"It's been a hell of a night, hey?" Jasmine, clearly exhausted, smiled wearily up at him as her shoulders slumped. She was right. It had been a hell of a night… and they hadn't even talked about why she had tried to run away. Thinking that they'd lost her had almost been too much for him. He wanted to shake some sense into her, demand an explanation, do something, anything, to make her understand the risk… But not tonight. Tonight their Jasmine needed to rest. He knelt in front of her. "Are you okay?" She nodded. Then she studied him. "Will you tell me the truth?" "Always." "Were all of those women at dinner tonight addicts like my mother?" He picked up her hand and cradled it in his. "In the early days, before our existence was common knowledge, we would turn the women away and encourage them to find treatment. It was hard to locate dragon clans then, so we had to hope that they would accept defeat and look for help. But after our secret was out, we started to see more and more women like your mother show up on our steps." He took a deep breath.
