“Oh, Gabriel, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It was just . . . it was just . . . suddenly you looked so good to me. Not that you don’t always look good, but this was different. This was very different. And those claws . . . I had no idea that I would hurt you, though. What can I do to heal them?”

Gabriel took my hands, which were fluttering around the stripes on his ribs, pulling them to his mouth. “They are mating marks, little bird. They are common with mating pairs of dragons, and I assure you, I would much prefer to bear the slight discomfort they bring than have you forgo making them.”

“But why aren’t they healing?” I frowned at the marks. “They should be healed by now. Enough time has passed.”

“Mating marks heal slower than other injuries. Don’t worry about them, May,” he said with a smile. “You gave me much pleasure when you embraced the shard.”

I looked back at my hands, my emotions conflicted. I couldn’t deny that the experience we’d just shared had been beyond anything I’d ever imagined, but I didn’t like the strange feelings that possessed me. “It was the shard that changed my hands? It wasn’t just something that happens to wyvern mates?”

He watched me for a moment, kissing the tips of my fingers before releasing them. “I’m sorry you were frightened, May. I would like to assure you that being the vessel to the shard will change nothing about you, but I can’t. It is part of you now, and until such time as it is removed, you will experience some of the sensations of what it is to be a dragon.”

I shivered, cold despite the relative balminess of the night air. I suddenly realized that I was naked, my clothing in shreds around us. A little noise of distress slipped out of me as I sorted through the torn fabric, trying to find something wearable.

“Take this,” Gabriel said as I clutched the wad of useless clothing.

I took the shirt he had pulled off, fortunately still whole since Gabriel had had the presence of mind earlier to unbutton it while I was struggling to get out of my clothing.

“It’s lucky you are so small,” he said after a quick search in the backseat of the car. “There’s nothing else here. I’m sorry I can’t offer you my pants, but they would not fit. I had not expected that we would need a change of clothing, or I would not have sent Maata and Tipene off with our things.”