Dragos didn’t stop at the New York City limit.
Instead he continued to fly south until he reached the Wyr/Elven border. The seven Elder Races demesnes in the United States did not follow any human geography, and state lines were not demesne border lines. The Wyr/Elven border cut through Lumberton, North Carolina, south of Fayetteville.
Once he reached Lumberton, he decided to pause and think. He landed on the shoulder beside I-95 South. Lumberton was a small town, with around twenty thousand humans and three thousand more of a smattering of the Elder Races. Even though Lumberton was several hours’ drive away from New York, it was just as gray, cold and dreary as the city had been.
Still keeping his presence cloaked, he changed into his human form to check voice mail and text messages, scrolling through them quickly while trucks and cars roared past on the interstate.
There. His vision narrowed. He’d gotten three phone calls from Pia’s iPhone. The first had come in almost two hours ago, and the others had come at intervals of every half hour afterward.
He didn’t bother to listen to any of the messages. Instead he punched speed dial. When a male answered his mate’s phone, his talons sprang out and the growl that came out of him shook the ground.
The male spoke rapidly, ”. . . Is quite well. This is Hugh Monroe. Again, your mate is quite well. Pia sent me out of Lirithriel Wood to tell you that she is fine, and that she thinks the Wood is interfering with your communication with each other. She gave me her cell phone because she wanted to be sure I reached you, sir, and I promise you, that’s the only reason why I’m using her phone right now.”
Monroe. It took Dragos a second to place the name. He was the gargoyle from Pia’s bodyguard team. Dragos took a deep breath and relaxed fractionally. Although he hated the gargoyle’s voice coming from Pia’s phone, he said, “Tell me everything.”
Hugh obliged by telling him about their trip into the Wood, along with every detail of the High Lord’s home, how Pia’s evening had gone last night and how she had sent Hugh with the message within minutes of waking up.
As Dragos listened in silence, he strode south down the shoulder of the interstate while traffic whizzed past, oblivious to his presence. Snow began to fall in fluffy, fat flakes that swirled over the dark gray land. The snowflakes that fell around him hissed as they boiled to nothing before they reached the ground, until a cloak of mist trailed behind him as he walked.
Fifteen more yards. He knew it like he knew the back of his own hand, just as he had known to a penny what had been in his original hoard before he downsized it. He knew to a precise inch the many miles of border that surrounded his demesne.
Monroe fell silent after he described flying away from the High Lord’s home. Dragos asked, “Where are you now?”
“I’m on the north side of the Wood, in the Francis Marion National Forest,” Monroe told him.
“You’ve done what you were told to do,” Dragos said. “Now go back in.”
Ten yards.
“I will certainly give it my best shot,” Monroe said. “But I’m not sure I can. I could feel the Wood close behind me as I left.”
Five.
“Try,” Dragos said. He hung up.
He checked through the rest of his messages, but there was nothing that couldn’t wait. Bayne had texted that Sidhiel had not made an effort to leave town. He sent out a blast message to his sentinels in a brief update and then he turned off his phone.
The thing about laws was, at their essence they were a decision. Before he had met Pia, Dragos had counted law as his finest achievement. Law was the necessary bridge he had needed to build between him and other creatures when the world had become so goddamn crowded.
But at his essence, he was a lawless creature. Other imperatives ran much deeper.
He would not tolerate being separated from Pia, nor would he let this Elven Wood keep his mate from him. If Pia herself was angry or upset with his decision, why then, so be it. They would just have to figure out a way to get past it.
And he would not let any other race dictate his actions.
Not when Numenlaur was involved, and prophecy might be at hand.
As he stepped across the Wyr/Elven border, he changed back into his Wyr form, launched into the air and continued south.
Choosing to copy the gargoyle’s actions, he landed in the Elven Wood’s much larger neighbor, the national forest. Coming to ground about a quarter mile out from his goal, he changed and walked the rest of the way through the new, slender young trees.