The bull lows, the sound irritated and chilling all at once. He paws the ground once, staring right at me.

Murr’s growl deepens.

I remain frozen in place. My dragon can probably get to me, but before or after the bull attacks?

The longhorn turns, sauntering back through the barn the way it came. Its tail swishes, and as it walks away, it drops a series of cow pies on the ground behind it. It’s like the bull is telling me what he thinks of me being here. Lovely creature. I tiptoe backward, edging towards the door at the opposite end of the creature. My knees tremble, my hands shaking as I creep out. When I’m fully outside, I race away from the barn as fast as I can.

A moment later, I’m scooped up in dragon claws. I’ve never been so damned glad to be encircled by talons. I cling to his scales, and I can practically feel him chiding me for being foolish and running off without him.

“Sorry,” I pant at my mate, waiting for my body to stop shaking with fear. “I didn’t see it there. I should have known there’d be a bull somewhere, right? That’s on me. I take the blame.”

Murr drifts a short distance away and then settles in the field. He doesn’t put me down right away but pulls me in close and rubs his muzzle against my head, as if reassuring me that he’s not mad. That he was just looking out for me.

He sets me down gently, opening his claws so I can step out of his grip. He doesn’t shift back to human form but remains as he is. Probably contemplating going to get that longhorn and eat him for dinner. That it’d serve him right for threatening his mate.

“Oh, leave him alone,” I say, laughing. My hands have stopped shaking and my knees no longer feel like water, so I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. “He was just protecting his territory.”

Murr stares down at me, his eyes whirling even faster than normal.

“What?” I ask, gazing up at him.

We stare at each other. Murr shifts quickly to his human form and moves to my side. He clutches my upper arms, studying my face.

“What?” I ask again.

“Dakota…in Murr mind?” he asks. “Hear speak, no words?”

Did…we…? I replay our conversation in my head. “I was just assuming what you’d do. I know you pretty well by now. I didn’t hear anything. I wish I did.”

“No…speak?”

I shake my head again, sad.

His expression remains skeptical. “Murr know,” he says after a long moment, searching my face. “Know Dakota inside. Know Dakota danger. Not say. Murr know.”

Oh.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t told him where I was. I’d simply raced off up the hill and climbed over a fence at the sight of the barn. He’d gone in the opposite direction. Of course, it’s not out of the question that he’d come to find me if I didn’t return right away. It’s also not out of the question that he’d know I was in danger. He’s picked up on my scent changes in the past, and I know from talking with him that fear has a particular tang to its scent.

Even so…

“I don’t know,” I confess. “You’re the one that told me that the mental link is broken now that the Rift is closed. That all drakoni can no longer talk in their heads.”

“Maybe no drakoni to drakoni,” Murr says. “Maybe husband to wife?”

He looks so hopeful that I have to give it a shot. “Okay, well, let’s test this. How do we see if we’re reading each other’s minds?”

Murr grins and touches the cape I have on my shoulders. “Dakota cover eyes.”

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OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 100

MURR

The thought of hearing Dakota’s thoughts, of feeling her mind touch mine…it fills me with excitement. For so long, I have felt entirely isolated. Cut off from the world. Even if I can feel her only a little, I’m hopeful. Just the possibility fills me with joy.

She is skeptical, but her people do not touch thoughts. She does not understand it the way I do.

I had not heard her cry out. I had been busy following the fence and listening to the cattle. I had found the gate and yanked it open, because it was important to Dakota to free them. My mate’s scent had drifted farther and farther away, but I assumed she was exploring. It wasn’t until I felt her flare of panic that I realized she was in danger.

Dakota did not tell me. I just knew.

It wasn’t until after we’d chased the bull off and I touched her to reassure myself that she was safe that I realized we had been too far apart to speak. I had sensed the danger.

Fothessa and Vaan had said they lost their ability to mind-speak, to touch their thoughts to another drakoni. The moment the Rift closed, we returned to ourselves from the madness, but we lost our mental connection. Meeting Fothessa and Vaan, I felt nothing. I could not pick up their thoughts at all. They might as well have been stones.

But with Dakota…I can sense her moods sometimes. Now, with her standing in front of me, her eyes wide, I press my thoughts at hers, trying to feel her, trying to get inside her mind and make a home there.

Nothing.

But I won’t give up. I’m full of ideas. If touching her mind is like trying to grasp a handful of fog, perhaps it will be best if we take away one of our other senses. I touch the cape she wears for me, the one that acts as my loin wrap. “Dakota cover eyes?”

“You want me to be blindfolded?” She gapes at me in surprise. “Why?”

“Help mind connect,” I say as I loosen the knot that keeps it tied at her neck. “Big…” I struggle for the word to go with the concept of concentrating.

“Focus?” she offers.

I nod and tap the center of her forehead. “Big focus.”

“Okaaaay.” She glances at the cattle, but they are not paying attention to the fact that they can cross through the gate. Either they are frightened of us, or too stupid to care. The scent of the bull is far away and drifting farther, and these others do not have the horns it did. They are no danger to us. We can try to touch minds here.

She takes the fabric and folds it into a band, then puts the band over her eyes. “Tie it in back for me, please?”

I move behind her, my mate’s pleasant scent drifting through the air and drowning out the stink of the cattle. Her pack is full and heavy, and I remove it from her shoulder for now. Clearly she has found something, but I am far more interested in touching minds with my mate than with human medicine at the moment. I knot the fabric at the back of her head, wincing when my efforts tug a few strands of her hair free.

Dakota leans back, drifting closer to me.

I run a knuckle along her neck, touching her soft skin. “Not afraid?”

She chuckles. “Of you? No. Of stepping in cow poop and smelling it all day? Yes.”

I feel a tremor go through her, and the urge to kiss her grows powerful. I need to be concentrating on touching our minds, not on touching my mate’s body. Then again, perhaps this is how our minds connect. We seem to think along the same lines when we are not trying to, so perhaps I need another focus.

I imagine leaning in and biting the high collar of her shirt, ripping it with my teeth and exposing her skin underneath. Baring her to the sunlight and the breeze that drifts through the grasses. Her skin would warm under the sunshine and her nipples would be the same shade as her lips, flushed with color. And between her thighs…

Dakota sucks in a breath. “Murr?”

“Yes?” I keep my hands to myself, even though I want nothing more than to touch her, to coax her arousal-scent into the air.

“Are you thinking filthy thoughts?” Her voice is a whisper. There’s a delicious, wicked feeling in the air, as if she thinks we’re being naughty.