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Dmitri still hadn’t decided about Faith Reynolds. Her dedication to her job was unquestioned. He wasn’t accepting her answer of just finding the cave, though.To have chosen this cave above any others? This one, which happened to have a dragon skeleton inside?

While he’d walked the site after meeting Dr. Reynolds, he overheard conversations. Many of the volunteers didn’t believe it was a dragon. They suspected it was a new species of dinosaur. The few locals he saw milling about were curious, wondering how the new find would help tourism.

He spotted a few “crazies” as Tamir called them, watching from a distance, but no one got close. Though he was curious about the two men Tamir had encountered earlier.

The way Tamir had acted as he spoke about the incident made Dmitri wonder if word hadn’t somehow reached the Dark Fae.

Or Ulrik.

Once volunteers began leaving for the night, Dmitri found himself climbing back down to the cave. He’d expected to find Faith shutting things down for the day, but she continued to work.

He didn’t want to be intrigued by her, but he was. If only his fascination had to do with how she’d found the dragon. He would discover what had led her to the skeleton, but that wasn’t what kept his gaze locked on her.

It’s not what kept his body strung tight as a bow.

She was average height, but there was nothing typical about her looks. Much to his dismay. His tastes ran toward the Fae since he preferred to stay away from humans. Yet, there was no negating the fact that lust burned through his body from the first moment her sherry eyes locked with his.

There was a . . . simplicity about Faith that he appreciated. No makeup was needed to enhance her natural beauty. At first glance, she seemed almost ditzy since her mind ran a million miles a second, but her intelligence and zest for life were apparent with one look.

Her sandy blond hair hung straight and glossy to her shoulders and was parted to one side with long bangs that she swiped out of her eyes repeatedly. The locks tantalized him by exposing the slender column of her neck and the delicate skin behind her ear.

Unblemished fair skin beckoned him to touch, to caress.

To lick.

He clenched his teeth at the need that surged through him. When she turned, he watched the pulse at her throat and fought the longing to press his lips against it to feel the warmth of her body.

Her oval face held a look of innocence and excitement he hadn’t seen in a long time. While her high cheekbones and sensual mouth added to her beauty, it was her eyes that caught him. They looked at the world as if it were a large sandbox waiting to expose its treasures.

His palm still prickled from their brief touch earlier. The shock that had gone through him had been electric. The charge surged through him faster than lightning and left him reeling—and aching for more.

Unable to look away, he watched as she stood and then bent over at the waist. The sight of her firm ass high in the air had the blood rushing to his cock. No mortal had ever had such an effect on him before. It unsettled him—and angered him.

He forced his eyes away and turned his mind to more pressing matters. He’d been sent because of the skeleton, but there was something about Faith that didn’t seem to add up.

The most important question: how had she known where to look to find the bones?

Faith became so engrossed in her work that she didn’t hear others talking to her. Even when Tamir called her name, she was often too preoccupied with digging up the skeleton.

Dmitri had watched her for hours. In that time, he’d listened to her hum and watched her touch the bones with such reverence that it shook him.

Though he’d come to the cave to watch her, it gave him time with the skeleton, as well. By the size, he knew it was an adult. Which of his dragons had gotten left behind? They’d been his responsibility, and he’d failed.

The longer he stared, the more he felt the weight of regret. The world had been created for the dragons. It was their birthright, their home.

Yet they were no longer welcome.

And he feared nothing would ever change that.

The Dragon Kings who found mates with human females were lucky. Those mortals welcomed the dragons and the Kings. But most of the globe was made up of individuals who wanted nothing more than to destroy the Dragon Kings, imprison them, or run tests on them.

So he and the others remained hidden.

But the dragon inside him—the fierce, savage creature that he was—silently cried out for revenge. And his family.