“How can he do that?” Marcus asked, still staring at the gigantic dragon sprawled across his father’s deck. “He was small. Well, he was huge for a dog, but still not . . .” He waved at Chewie’s current form. “Not this. It shouldn’t be possible.”
Beka tried not to laugh. After all, this was his first dragon. It took some getting used to. “Says who?” she asked. “Einstein? He got a few things wrong. Physicists never enter magic into the equation.”
Marcus opened his mouth, closed it again, then just shook his head. “Wow. First witches then dragons.” He looked as if his entire worldview had changed in a second. Which it probably had. “I hate to think what that makes me—the talking frog?”
Chewie nudged him with one webbed foot, claws carefully sheathed. “It makes you in the way, dude.” He nodded to Beka, then half climbed, half slithered over the side of the boat, disappearing under the water without so much as a splash.
“Holy crap.” Marcus sat down rapidly on the nearest flat surface.
“Yep,” Beka said, scooting him over so she could sit next to him. “Now you can see why I didn’t want to try renting a different boat to take him out on. There’s not a distraction big enough in the world to keep people from noticing him when he is in dragon form.”
Marcus didn’t say anything for a minute, so she turned to look at him.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged broad shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess part of me hoped that you’d come to me because you trusted me to help. And because maybe you missed me, just a little.”
Beka took a deep breath. “Just a little? Hell, Marcus, it felt like I was missing half my soul.” She felt like an idiot saying it, but at least it was the truth. After everything that had happened, she owed him that.
His hazel eyes stared into hers, as if he could read her mind, or maybe her heart, which stuttered and skipped as if it only half remembered how to beat.
Then he said in a low, fervent voice, “I think I found it for you.” He pulled her into his arms, wrapping her in strength and warmth and longing, tugging her in close until his lips met hers. Soft yet firm, they pressed against her own until she parted for him without thought, his tongue dipping in for a moment as if to taste the words she hadn’t said yet.
He drew back long enough to say, “God, I missed you, Beka.” Then there was only the silken slide of his lips and the glory of his hands and the passionate heat and joy that came from being in his arms once more.
* * *
MARCUS FELT LIKE he could kiss Beka forever. It was as if the universe had granted him a second chance. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to blow it this time. This time he was going to hold on to her and never let her go.
Or at least not until someone dumped a bucket of cold water over him.
Sputtering, he turned around to see Chewie, still amazing in scales and long, sharp teeth and shining, curved claws the purple-black of mussel shells. And water. Lots and lots of water.
Chewie shook himself again, like the dog he usually was, and doused Marcus and Beka with another couple of gallons of seawater. “Oh, sorry,” he said, glowing golden eyes innocent. “I didn’t see you there. Did I get you wet?”
Beka pulled away, half laughing and half scowling, and leaving Marcus feeling absurdly bereft. He wanted to grab her and drag her back into his arms, but the moment had clearly passed. He’d just have to make sure there was another one. Soon.
She grew more serious as she noted Chewie’s empty hands. Paws. Whatever.
“Weren’t you able to find anything?” she asked, a hint of panic in her tone.
“Oh, I found things all right,” Chewie said grimly. “Lots of things. Silver canisters, just like you said, cleverly tucked into crevasses where no one would ever think to look, and hidden under rockfalls disguised to look old, but actually quite recent. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to bring one up. They’re slowly leaking whatever’s inside—purposefully, I think—and I’m not sure you want to have one on the boat.”
“Drat,” Beka said. “Maybe I can give you a container to get me a sample in, and you could go back down and collect some for me to examine?”
Chewie shook his huge head, scattering more salty water like teardrops. “I don’t think that will be necessary. All the canisters had the same symbol on them; I can draw it for you.”
He took one claw and delicately scratched a triangle into the wooden deck. Inside the triangle, he added a trefoil design of three cones, their wide ends toward the outside edge, and flattened narrower ends meeting around a smaller circle in the middle. “There,” he said. “It looked like that. The background was bright yellow, and the three inside bits were black. There was a black rim around the outside too. Does that mean anything to you?”