Chapter 23

And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.

―Ursula K. Le Guin,?The Farthest Shore

Fitful dreams and haunted, shadowy nightmares chased Mikhail through the halls of his mind as he slept. The dragon stirred, trying to reclaim control as images of Elizabeth, his sweet Gloriana, betraying him played over and over. For five centuries his dragon had held the pain of the past at bay. But the moment Piper Linwood came into his life, the fortress around his dragon's heart had begun to crumble.

He had dared to desire a mate once before, and it had cost him everything but his life. The dragon inside him didn't want to take a risk like that again. It had nearly killed him. And Piper She could be his mate. The chemistry was there, and the hunger in her blue-gray eyes when she looked at him made it all but impossible to keep his distance.

He had to have