At her nod, he slid one muscled arm around her waist, the other clasping her raised hand. A waltz. She had seen this enough times in movies. She could do this.

As Tristan swept them around the ballroom, she fell into his steps, her feet not tripping, and she laughed for the sheer enjoyment of the moment. At last, she danced in an opulent ballroom and wore a lovely gown, with starlight shining down upon them as they danced.

In his arms, she felt so secure and safe and cherished.

I could stay here forever.

You cannot, unless you never wish to see your twin again.

The thought cut through her joy like a knife slicing through butter. She pushed it away, determined to make the most of this, her first dance with Tristan.

He leaned closer and whispered into her ear. "I shall enjoy a different dance with you later, my lady."

Heat suffused her skin. Fingers tightening on his firm, muscled shoulder, she let him sweep her away, just as he'd swept her away at the ranch, swept her into a new and strange and exciting world.

Applause sounded as they finished their dance. She curtseyed and Tristan bowed. The T-Rex shifter who had acted as footman at the door called out, "Well done!"

Silence draped the ballroom, and she saw the slight disapproval on the faces of other guests. Some Fae protocol broken?

The hell with that. This was her dream, and in her dreams, everyone, even lizard shifters, were treated with utter respect.

Nikita left Tristan and went to Saul. She took his tiny, clawed hand and curtseyed to him. "Thank you, for making me feel welcome."

She kissed his cheek.

Saul went beet red and then another round of applause broke out in the ballroom.

When she rejoined Tristan at their table, he leaned back, his eyes focused only on her. As if they were not among more than a thousand guests in his enormous ballroom.

He leaned forward and covered her palm with his. "Thank you for acknowledging him, Nikita. Saul has often felt left out at affairs like this. His upbringing was rather...crude."

"No one should feel left out." She remembered the loneliness in the basement when her twin, as pack leader, went running with the others and she was forced to remain behind.

Tristan stroked her fingers in a slow caress. "You always did treat all with fairness and diplomacy. From the simplest peasant ogre to the highborn, you looked upon them equally."

As dancers took to the floor and swirled around them, she noticed Fae with silver hair and Lupines who looked half-human, half-wolf milling about the guests and asked him about them.

"Everyone takes the form that pleases them when they wish. Here, one does not worry about shifting accidentally in front of Skins. Only in the Midnight Kingdom can shifters assume their true form and mill about freely from city to city," he said.

She'd heard of vague tales of such a kingdom, where Dark Fae and shifters co-mingled, and their magick was most powerful, and dangerous.

"I thought that place was legend," she remarked.

"It is truth." Tristan nodded as a blue fairy in shimmering tulle flitted by and trilled a greeting.

Another fairy flitted over, offering them a silver tray loaded with delicacies. She selected a sea scallop wrapped in bacon and bit into it with a sigh of pleasure. As she ate, several Others came to their table to greet them.

Tristan greeted each one with warmth, spending several minutes inquiring about them, his concern obvious. Yet even in mortal form she felt the aura of his power ringing him like a lighthouse beacon, where the others were pale moonlight in comparison.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall, bearded man clad in a blue velvet tunic, cobalt leggings and doeskin boots. He stood on the sidelines of the ballroom, looking at the scene with brooding eyes.

"Drust," she said, touching Tristan's arm. "I'm going to ask him to dance. He looks so lonely."

Tristan kissed her cheek. "Enjoy yourself."

When she went to him, the dragon shifter looked wary and startled. Nikita offered a wide smile.

"I seem to recall a time when I danced at many great balls in Castle Baldwin, and one such dance was with you. Would you do a kindness and dance with me?"

Drust bowed low. "It would be my pleasure, my lady Nikita." Then, in a lower voice, he added, "I owe you much more than a mere dance. It is my greatest wish that I could make amends some day for failing to watch over you and safeguard you from harm after Tristan died."

He danced with effortless grace, twirling her around the ballroom, her skirts flying out, but he kept her at a courteous distance. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder.

"Are you settling in here? This place is heavenly, but I can imagine it takes some adjusting after the Shadow Lands."

"The Shadow Lands were hell for me," he confessed, expertly cutting a turn. "The land can turn the hardiest of souls, the strongest of men and dragons, inside out. Only those with truly strong spirits, and courage, survive past their memories to move onward to Tir Na-nog."

"Tristan was pained while we were there," she admitted. "He must have suffered much."

He looked down at her, his look expressive with regret. "He had the memory of you to guide him here. You have always been the only one for him, from the moment he saw you in the market square two years before your mating day. He told me, 'Drust, look at that lovely Lupine. See how gentle and yet spirited she is? She is the one for me. I know this.'"

Nikita blinked. "According to my dreams, which are memories, ours was an arranged match. He scarcely knew me. He knew of my father's landholdings, and the forest-rich territory. That is why he mated me."

Drust laughed, a deep sound that held much amusement. "Did you ever stop to think who did the arranging, my lady? Tristan cared not for territory. Or licking the white ass of that foul bastard, Emer. He wanted you. He would have given anything to have you, anything to make you happy. You had given away some of your wares to a group of Lupine children who went hungry and ignored by Others. He said to me, 'Drust, she is so lovely. Each time I see her my heart feels lighter. She is the woman who can make me the Lupine I know I can become, if she is by my side.'

"Your true beauty was not your looks, but your soul. He recognized this, and knew you belonged together. It happens at times with Lupines, this soulmate recognition. It happens far less with dragons."

A warm tenderness came over her as she glanced over at Tristan, talking with Saul. And then new memories surfaced, the flower garden Tristan had planted for her when she wistfully mentioned longing to see the blue wildflowers each day. How he had moved her entire family into the castle at his own expense when he caught her crying one night because she missed her kin. And how he'd taught her to read, when she longed to become educated.

Tristan had always been there for her, but she did not recall his little acts of kindness and love.

"He never told me."

"Men are stupid in that way. We did not dare to be perceived as weak and ruled by the heart, not when the Fae were constantly breathing down our necks. But he knew you were his. I always wanted to find my true mate. I was mated twice and never did find her."

He swept her past a table filled with Fae drinking and laughing. "But you had Camilla. You loved her, from what I can recall."

"I loved her, but I was busy upon the king's business and had little time for her. Once she told me she felt less than a female because she'd failed to give me children. I tried to assure her I had six strong, healthy children and did not need another. I tried to make her feel accepted, but it was a long and difficult road."

She felt sympathy for Camilla, who had been loved and did not feel it.

"Is Camilla here in Tir Na-nog?"

Drust shook his head. "I have not seen her neither here, nor in the Shadow Lands. Shortly after the end of the Drakon War and there was peace between shifters and the Fae, I caught her with a lover, and banished her."

"Oh Drust!" She pulled back a little and studied him. "I'm so sorry."

He shrugged. "I did love her, but I would not tolerate such a betrayal of trust." The dragon laughed. "Ironic, isn't it? Betrayed by my mate, and all these centuries Tristan believes I betrayed him. Betrayal is an ugly thing, my lady."

The dance ended and he gave a courtly bow to her curtsy. Then he formally escorted her back to her table and pulled out her chair.

Drust took Tristan's empty seat, his gaze sweeping over the crowd. "It feels odd to be among this many after so many centuries of forced solitude. I do not know if I like it."

She touched his hand. "This is a land of dreams, Drust. You should learn to experience joy once more. If not for you, I would have been in real trouble."

"The Shadow Lands are no place for one such as you with a gentle and innocent heart," Drust said. "For me, they were painful, yet comfortable. They were a place to contemplate my life, and my death."

Curious, she studied him. "How did you die? Was it a great battle?" She imagined Drust's chest pierced by a lance or him gasping his last breath as he fought to defend his territory.

He grinned. "Carriage accident. Not very noble."

They laughed a moment. Then the dragon stared again at Tristan. "Tristan could have left you to journey through the Shadow Lands. He walked that path again because he would not see you walk it alone. And he was forced to remember all the torment he suffered while there."

Another shifter asked her for a dance, and Nikita ended up on the floor dancing for a long while. Finally, with excuses of needing to sit, she returned to her table. By now Tristan and Drust were talking, walking the perimeter of the ballroom. Hands hooked behind his back, Tristan listened as Drust talked. Once in a while he lifted his head and laughed at something the dragon shifter said. Memories blazed back-good ones. Utterly content, she let herself drift into one-before the Drakon War began. Tristan with his best friend, Drust, went fishing in the lake near Castle Baldwin as she and Camilla, Drust's mate, watched Drust's children from his first marriage scamper over the meadow next to the lake.

Camilla was plain-faced, but good with the children, and she had a quiet air about her Nikita had found refreshing. Camilla kept her company when Tristan and Drust were sent off on a raid for King Emer.

Nikita watched the children, her chest tight. She had confirmed today her suspicions.

"They seem so frail," she mused. "And yet they run and play as if they were indestructible."

"A trait among children, lost to us as we age. Do you want children, Nikita?" Camilla asked, handing her a cup of wine.

Nikita smiled and set the cup down. "Yes. It is my dearest wish." She pressed her hands to her belly. "I think that wish may be coming sooner than I had hoped."

Camilla hugged her tight. "Congratulations. Drust and I were never able to conceive on our own."

She blinked at the wistful look on her friend's face. "I'm sorry."

Camilla shrugged. "I have Drust's children from his first marriage to care for, and they are like my own. It will suffice."

But to never carry the child of a man you loved, it must be heartbreaking, she had thought. And then she looked at Drust, who gazed at Camilla with the same tenderness Tristan displayed to her, but Camilla did not return the look.

Tristan's deep voice broke through the memory. "My sweet, are you well? You look lost in thought."

She smiled and accepted the silver goblet of punch he handed her. "Just thinking of the past."

Maybe Camilla had taken another lover because of her inability to give children to Drust. The dragon admitted he had little time for her.

Would the same happen to her if she chose to remain on Earth as mortal? At least here, she would see Tristan often. Give him a chance to be a real father.

The thought deeply troubled her.

They remained at the ball for a few hours, mingling with the guests, dancing, but always keeping an eye on each other. On the carriage ride back, she studied him with sweet anticipation.

When they arrived back at the cottage, he dismissed the coach and the coachmen, and they flew off into the night. Taking her hand, Tristan led her into the bedroom.

Once inside, he loosened his black tie, unbuttoned his jacket but then stilled, his gaze heavy-lidded with desire. In the soft golden glow of the bedside lamp, Tristan could have been a billionaire CEO returning from a late night benefit, ready to tumble into bed with his wife for a long bout of lovemaking before rising with the sun to assume his business duties.

Only this was a fourteen-hundred-year-old wizard who dispensed justice by obliterating shifters who did evil. Such a burden on his spirit.

She went to him, grazing her thumb along his stubbled jawline. "I had a great time tonight. It was amazing meeting all those shifters from your past."

He picked up her hand and kissed it. "I have lived long, Nikita, done much, but loved only one woman-you."

He rubbed her hand along his bristled cheek. She wished she could erase the haunted look in his eyes. This was the heavenly afterworld, but turning mortal must have triggered memories Tristan did not wish to recall.

"I love you as well, Tristan."

He looked up, a flash of hope on his face pushing aside the darkness.

"I have always loved you deep inside, but the part of me that remembered the pain of your death, and how I was left alone, refused to recall it. All those nights after you died, I would curl up on my bed and weep. And I would wish for one last time running with you beneath the moon as wolf, one last touch of your lips against mine as Skin."

She slid her arms around his neck and reached up to kiss him. He lowered his head to hers, and the kiss was sweet and brief, not the drugging kisses he'd showered upon her in the previous days.

Tristan cupped her face with his warm palms.

"I want to fall into you like water, drown myself in you. I want to dive into you so deeply the memory of you will carry me through the centuries to come. Being immortal and patrolling the mortal plane is lonely, Nikita. Watching all your friends die, loathing to grow close to anyone because you will outlive them, or they could embark on a dark path that forces you to kill them so that others may live."

She stared into his dark brown eyes. "Tell me what I can do to ease your pain."

"Be with me tonight. Run with me as wolf, as we once ran when we were mates on Earth. I want to feel the wind against my face and hear the beat of your heart as you race with me beneath the moon."

His eyes closed as he kissed her knuckles, one by one. "With you at my side, the loneliness is vanquished. The darkest nightmares in the Shadow Lands, not knowing if I would ever hold you once more in my arms, were a living hell. When the grayness in the Shadow Lands threatened to swallow me until all I could hear were my own screams and remember the pain as they tortured me and the guilt I felt at leaving you, I would run as wolf and pretend you were running alongside me. Only the memories of you pushed the darkness away a little."

Deeply touched at his confession, she kissed him.

They left the cottage and went outside. Nikita lifted her arms and called upon her magick and shifted into wolf. Iridescent sparks swirled around her, as lovely as fairy dust.

Sensations rushed at her, the smell of water in the creek behind Tristan's home, the sounds of fairies dancing on the wind, the feel of the earth beneath her paws.

The large silver wolf standing beside her looked at her quietly in the moonlight. And then they bounded off for the woods.

Racing after him, she yipped with sheer enjoyment, snapping at the glowing green dragonflies darting in and out of the woods. Silver moonlight spilled down upon them, and she could taste the scent of prey hiding in the bushes.

But tonight her hunger was not of wolf, but woman.

They ended the chase at a small glen deep in the woods, near a bubbling creek. White orchids and lilies grew amid the green mosses and grasses. Tristan shifted back to Skin. Still nude, he padded over to a flower. She shifted back to Skin and watched him pluck it and then inhale the fragrant scent.

He held it out to her with a solemn look.

"Will you be my forever mate, Nikita? I ask much of you, for if you decide to remain mortal, you could never choose another mate to grow old with or bear other children with. No other male would be interested in you."

The mating mark. Her breath caught. The mark a male Lupine gave to his female, to show to the world she was his. It diffused the lust of other males. They would never be sexually interested in her.

But she could not imagine having sex with anyone but Tristan. And if she could not have him as her mate, then she wanted no one else.

He claimed her heart, always. She accepted the lily and inhaled its fragrance.