“He was there,keeping watch over her, which meant he expected something to happen.What? That she would be so foolish as to try to escape? Not for a moment did she believe he would seek to trap her like that. No,he was waiting for someone else,the real villain who had sought to harm them both.Waiting and hoping to lure him out by the simple expediency of using her as...bait.That husband of hers-that dear, darling husband of hers-was going to have some serious apologizing to do when this was over.Fearing that the sheer expanse of her smile would give the plan away, Rycca pulled a corner of a blanket up over her face. A short time later, she drifted off to sleep again,secure in the knowledge that she lay under the watchful eye of the Dragon.”

“She opened her eyes and studied him a moment. Then she slipped her hand in her pocket, come up with something and held it toward him - palming it, like a secret. "For you," she said. "For me?""I'd like you to have it."It was a snapshot stolen from her family album: Muriel as a toddler, clambering out of a wading pool. She meant, he supposed, to give him the best of her. And so she had. But the best of her was not that cild's Shirley Temple hairdo. It was her fierceness as she fought her way toward the camera with her chin set awry and her eyes bright slits of determination. He yhanked her. He said he would keep it forever.”

“Sarah put the man and the other dead children out of her head. Later, perhaps, she would watch Lockie out in the garden and cry for all the mothers who would not see their children again. Later she would weep for the sadness of their loss and the joy of her own luck, but now she only had eyes for her boy, her little man, her Lockie. She ran her hands over his body, lifted his shirt a little and caught sight of a yellowing bruise. The air caught in her throat.‘Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ she whispered.Someone had hit him. She wanted to undress him right then to see the damage but Lockie was so fast asleep. She knew he wasn’t just sleeping because he was tired. He had gone to the same place she had been in for months. She and Lockie looked alike now. The angles on his face matched hers and in a way she was glad. She had suffered along with him.And now here he was.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Let me drop the belt-"“No.” She held on when he would have pulled away. “Don’t. I like it.” Again, he lifted her face, and he smiled. “The tool belt turns you on.” “No.” She closed her eyes and thunked her forehead to his chest. “Little bit.”

“He did not waste time greeting her, but fell upon her at once with a vicious snarl. With his powerful jaws he tore at her, pulled her apart. He ripped open her guts and they spilled with a rank smell across the broken road surface. He tore off her leg and threw it into the darkness like so much poisoned meat.The pain was intense, but she could not complain or fight him off. She lacked the energy to even raise her head. He tore and bit and ripped her apart and she could only experience it passively, as if from some remove.Somehow she knew that he wasn’t killing her.That he was saving her.When he was done, when all the silver was torn out of her body and cast away from her, she breathed a little easier, and then she sank into a fitful sleep. He stood watch over her throughout the night, occasionally howling as the moon rode its arc across the night sky. Occasionally he would lick her face, her ears, to wake her up, to keep her from fading out of existence altogether. Once when he could not wake her he grabbed her by the back of the neck and shook her violently until her eyes cracked open and her tongue leapt from her mouth and she croaked out a whine of outrage.”

“Could she kiss him? Would he allow her that? Was that something he could pretend was nothing? What about making love? Could she just open up her legs and pull him inside her and have him all she wanted and later give her assent that it was nothing?”