‘‘That is regrettable, but not unknown,’’ he said.

‘‘It wouldn’t be anything but a sign of Cyrene ’s weakness for handsome men if Magoth hadn’t decided that she was worth keeping for a bit. He enthralled her. Do you know what that is?’’

He pursed his lips slightly. ‘‘Is it a spell of some sort?’’

‘‘More or less, yes. He placed his thrall on her, and used his will to get her to kill off his competition, her lover, Hugo.’’ I looked down at my hands for a moment. They were balled into fists. I forced myself to relax my fingers. ‘‘Cyrene, in a drunken orgy that I really don’t want to know about, decided that it would be a good idea to have a doppelganger, and since you need to have a demon lord to create one, and she was considering becoming Magoth’s consort, she went ahead and started the ceremony.’’

‘‘It did not go as planned?’’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘‘Magoth was growing tired of Cyrene. He lifted the thrall and agreed to the creation, on the condition that she bind her doppelganger to him. Since she’d sacrificed her common sense to my creation-why she couldn’t have picked a trait like ticklishness or even irritability is beyond my understanding-but since she sacrificed that, she said yes. Thus I was created, an instant servant of Magoth.’’

‘‘Who uses your ability to shadow walk to his own benefit?’’ Gabriel asked.

I nodded again. ‘‘He seeks to gain a hold on the mortal world, and sends me out to acquire for him those things which might give him power here.’’

‘‘And you thought I wished to use you the same way he does,’’ he said, then checked himself. ‘‘I suppose in your eyes there is little difference. I understand now why you refused to help me.’’

‘‘I never refused to help you,’’ I said wearily, slumping into a chair. ‘‘I just can’t have sex with you. I can’t… love you.’’

‘‘Love is not an emotion that is so easily commanded,’’ he said, his fingers wisping across my cheek.

I looked up. His expression was unreadable.

‘‘I would not demand declarations of love from you. I would hope that the emotion would follow, as it does for most mated pairs, but I believe you already feel for me an attraction that would be enough. To start,’’ he added with another brush of his fingers across my cheek.

I resisted the urge to lean into the gesture. ‘‘That point aside, the fact remains that I can’t be the mate that you want. Or deserve. Magoth is bent on seducing me as he did Cyrene, and has even offered me the position of his consort. It is becoming increasingly… difficult… to resist him,’’ I said carefully, wanting him to know the whole ugly truth. ‘‘He is not someone I would choose to have that sort of a relationship with, but he is very powerful, and I know the day will come when despite my best efforts, he will succeed. And once that happens, it will be child’s play to cast a thrall upon me, and then…’’

He looked thoughtful as my words trailed off. ‘‘Then he would order you to kill me.’’

‘‘Yes.’’ I rubbed my fingers. ‘‘I like you, Gabriel. I think you’re probably a very good wyvern, and a good man. I believe that if my situation was other than it is, I would be happy to be your mate-in all meanings of the word. But I will not risk your life for just a few fleeting moments of sexual gratification.’’

His dimples suddenly appeared. ‘‘I assure you, there will be more than just a few fleeting moments.’’

‘‘You know what I mean.’’

‘‘Yes, I do.’’ He suddenly dropped to his knees before me, pulling me from the bed into his arms, my legs straddling one of his silk-clad thighs. ‘‘Mayling, my little bird, so used to carrying the burdens of the world upon your delicate shoulders. Do not speak that reproach I see your lips ready to form.’’ His head dipped and he kissed me quickly, his fire roaring through me for a moment before it withdrew. ‘‘I am wyvern of the silver dragons. I am not so easy to kill.’’

‘‘But-’’

‘‘Do not worry about it, Mayling. You are my mate. I will not give you up to anyone, not even a demon lord.’’

‘‘I’m bound to him,’’ I said, wishing I could just give in to what he offered me. ‘‘It’s not so simple as me having a choice, don’t you understand? He is repugnant, evil personified, the being I most dread on the planet, and yet more than once I have found myself slipping under his seductive spell. To say you won’t give me up is neither here nor there… I’ll give myself up in the end.’’

‘‘You have resisted his attempts upon you for a hundred years,’’ he said, his eyes bright with emotion. ‘‘I will teach you ways to continue to do so.’’

A faint surge of hope blossomed within me. ‘‘You know a way to avoid his spells?’’

‘‘Well… not as such. But there are others who do, and we will find them. Do not worry about this, little bird. You are mine, and I do not give up what I hold.’’

I looked deep into his eyes, and for a moment, I believed him. His belief in himself was unshakable, as was his interest in me. But there was something else, something that was even more intriguing, a brief glimpse of a gentler emotion that found an answering chord within me. ‘‘Even if we do find someone who can teach me, we’ve only known each other… well, for a few hours. And much as I enjoy kissing you, and touching you-’’

‘‘And wishing to feel me slide into your body, possessing you as only I can-’’ he said, echoing my thoughts.

I clapped a hand over his mouth, glaring as his dimples emerged.

‘‘Even if all that were true, and I’ll thank you very kindly to stop reading my smutty thoughts about you, even so, I am not the sort of a person who is comfortable with the idea of physical intimacy the very day we met. Just because I haven’t slept with a man before doesn’t mean I’m the sort of girl who jumps into bed at the first seductive and incredibly arousing smile a man gives her.’’

To my surprise, the aforementioned smile faded. ‘‘You are a wyvern’s mate.’’

‘‘Yes, I know-’’ I started to say, but he stopped me.

‘‘More to the point, you are my mate, but to ensure that you are not, for lack of a better word, poached by another, I must claim you. Physically. After which, you will accept me and the sept, and only then will you be safe from everything but lusus naturae.’’

‘‘What do you mean, poached?’’ I asked. ‘‘Lusus what?’’

He took a deep breath. I was momentarily distracted by the feeling of his leg pressed so intimately between mine, but managed to wrestle my mind away from that to what he was saying.

‘‘Wyvern’s mates are rare. They are born-or in your case, created-to be the mate of a wyvern.’’

‘‘And?’’ I asked, waiting for the penny to drop.

‘‘Any wyvern,’’ he said.

The penny hit the floor with the impact of an atomic bomb. ‘‘You mean I’m not your mate… I’m any wyvern’s mate?’’

‘‘Any wyvern who does not yet possess a mate, yes. There are four wyverns in the weyr… two of them are mated, two are not, although we’re not quite certain about whether or not one of the wyverns is still alive.’’

‘‘So there’s another wyvern out there who could zoom along and… what? Grab me for his own mate?’’

Gabriel looked vaguely uncomfortable.

‘‘What? The other wyvern isn’t a man?’’

‘‘No, he is, it’s just… it’s a long story, one which I really don’t wish to go into right now, but the blue wyvern was challenged and overthrown by another wyvern, the true wyvern, so now you could say there are two blue wyverns.’’

‘‘You dragons are very strange,’’ I said, apropos of nothing.

‘‘And then there’s Kostya,’’ he said, his gaze a thousand miles away.

‘‘That’s the guy you want me to rob?’’

‘‘Yes. He claims to be the wyvern of the black dragons, but as such, they do not exist.’’

‘‘Great. So there are now three other possible guys on the snatch-and-grab list?’’ I asked.

He hesitated. ‘‘Possibly four, if Chuan Ren is not confined to Abaddon after Aisling threw her there.’’