Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,74

tongue, which moved, fitfully at first and then with purpose, lapping two strong strokes and then a third.

Doing her best to ignore for now the pleasure-pain of his feeding, she leaned in and said, “Wake up. I need you.”

Her heart hammered and despair threatened as the dragon reached them and reared up, shrieking and beating at the air with its wings. Then it slammed back down and snaked its vicious triangle of a head toward them, moving in for the kill, gaping its jaws wide and—

Dayn moved convulsively, jerking upright, yanking the crossbow into position and putting his bolt straight into one fiery red eye.

The dragon bellowed and yanked back, wings flailing so hard that it lifted off the ground and hung for a moment, suspended as it writhed and keened, contorting into impossible-seeming shapes in the sky. Seconds later, it went limp and plummeted to the ground.

It vanished when it hit, sent back to whatever magic had summoned it.

Suddenly, the meadow was entirely silent.

Reda stared at the place where it had been, and blew out a long breath. “Okay. We made it. That was…okay.” She wasn’t okay, though, because she was far too aware of the deep ache in her wrist and the echo of mingled pleasure-pain within her.

Dayn, too, was far from okay. He groaned as he tried to sit up away from her, then fell back weakly. A muscle pulsed at the corner of his jaw. “We need to get out of here. Moragh will know we killed her creature. She’ll send men to find us, or come herself, and I’m in no shape to fight.”

That was an understatement. It took all her effort to get him on his feet and keep him there, and he leaned heavily against her. More, as they left the meadow and headed back into the forest, he slid into and out of lucidity, his mumbled thoughts fragmented. “Don’t know who I am, he says? I’ll show… Wish I could’ve gone with you, my sweet Reda, wish you hadn’t come back… Don’t know where they are…”

The “wish you hadn’t come back” was a theme. And where before she had told herself he had sent her away to keep her safe, now she wondered whether she was kidding herself. But for a change, instead of immediately assuming the worst, she decided she would wait and see. First and foremost, she needed to get him back on his feet. And although she thought she knew how to do it, the prospect wasn’t appealing.

Or rather, it was appealing. And that was what worried her.

A short distance into the forest, she found a spot where a big tree had long ago fallen against three big boulders. Time and weather had hollowed out the giant trunk, creating a small sheltered area that would have to do, because Dayn was breathing hard and struggling to keep himself upright.

She eased him into the hiding spot and then walked a quick circuit, but didn’t find any sign of the witch, at least nothing that she could detect with her alltoo-human senses. Rejoining him, she ducked down and crawled in beside him.

The hollow was dry enough and offered good concealment, but she sorely missed the supplies that had galloped away with MacEvoy, because Dayn didn’t look good at all. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow and pain cut deep grooves beside his mouth.

The thing was, though, he didn’t need anything from the saddlebags. He needed blood.

Chapter 14

Steeling herself, Reda looked down at her wrist. The slices were neat marks, already sealed up through some sort of vampire magic. But what made her the most queasy was the reddish circle painted on her forearm, showing where his mouth had been.

When it had actually been happening, it hadn’t really bothered her. Now, though, her stomach roiled, though she couldn’t have said why. It hadn’t really hurt all that much, and the pleasure had far outweighed the sting. More, she didn’t feel any different than she did before, and it had saved them, damn it. How was that wrong?

It wasn’t until she didn’t get an answer that she realized she was waiting for one. She wanted reason and logic to weigh in, wanted to hear from practicality, because they were the ones who could explain why her baseline human self said it was wrong for one person to drink blood from another, yet under the circumstances she couldn’t think of a good reason why.

Maybe that was her answer, and the reason why the