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Closing my eyes, I let out an irritated breath at my runaway thoughts. I try to focus on the breeze whipping through the grass, the fresh summer air, the brief shadow on my face as a cloud crosses the…

Wait… there are no clouds today. It’s the reason I came out here, to soak up some uninterrupted sun.

The shadow crosses my face again. I peek one eye open to look and can’t believe what I’m seeing.

The silhouette of massive wings against the sky. An enormous, familiar horned head and spiked tail. Golden scales glinting in the summer sunshine.

My heart stutters, then starts galloping.

The dragon has clearly seen me as well as he starts circling lower and lower over the grassland.

I should get up and move, run, get back on the four-wheeler. There’s no chance in hell I’d be able to outrun him, but it’s got to be better than sitting here like a piece of damn prey just waiting to be picked off, doesn’t it?

My paralyzed limbs decide for me as the dragon circles to the ground. I can’t move, can barely breathe as I’m pinned in place by the otherworldly sight.

When he finally lands, the ground vibrates with the force of his massive body coming to rest just a few yards away from me.

Like the last time I was face-to-face with this mythical, magickal beast, some distant corner of my mind is aware I should be terrified. But there’s something about him now, like there was then… something soft in the gold of his eyes and gentle in the dip of his head as he approaches me slowly.

Also like last time, I’m not sure who I’m dealing with right now. I’m pretty sure dragon-Blair is a separate entity from human-Blair, but just how much crossover they have, I really don’t know.

“Easy,” I whisper to the dragon when he’s just a few feet away, and he huffs out a breath, almost like he’s telling me the warning is unnecessary.

It certainly seems to be the case as he eases that gigantic head of his down and I have to lie back in the grass to avoid being crushed.

But it turns out I don’t have to worry about that either, because like a giant, terrifying, scaled puppy, he comes to a stop and rests his chin on me. He’s not giving me enough of his weight to be uncomfortable, but crowding in close enough that I have nowhere to look but at him, nowhere I can go without pushing him off.

He lets out another huff of breath that breaks across my face.

“Ugh,” I complain, reaching up to stroke his nose. “Dragon breath.”

A deep rumble echoes in his chest and he gives a little toss of his head that might almost seem like an eye roll if I didn’t know better.

It’s so human, so strange, that the reality of the situation slams into me all at once.

Blair found me. Or at least his dragon did. He’s here. Acting like nothing happened. Like it’s totally fine for him to come crashing back into my life.

“I don’t forgive you,” I whisper. “Blair either, if he’s listening.”

It’s only a split second after I feel the scaled head on my chest starting to shift that I hear a familiar, char-edged voice.

“I’d prefer if you called me Ewan.”

Jolting upright, I push him off me and scramble to my feet. “I don’t care what you’d prefer.”

Blair should look ridiculous, lying here naked under the Idaho sunshine, but he somehow doesn’t. He’s still in his half-shift, wings spreading wide as he pushes himself into a kneeling position in the grass.

“Hi, ember.”

Damn him, and damn that stupid nickname and the things it does to the bottom of my stomach and the center of my chest.

“What are you doing here?”

I expect him to stand, crowd into me in that way he does, push his advantage. But he doesn’t. He stays kneeling, looking up at me as his eyes rove across my face like he’s memorizing the sight of me.

“I came to see you.”

I shake my head, irritation growing. “Yeah, I guessed that. What I mean is… what thehellare you doing here?”