Losa couldn’t stop herself—she jumped away when the colossal dragon pulled himself back to his paws as if she were a sparrow hopping out of a serpent’s striking range. An instant later, her coffee-hued fur bristled with shame. Disgrace at her own skittish weakness in the face of someone who was obviously laboring under a similar spell of confusion prickled beneath her skin. Pitiful, stupid girl. But what if his bewilderment were a sort of ruse? He said he’d known her name. He called her “important.” As the sable damsel silently watched the miasma of forlorn emotion swirling in his topaz pools, she thought for certain that Hurricane wasn’t lying . . .

But if this were just a clever play, meant to trap a bewildered princess . . .

Then she was already close enough to kill.

Two opposing oceans battled each other inside the forest spirit’s chest. Tempests of lonely confusion and terrified apprehension sloshing against one another until fear wrestled its opponent to the bottom. Have to leave. Have to leave NOW. A hastily muttered apology tripped half-formed from Losa’s elegant muzzle and she quickly drew away. She had to escape this bizarre monster who managed to snare her. She must break free from the gravity of his voice, all at once as soothing and rough as a waterfall plashing over jagged rock.

Fine-boned paws gradually picked up speed as Losa cloaked herself in the lushly filled forest undergrowth woven just outside the lake’s pebbled banks. At first she trotted lightly, gingerly, for the acute sting of each split pad in her feet was losing numbness with each step. Warmth leaked between her toes as blood started to flow once more. Powerful and dark. Cutting fangs and burning eyes. Visions that flickered behind Losa’s irises replayed in the span of a few heartbeats, triggered by the aching familiarity of this stranger’s thundercloud visage. Her cobweb mind couldn’t choose whether she trusted Hurricane or reviled him, so misled instincts chose for her. Better safe than slain, whispered a kind voice from her serrated memories—but Losa had no way to discern the speaker’s identity. Frustration quickened her pace. Damn that midnight warrior! It was his fault her thoughts echoed and resonated in the wrecked hallways of her brain, growing louder and more chaotic as they smashed into one another. How DARE he play this game with her and make her think they were somehow linked? It was a trap, wasn’t it? And she had tread horrifyingly close to its killing teeth.

If the evil one who’d made her this way knew how close she’d come to waking from her curse, He would have snarled in rage—and then laughed His victory with cruel joy. What could be more pitifully hilarious than princess and knight meeting at last, only to divide again? Of course He had ensured His mental traps were set. He had accounted for such a situation in a nearly impossible future, had relied on the similarities between Himself and Hurricane of Mexico to carve a chasm between Losa and her own sanity. The dark-chocolate damsel would never comprehend the difference between her savior and her tormenter. Brilliant.

“Losa!”

Her heart slammed against her breastbone so hard a yelp leapt from her maw. “He knows . . .” My name. Losa finished the thought silently, not realizing that in her shock she’d stopped moving. Suddenly she heard the desperate crash of his paws drumming on the terra. Pursuing her. The dusky fae launched back into a run. She flew.

Each stride stabbed agony into her paws—yet Losa refused to slow. Even injured the young lass was a match for the smoky poltergeist charging down her trail. She darted through the woods like a frightened deer: graceful, agile, only the vaguest syncopation of beats to betray her pain. Panic might have been enough to fuel her indefinitely—if not for an obstacle her evening lanterns failed to see. Leaping over a fallen log, Losa swerved a nanosecond too late to avoid a cracked branch harpooning from out of sight. It stabbed toward her shoulder and dug a trench down her side. She screamed—and lost her footing and crashed violently to the earth, mindless and motionless with shock.