed himself a moment to picture the other man cowering at his feet. Indulgent maybe, but it tempered the powerful need to shift. Just.
The cold, musty air of the stairwell wrapped around him, jarring him from his rage. He stumbled to a halt, a wave of abrupt emptiness rolling through him.
His blood ran to ice.
Shit. He couldn’t sense her. He couldn’t sense Jilly.
He couldn’t feel his Fire Mate. He should be able to. The mating fire had begun. He’d tasted her, touched her. He should be able to find her, feel her, be aware of her existence regardless of where she was. But he couldn’t. Instead, he sensed nothing.
Emptiness.
The need to shift ripped through him, so potent his bones and muscles began to burn.
Fuck. He was too close. Too—
A million pinpricks of heat razed his flesh. His lungs filled with fire.
No. No. He needed to resist…he needed to…
Grinding his teeth, Ari closed his eyes and sucked in slow, musty breath after slow, musty breath. He had to regain control of himself.
Sydney—and the world—didn’t need to discover the existence of dragons. And more importantly, Jilly didn’t need an angry dragon coming after her, not when she still had no real idea of what was going on.
As the tenth breath of cold air streamed down his throat, Ari sensed her, like a flood of golden life and warmth and perfection.
Ari. Where’s Ari? Where am I?
Her frantic thoughts whispered through his mind. Any gnawing doubts she truly was his Fire Mate vanished at the sound of her voice in his head. The sporadic, almost wispy linking of minds was one of the most intimate
