Skylar followed Orion's broad back as they walked down the trail of the herd of sheep meandering ahead of them. The sun was still hidden behind the mountains on the eastern side of the valley and Skylar yawned widely, her eyes still heavy with sleep. Orion had roused her while it was still dark out, and the rest of the house was still asleep.

She was amazed Orion didn't want to sleep longer. He'd stayed up far later that she did last night, conversing with his family and friends. Upon returning to the Big House, Skylar had been bombarded with new faces who were curious about her, but also wanted to welcome Orion home. Among those were Percy, his parents and younger sister, and the woman he was courting, a lovely brunette who had immediately greeted Skylar with a huge smile and gentle, caramel colored eyes. The young woman who'd been with Orion's brother Olly was also there, and she stuck close to Laura while Olly spoke with Leo and Orion.

Victoria was nowhere in sight, so she was likely getting dinner ready, so Skylar was all alone, standing close to Orion since she had nowhere else to be. Luckily, Percy's romantic interest had approached Skylar with a friendly grin.

"Hello," she said, getting Skylar's attention. "I'm Laura."

Skylar smiled at the pretty woman. While not classically beautiful, Laura radiated charm and kindness, drawing people to her. "I'm Skylar. It's a pleasure."

"Indeed," Laura agreed. "Percy has already told me quite a bit about you, what he's observed anyway."

Skylar wasn't sure what to make of that. "He has?"

"Oh, yes. Don't worry, I was very impressed by it all," she laughed reassuringly. "Not many people can stand up to Orion the way I heard you did. That's quite a feat, putting him in his place. The man is as stubborn as they come."

Skylar already liked her.

"Oh, and this is my sister, Fiona," Laura motioned to the lavender eyed- female next to her, and Skylar saw the similarities right away. With their dark hair and caramel skin, which matched Laura's eyes almost perfectly, the girls were an attractive pair.

"We sort of met earlier," Skylar smiled at the girl, "but we didn't get a chance to officially meet. Orion was a bit antsy to get moving."

"That sounds about right," Laura laughed. "The man can't be idle."

"Olly's the same way," Fiona added in a soft, husky. "I think it runs in the family."

"But we love them anyway," Laura sent a lingering look over to Percy, who immediately sensed her and winked. That was how Skylar had figured out they were together.

"Are you two...?" she asked.

Laura shook her head, her dark hair swinging methodically. "Not officially, but I think he's going to ask me soon. Oh, I hope he does."

Fiona nudged her sister. "After what happened right before he left, I'm surprised he hasn't already staked his claim," she teased.

Fiona turned to Skylar. "Another male in the clan made a huge deal out of letting Laura know he was interested. Percy was not happy."

"But Percy is the only one for me, I'm sure of that."

"Even though he's not your True Mate?" Fiona teased, as if it were a joke.

That caught Skylar's attention, mostly because it was a term she was unfamiliar with. She hoped one of them would elaborate, but they either assumed she already knew the meaning of the word, or it didn't matter because they were kidding. Either way, they moved on from the topic quickly, with Laura rolling her eyes and looking over at Percy again. What Skylar saw in her eyes, in the way she looked at Percy, was what Skylar had always wanted. What she saw her parents have. She wanted to love her future husband that much, so much that the room melted away when you looked at each other, the way it so obviously was with Percy and Laura.

That was when Victoria came into the sitting room to announce that dinner was ready, effectively ending their conversation. Once seated at the table, which was full of eight strange faces, along with the four members of the Alpha family, Nana, Percy, Fiona, and Laura, Skylar was introduced one by one over dinner, but luckily she wasn't required to say more. People were more interested in watching her than asking about her. She also thought that perhaps they had been instructed to leave her be. Orion met her eye a few times over dinner, giving her reassuring smirks, and she felt much better. Her dragon was on edge, being surrounded by so many new faces, but it was an interested on edge. Nervous, but excited. Not like when they were around humans, when she was on edge in a way that would give Skylar a migraine if things went to far.

After dinner, Skylar, Fiona, Laura, and Nana helped Victoria clean up while the men went into the sitting room for a drink and to talk. Luckily, Victoria had offered to show Skylar to her room, probably sensing Skylar's exhaustion. So, they bid their goodnights to the ladies and brought Skylar upstairs.

"I'm sorry I didn't have time to get water for your bath. I didn't expect so many people to come for dinner," Victoria sighed as she brought Skylar her shift to sleep in. "You apparently draw a crowd."

"Who were all those people? They appeared very comfortable with Leo and Orion," Skylar asked as she took her hair down.

"Everyone is comfortable with them, they're very close with the members of the clan, but that just happened to be Leo's Beta, Lawrence, who is also Percy's father, his mate and Percy's younger sister, and then some of Leo's patrol. Their wives likely sent them to get a look at you, possibly learn more about you," Victoria winked. She leaned back and yawned. "I might head to bed as well. Lord knows I can't stay up past sunset anymore, and Leo and Orion will be downstairs for hours entertaining their friends."

"I can do the rest from here," Skylar assured her, even though she'd never gotten ready for bed on her own before, she was sure she could do it. She didn't want to burden Victoria. Besides, Victoria wasn't a ladies maid, she was the mistress of the Big House. It wasn't her responsibility to take care of guests. Which made Skylar wonder, where were the servants?

"Oh, of course, I'm hovering," Victoria laughed. "You know where I'll be if you need anything, alright? Sleep well."

"Thank you, you as well."

Victoria exited the room with a smile, and Skylar turned to take her first real breath since being kidnapped. She was finally alone, and she was safe. The room was sparsely furnished, with a chair by the fireplace and a simple bed, but it was a real bed, and Skylar wasted no time changing into her shift, although she carefully took Jonathan's necklace off and set it on the vanity after kissing the blue jewel. No matter what her feelings for Orion were, confused about those as she was, she missed her friend dearly. She picked up the brush that Victoria had left her and brushed through her red curls before climbing underneath the soft quilt and falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She'd awoken again sometime later, when someone had opened the door to her room to check on her, likely to make sure she was still there. She opened her eyes slightly, just enough to see the large figure in the doorway. She assumed it was Orion, and was a little hurt to know that he still didn't trust her to not run away, but understood his reasons. She no longer heard voices downstairs and assumed the guests had left. When the door closed again, she peered out the window near the side of the bed and saw the nearly fully moon sitting high in the sky. She fell back to sleep to thoughts of painful shifting, and large groups of dragons.

It was only a few hours later when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder, shaking lightly. "Hey, Skylar, wake up."

Her first instinct was to strike out, which Orion dodged easily, and the second was irritation. She pulled the blankets up to her chin and glared sleepily at him. "What do you want? Why are you in my room?"

"You weren't waking up to my knocking," he explained. "Get dressed and we'll have a quick breakfast before we get going for the day."

Skylar turned her head to look out window and then back to the large silhouette still looming above her. "The sun isn't up."

"It will be soon, but we have a lot of training to do before the full moon, so hop up," he nudged her hip slightly, precariously close to her bum, and she growled at his easy touching. She was not in the mood to wake up at this unreasonable time, and neither was her dragon.

"And if I say no?"

"Then I carry you out of bed and force you to get dressed myself," he warned, leaning away from the bed. Skylar couldn't help the reddening of her cheeks at that thought, and she sat up to glare at him.

"Why are we up so early?" she demanded, refusing to get out of bed until he was out of the room. She felt vulnerable enough with him standing over her like that, let alone seeing her in her shift.

"We need to work on your relationship with your dragon, and I hope to have you shift on your own by the end of the day. So I figured we'd give ourselves as much time as possible."

Skylar's eyes widened at thought, and even her dragon was unsure about shifting. That would be territory they were both unfamiliar with. It was one thing for her dragon to fight knowing she would lose, but another to know that Skylar would finally unlock the cage she'd taken so long to secure. The fact that Orion thought he could dismember it in a day... that was insane.

"I'll be in the kitchen when you're ready," he told her with a lingering glance and left the room. Her body warmed at his gaze, even after he shut the door behind him, and she couldn't help but remember the way the solid muscle of his arm had felt beneath her hand yesterday when she was rubbing the healing cream into his arm. She swallowed to soothe her suddenly dry throat and wondered what her strange reactions to Orion were all about. It must be her dragon's affection toward him, leaking into her own perceptions of him. He was a private man, careful about what he revealed to her, and he was a bit rough around the edges, but Skylar had truly believed Victoria when she had said he was a sweet man. He had been nothing but kind to her since their arrival, and perhaps that was because they were among his people, where he felt safe, although it was hard to imagine the imposing Orion as feeling anything but confident and invincible.

Skylar rose and peered out the window and was surprised to see other people moving around, carrying torches. Why did people get up so early here? She stretched her arms high above her head before putting on the clothes from yesterday.

And now here they were, trekking up the hill after the herd of sheep heading out the one of the far pastures, or so Orion told her. The piece of bread and cheese he had given her before they'd set out wasn't going to last long, so she hoped that the pack over his shoulder contained their lunch, even though it was hardly breakfast for normal people.

"Where are we going?" she asked again. "And why did it have to be so early?"

"We're going away from the village, out of the way of prying eyes. There are some woods up ahead we can hide in so nosy clan members don't bother us," he told her. "And it had to be so early so that no one followed us, and so that we have a whole day. Dad wants to address the clan about you, with you there, so we'll do that tonight. Tomorrow night is the full moon, so I want as much time for you to prepare as possible."

Skylar nodded. That was probably a good idea, especially since her dragon had never roamed free, let alone been around other dragons. The thought of shifting terrified her. Not only did it hurt, but she had no control whatsoever. The last thing she wanted was to hurt someone. Of course her dragon was terribly offended that Skylar thought she would hurt any other dragon, but Skylar couldn't help it.

"What are we going to do first?" she wondered as he veered away from the path of the flock, heading toward some trees in the distance.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. "We're going to try to unlock the cage."

"I threw away the key a long time ago," she told him, looking down at her feet. In fact, the cage didn't even have a door.

"Then we'll see if you can't get rid of it all together. You'll have to work together with your dragon for that. If you can't get it open, I have another idea."

Skylar remembered what Draco had threatened her with. "Pressure points, to trigger the shift."

He stopped in his tracks and spun around to stare at her. "How did you know that?"

Skylar stared up at him with wide eyes. His abrupt outburst approached the edge of anger, and she wasn't sure why. "My original captor threatened me with it, if I didn't go with him. He said he would expose me in front of everyone."

"He knew about that trick? How the hell did he know about that," Orion whispered to himself before turning on Skylar again. "Skylar, you have to tell me who he is. This man is dangerous to my kind, our kind. I can't let him roam free."

She didn't understand her own hesitation to tell him. Perhaps because it would reveal who she was, and she wasn't sure if she was ready for that. She didn't know what they would do if they found that not only was she the princess, she was the sole heir to an entire kingdom. She shook her head slowly and clasped her hands in front of her. "Orion, I can't tell you. Not yet," she pleaded. "He doesn't have anyone else, he doesn't know who anyone else is. He can't reveal to my parents what he did to me, or it will ruin everything for him. My father is much more powerful than he, he will destroy him. Nothing is going to happen right now. You don't need to know yet."

"Like hell I don't," Orion sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "And we'll come back to the conversation about who you are later. I'll give you two weeks to tell me, Skylar. That's how long we have until another Alpha comes to visit, and my father and I will need to discuss with him about how to proceed with this threat to our existence. To do that, I need to know exactly who this threat is."

Skylar's dragon didn't agree with this withholding of information, but Skylar wasn't going to budge. Orion didn't need to know about Draco, not yet. Draco wasn't a threat to them here, he didn't know where she was, and he had no way of finding her. But she nodded in agreement. When she trusted Orion more, she would tell him about Draco, and she would tell him about who she was.

But, for now, they just needed to get rid of the cage that had been in her head for fifteen years.

They trekked further into the valley, falling under the trees Orion had mentioned before, a small forest that stretched about a mile in every direction. He set his pack down next to the trunk of a tree and stretched. Skylar couldn't help but admire the long, muscled planes of his body. Today his dark hair had been pulled back with a piece of twine at the base of his neck, keeping the strands out of his finely angled face. He turned to find her staring at him, boring into her with those gold eyes, and she thought she saw a hint of satisfaction there. She quickly looked away, blushing, and rubbing the toe of her boot into the ground.

"Come here," he told her, motioning with one of his large hands. "We're going to try meditating first. Simply clearing your mind of anything but your dragon. You're not the first one to do this to yourself, and there are various ways of dealing with the problem. We're start small and work up."

She walked up to him and took his outstretched hand, ignoring the heat that began from where they touched to her very core, and followed his example as he sank into a cross-legged position. He placed her hand on her knee, but she would have sworn she felt a slight caress of his thumb on the back of her hand before he let it go. She looked up from her abandoned hand to meet his eyes.

"Okay," he began, "the easiest way to do this would be to simply will away the cage, but I doubt that that's going to work in this case, so instead you're going to go up to the cage. You're going to approach your dragon on your own, not keep her as far away as possible like you usually do. You're going to go up to her, and you're going to look into her eyes. That other half of your soul isn't the enemy, she is you."

"That's it?"

He smirked. "That's it. Ready?"

Skylar nodded slowly, and her dragon growled encouragement, relaxing in her confinement to wait for Skylar.

Skylar closed her eyes and took a deep breath, focusing within herself. After about thirty seconds, she realized that while in theory this seemed easy, it wasn't. She'd spent so long avoiding her dragon, so long trying to pretend she didn't exist, she'd lost the cage. For a dragon that always seemed so close to the surface, she wasn't easy to find. Skylar continued to breathe deeply, trying to unwind the maze that was her mind. Finally, she sensed she was on the right track. Her dragon perked up in her cage, sensing Skylar. That was when Skylar realized she'd never been this close to her dragon. She wouldn't have been able to ignore the power, the pull, that resided there if the cage had been closer to the forefront of her mind. No, she'd hidden it well, all those years ago.

As she got closer to the cage, the stronger the pull became. She couldn't figure out what she was being pulled towards, but she assumed it was her dragon. It was so dark there, so dreary. There was nothing else, no other thoughts, no other feelings, just anger and sadness. Anger and sadness that radiated from the animal in the cage. Skylar's heart sank as she realized how effective her isolation of the animal had been, inside of her head or not. As she stepped close to the bars, the beast residing there lifted her magnificent head to peer at Skylar. Here they were the same size, here they were equals. Inside of Skylar, they were the same, but they weren't not one. Two sides of one coin. The dragon looked down at Skylar, and amazingly, Skylar saw herself. She shouldn't have been surprised, but she was. Orion had been right. This was her, another part of her. A part she had always thought so terrible, so dangerous, locked away here in this desolate corner of Skylar's mind.

The saddest part of the situation was that upon seeing the animal, Skylar realized that the dragon did not hold her in contempt. The beast loved her, wanted to protect her, but Skylar had locked her away. There was the selfish part of the animal that wanted her freedom as well, but as frustrated as she was, she did not hate Skylar. The anger the dragon felt for her was that of someone who had been hurt by the one they loved. Skylar had hurt her dragon immensely

Skylar hated herself, for causing the suffering of this part of her.

She reached out to touch the bars of the cage, to do something for this part of her, but she was shot back to the surface and jerked into the present once again. She gasped and opened her eyes, amazed to find her cheeks wet with tears. She'd been crying. The sun was also flooding the valley with light.

Orion stared at her, his golden eyes wide in questioning. "Did you find it?"

Skylar nodded and wiped at her cheeks. "How long has it been?"

"A couple of hours."

"A couple of hours?" she repeated in disbelief. She would have sworn it hadn't been more than twenty minutes. "What have you been doing?"

"Sitting here, watching you, meditating. It's a very good exercise for dragons, to keep each half in touch with the other. I haven't done it in a while. It's very relaxing."

Skylar shook her head and wiped at her damp eyes again. "I want to let her out. I can't keep her in that terrible place anymore."

A corner of Orion's mouth twitched. "Good. That's going to help us break down the cage."

Exhausted as Skylar was from the first attempt, she closed her eyes to dive back in, but a hand on her knee stopped her.

"Whoa, how about we take a break, huh?" His golden eyes bore into her, studying her. His face betrayed very little of what his was feeling, but his eyes had softened. "Meditation can be tiring, especially if you're not used to doing it very often. The fact that you found her on the first try is impressive enough. Most young dragons can't find their dragon side right away."

"Young dragons?"

"Children who have just shifted for the first time," Orion explained. "This is an exercise we do with them, to make shifting less painful. I figured it would apply here as well."

"You're training me like a child?" Skylar tried to decide of she was offended by that or not.

"I'm training you like someone who has no experience as a dragon," he responded shortly. "This will help you. I could have you train with the five- and six-year-olds, if you would prefer that?"

Skylar grit her teeth together. "No, I would not prefer that."

"Alright, then we do it my way."

<><><><><>

Skylar fell back on the forest floor, breathing heavily. For something that took place purely inside her head, it took a tole on her body. She'd done a fantastic job securing that cage. So good in face, she couldn't get it to budge. She closed her eyes and sucked in as much air as she could, trying to return her breathing to normal.

"It's not working," she gasped. She could feel Orion sitting next to her, tapping his fingers on his knee impatiently.

"Not even a little? It didn't even budge that time?"

"Does it look like it budged to you?" Skylar snapped, opening her eyes to glare at him. This was much harder than he had made it sound.

He lifted his lip and snarled at her, but didn't say anything.

Skylar's dragon was just as frustrated as everyone else. Her freedom was so close, and Skylar was actually on her side for once. But the cage was solid, it wasn't going anywhere.

Skylar sat up slowly to look at him. He was staring at her thoughtfully, his chiseled face revealing nothing about what exactly was going through that head of his. Skylar wrapped her arms around her knees and watched him. They'd been at this for hours; the sun was high in the sky at this point. "Do we try plan B? The pressure points?"

Orion sighed and shook his head. "I'd rather not do that, if we can avoid it."

"Why?" Skylar asked speculatively.

"It's... quite painful."

Skylar swallowed nervously and hugged her knees tighter. "But will it break the cage?"

"It should," Orion said, but he sounded anything but sure.

"You don't know?"

"I've never encountered this before!" he defended himself. "I don't know what will work and what won't. I didn't think we'd have to use the pressure point, but now it's looking like we might, since you can't get rid of the cage."

Skylar could help but laugh, which apparently surprised Orion because his dark eyebrows rose in confusion.

She waved her hand dismissively. "All these years I was so worried about her escaping, so worried the cage wouldn't hold, and I now realized I was worried for nothing. She wasn't getting out, even if I wanted to let her out."

Orion snorted. "I've always appreciated irony." He rose to his impressive height, his long legs unfolding with ease. "Come on. You promised Nana you'd go with to help her collect herbs."

"Are we quitting?"

"No, how dare you think that," he offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet as if she weighed nothing. "You simply have an appointment to keep, and I need to talk to my father."