“Don’t go.” Finn glowered down from his lofty height, arms crossed over his bare chest. “I forbid you to go.”

“You…what?” Diego blinked at him in shock. “Since when did you decide you wanted to play lord of the manor? You can’t ‘forbid’ anything.”

Finn slumped against the wall and slid down until he sat on the floor. “Apparently not. I thought I might try it once. Would begging and pleading alter your ill-conceived decision, then?”

Diego crouched down to take Finn’s long-fingered hand between his. “Cariño, what is all this? I’ll only be gone a week. You left me once for five days and told me it wasn’t long at all.”

“But I wasn’t doing the waiting, now, was I?” Finn said with a sharp bark of laughter. “Oh, love, I can’t explain it. I have an ice spear lodged in my spine, and I don’t know why.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Diego rolled his eyes. When he had first mentioned the trip to New York, Finn hadn’t protested. Now, when it was too late to cancel his plans, his impending absence caused Finn such anguish.

“But I do. Have a bad feeling.” Finn put his forehead on his knees, long blue-black hair falling forward to hide his face.

“So come with me.”

“No.”

“We could take a train. I don’t have to fly. Or you could become an eagle or a peregrine and meet me there.”

“I won’t go back to the poisoned lands. Not even for you.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask you to.” Diego leaned in to nuzzle at Finn’s jaw. “Are you afraid I won’t come back? That I’m leaving you for good?”

Finn opened his arms and pulled him close with a gusty sigh. “It’s not that sort of feeling, my love. It’s more as if this journey of yours will act as a…catalyst. That we are at some strange turning point I cannot see beyond.”

“Even you can’t see into the future…” Diego stroked a hand over Finn’s hard-packed chest. “Can you?”

“No. No, I can’t. Frustrating sometimes.”

“Whatever it is, mi amor, we’ll work through it. Don’t worry so.”

* * * *

Finn stared out of the bedroom window at the larches. Tamaracks, they called them here. The soft burst of gold as they prepared to shed their summer needles amidst the dark green of the pines should have made his heart sing. They only made him think of Diego’s golden skin against the dark sheets and compounded his misery.

“Bloody, blithering fool,” he muttered at himself.

Diego would return in another three days, a blink of an eye for someone who had lived for thousands of years. The thought didn’t help. He yearned for his love with every scrap of his being, hating the emptiness of his arms and the empty spot in his mind where Diego’s presence usually nestled. He was so cursed lonely without him, which was what made falling in love so gods-be-damned stupid in the first place. Only someone in love truly felt this consuming, hollow pain.

“I need to go out,” he told the pillow he held, the one where Diego’s scent still lingered. While he liked the new house nestled in the Montana forest, close to the wilderness for him but not too far from the little town for Diego, he had never spent five days sequestered inside a building of his own free will.

There, that was it. He was depressed because of confinement and lack of food. Not that the larder was empty. He just hadn’t felt like eating. A nice fat trout sounded good, or perhaps whitefish, cold and shining.

He would swim, feed, and return by nightfall, when Diego might call. Good. Perfect. He hurried down the stairs, poked his head out of the back door and lifted his face to the breeze. No humans lurked nearby to see, so he stepped onto the wooden porch and wriggled out of his jeans. Clothes were fine now and then, and he wore them to satisfy Diego’s sense of modesty, but the best part about putting them on was shedding them again.

The sun caressed his bare shoulders. The cool grass kissed his feet. He spread his arms to the breeze and closed his eyes. A faint blue glow danced over his skin as his body melted, his form condensing, his hair shortening and spreading to cover him in sleek black fur. A river otter soon stood where Finn had been.

Otter Finn galloped for the river, his heart singing as the tumult of its rush and tumble reached him. He stumbled and stopped as another noise drifted over the roar of the rapids—a scream, inaudible but in his mind. Terrible fear knifed through him—the cold panic of a human in mortal danger.

This is none of my business. I should not involve myself…

What would he say to Diego, though, if he came back and found out someone had died on the river? “Oh, yes, my love, I heard them dying. I simply decided not to act.”

He cringed. Diego would disapprove in the worst way, and perhaps this was someone else’s beloved, someone whose absence would cause terrible pain.

He shifted to hawk form and took flight. His powerful wings arrowed over the river, sharp eyes searching the water. There. A little bean-pod-shaped coracle rode the rapids, upside-down and unmanned. Not far behind, its former occupant struggled, head tugged under the whitewater again and again despite the orange vest humans wore to help them float.

Hawk Finn folded his wings and plummeted on an unerring course to intercept. The moment before he hit the raging rapids, he shifted again, his body elongating to a scaled, sinuous form. Dragon Finn caught hold of the unconscious human’s collar with his teeth and knifed through the water to shore.

“Probably best not to have you see a dragon first thing,” Finn muttered, and shifted back to his own shape. He sat panting a moment. All the swift and sudden shifts had taken a frightening amount of effort.

He cocked his head to the side to regard his odd catch. The scent was female and she still breathed. Her skin was fish-cold, though. Not normal for a human.

He shook her gently. “Do you hear me? Do you have companions nearby?” No response and, as he sifted through all the sounds his ears could reach, no companions either. Dagda’s balls. He simply wasn’t any good at dealing with ailing humans. What would Diego advise?

“Most likely to get her warm, you dunderhead,” he muttered. With a sigh, he slid his arms under her and carried her back to the house.

The strap under her chin frustrated him, but he finally found the little catch to the clasp to remove her helmet. He supposed if one were to go boating in the rapids, which struck him as a supremely unwise idea, a helmet would be prudent. The wet clothes only pulled more warmth from her, so he removed those as well.

Pity, really. He traced a finger over the dark bruise forming on her perfect jaw. Such a beautiful human girl, full-hipped and plump-breasted. He would have liked… No, Diego put such stock in exclusive pairings, like swans did. For Diego, he would refrain.

He frowned. The girl still wasn’t any warmer. Bed. Diego had a blanket that warmed itself. It should help. He carried her up and wrapped her in the magic blanket, then stared at the white box with the buttons that told it what to do. Which button did one push? The one with the red circle looked threatening so he chose the yellow as a happier color.

She remained stubbornly unconscious. He sat beside her and stroked the dark tendrils of damp hair from her face. Such soft hair, he fought the temptation to bury his fingers in it. Still so cold. Damn and damn again.

He would simply have to warm her himself.

Finn lifted the blanket and slid underneath with her. He pressed his skin to hers, wrapped his limbs around her and pulled warmth from the surrounding air. Slowly, her body temperature began to rise, and he smiled, pleased at his success. Of course, something else began to rise, as well, but he steadfastly ignored the erection pressed against her lovely bottom. He was no brainless slave to his mating urges. He could control them, despite what some might say.

* * * *

“No, really, Miriam, I don’t mind,” Diego said into his cell. The plane eased up alongside the gate, thumps and thuds coming from outside the door. “It’s just one book signing. There are bound to be cancellations here and there, right?”

Miriam’s snort was neither ladylike nor polite. “You just want to get home to that handsome beefcake of yours so you can screw like bunnies.”

“I won’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind.” Diego laughed as she swore softly. “But seriously, one promo event canceled in a dozen? I’d say that was pretty good.”

“All right. But when you’re bigger than Michener, those idiots’ll regret canceling on you.”

“Maybe. Thanks, though, for setting all that up in the same week.”

“All to make me more money, hon. Don’t ever think it’s anything else,” Miriam growled. Then her voice softened. “You done good, Sandoval. Though I always knew you would. When’s my next book coming?”

“Dios. Don’t I get some time off?”

“No. Not at the snail’s pace you write. Tell me you’ve started the sequel.”

“Started, yes.” Diego shifted to pull his laptop from under the seat in front of him. “But finished is still months off.”

“Get cracking, then. You tell that man of yours to take care of you so you can work.”

“He watches out for me. I haven’t had an episode since Canada.” Diego cringed. Bringing up the seizure that had landed him in the hospital for two weeks was a bad idea.

Miriam only snorted her disbelief. “All right, kiddo. Talk to you soon. Kiss Finn for me.”

Diego smiled, knowing she would have much rather claimed the honor herself. He said goodbye to the flight attendants, one of whom blushed, clutching her newly signed copy of A Pooka’s Life to her chest. The notion of fans still amazed him, people who gushed and stammered upon meeting him and said absurd things such as ‘you’re so much cuter in person’. Officially, the events in New York had all been for the Dragon Rites release but many of his readers had fixated on his first book. One girl at a book signing had had tears in her eyes when she’d confessed she wished the pooka was real.

If only she knew.

He had given Finn a pseudonym, Thistle, for the book, but all the material came from recorded interviews about Finn’s life, and the artist had used photographs of him for the illustrations. More than one plea had come in from agencies and advertisers for the model’s name and phone number. Miriam said it added to the book’s mystique when Diego steadfastly refused to divulge any information, and though Finn would never reveal himself to the world, he found the whole thing incredibly funny.

A spring in his step, he hurried to the parking garage, eager to get through the three-hour drive home. Finn had been so despondent over his departure; he hoped the surprise of coming home early would make up for any heartache.

* * * *

The girl struggled toward waking. Her thoughts took form as she fought clear of her dreams. Mother of waters, though, she was loud. Finn’s forehead creased as another mental shout battered the shield he had thrown up against her psychic noise. The birds singing outside were drowned out by her.

Of course, some humans were naturally loud, like mental blue jays, but some only reacted to trauma this way and fought their way back screaming. She would most likely quiet when she woke. He hoped. Diego was never this loud, not even in his moments of greatest anguish.

“Fire and storm, Diego,” he muttered. “Why did you choose this week to leave me on my own?”

* * * *

The house was still standing. Good. Finn hadn’t had any major battles with household appliances. Diego pulled the truck into the freestanding garage at the back of the house. He smiled as he caught sight of the black jeans discarded in an untidy pile on the back porch. Finn was out, then, swimming and hunting.

A terrible thought had struck him on his way home. What if Finn had truly been pining, neglecting himself? He had sounded cheerful enough when Diego called each night, but he was a practiced liar and could have been covering up to keep Diego from worrying. A Beauty and the Beast scenario had crept into his thoughts, where he would come home to find Finn stretched out in the garden, dying. Stupid, of course, since Finn could go years without food, but knowing that he was doing what came naturally and not sitting inside sulking lifted a shadow from his heart.

He picked up the jeans and draped them over the porch railing. Finn might want them when he came back. “All right, cariño, you’ve had to wait days for me. I can wait a few hours while you’re fishing.”

The house was in order, no mess, no plates of half-eaten chicken strewn about and no oil paints smeared on the living room rug. A completed canvas leaned against the wall, a new one. Diego frowned at it, head cocked to one side. Predominantly black and gray, with anguished streaks of red and yellow, it screamed emotional distress. Perhaps not doing so well after all.

He climbed the stairs to take his bag to their bedroom and stopped cold in the doorway. A young woman lay in his bed, wrapped in his electric blanket and in his Finn’s arms. As he watched, she turned with a little cooing sound and nuzzled at Finn’s throat.

“Holy. Shit.”

Finn’s head jerked up, expression frozen in horror. “My love, I didn’t hear you arrive—”

“I guess not,” Diego said softly. “You’re a jackass.” He dropped his bag, hurried down the stairs and out of the back door.

“Diego, wait!” The anguished wail followed him but he didn’t stop until he hit the gravel drive.

Finn shot through the door, stark naked, still half-erect. Great, wonderful, go ahead and throw it in my face.

“Diego, please.” Finn spread his hands, looked down at himself, and at least mustered the sense to reach for his jeans draped on the rail. “Let me—”

“No. Don’t.” Diego held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, your justifications. Not just now.”

Finn’s mind reached for him, a soft, tentative touch, while he took a step closer, holding a hand out to him.

“No, damn it!” Diego flung up the mental wall to keep him out and backpedaled three steps. “You need to leave me alone right now. I came home early. I was worried about you. Stupid me.”

“But I—”

“I don’t care why you took her to bed! I don’t want to hear what happened!” He ran his hands over his face, chest constricting with anger and pain. “I knew. I knew what you were when I fell in love with you. A liar and a satyric who’s let his dick lead him around for centuries. But why make me promises you knew you couldn’t keep? Dios… Finn…”

“My love—”

“Leave me be for a few! Let me think without you hammering to get in!”

He spun away and strode off into the woods.

* * * *

Finn shivered in the wake of Diego’s fury and yanked the jeans on, marking the path of his retreat. Diego was so hurt, so angry, Finn could sense the lightning beginning to spark in his head. If he let it go too far, he would have an attack of the falling sickness. Out there in the woods. Alone.

Of course, if Diego was angry enough, he might turn the lightning on Finn.

He chewed his bottom lip and came to a decision, taking the steps two at a time to race back to the bedroom. The girl was just sitting up, befuddled and groggy. She looked up as he skidded to a stop in the doorway.

“You were drowning. I pulled you out. There’s a phone beside you. Call someone to collect you. You are in a house at Box 22 on Old Route 249. They should find it by that.”

He didn’t stop to see if his rapid-fire instructions were heard or followed. Heart pounding against his ribs, he flung himself back down the stairs and after Diego. The trail was as much physical scent as thought scent. Diego’s anguish could have been heard for miles by any creature not head-blind and the little sparks of magic leaping from him crackled more and more loudly.

“Don’t turn me into fried pooka, love, please, please,” Finn muttered as he ran. Diego had never been able to use his enormous potential while fully awake, but once he seized, the unleashing of his mental lightning was daunting.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, the sudden pull on the flows of surrounding magic nearly sucking all the air from the woods. Finn broke into a full-out sprint.

“Diego! Diego, no!”

A wall of force slammed into him and hurled him through the air. His back smashed into something with a sickening crack. The sun went dark.