“Anything?” a different, still unfamiliar, voice asked.
“Jack shit,” said the third one.
“Go.” Rune said to Hadyn.
Together, they carefully untangled from each other, then checking every step of the way, climbed over the boulder they’d been behind. Hadyn was as quiet as any human he’d ever run across. But the second time a pebble shifted places with a tiny snick of sound, he turned and swooped her off her feet.
With that, he moved to the tops of the boulders, using his shifter strength and speed, to leap from larger rock to rock, his muscles bunching and releasing with each move, then tensing to balance them both.
Hadyn didn’t even make a peep. Just held on tight.
Maybe after the kings’ war was over, he should suggest that mates be found younger and trained in the ways of dragon shifters sooner. Because every other woman he’d rescued would not be reacting the way she was. Most would be losing their shit by now, loud enough to bring the clans down on top of them from the other side of the world.
The entire way down the tunnel, he listened for any signs that they’d been heard, or scented, or sighted. A yell, the sound of rushed feet coming after them. A shadow or breeze coming from above the opening to the caldera.
A small spout of relief erupted inside him once they reached a decent distance to allow him to shift.
This wasn’t over yet, though.
He lowered Hadyn to her feet.
“I’m going to shift. Climb up when I’m done.”
She gave him a thumbs up, eyes wide, pupils swallowing the ocean hue of her irises whole, making her appear more like a black dragon shifter all of a sudden. Damned if that didn’t have his still partially erect cock springing back to turgid life.
He willed it to submission, not needing to deal with dragon dick dragging him slower in the air.
Leaving Hadyn where she stood at the edge of the larger hollowed out space, he moved far enough away and shifted, pushing himself to that edge where the process became pain as his dragon all but burst from him.
Maybe he’d gone too fast, because, for the first time since his first shift, the creature side of his nature threatened to take over completely. Rather than lie down for Hadyn to climb up, as he’d instructed, he snapped her up in one big claw and launched himself into the air.
By some miracle, Hadyn made no sound at the sudden snatch and grab. In fact, she twisted in his grip to sit up, wrapping her arms and legs around one massive knuckle. His dragon’s satisfaction at her immediate acceptance as he curled his hand into a tighter fist around her almost threatened to distract them both from monitoring for any shifters both behind them and outside the mountain.
It took him all the way to the end of the tunnel to wrest control back from his more elemental, baser self. Right in time to burst from the tunnel into the pitch black of night.
Two roars nearby told him that they’d been sighted.
“Hold on,” he called to Hadyn.
“You’ve got one dragon a half mile out at your five o’clock,” she yelled back over the force of the wind. “I can’t see the other one.”
“He’s above us.”
If Rune could get them to altitude, on this moonless night he could disappear and the dragons after them wouldn’t have a clue where.
A soft whistle of sound was his only warning that a third dragon was close. “Brace—” was all he managed to think at Hadyn before the fucker slammed into him from the left and above, driving him down toward the ground.
Rune couldn’t twist to his belly to fight him off because that would expose Hadyn. Instead, he went for his attacker—dark green if he had to guess—by the leg, trying to yank him away. He missed on the first two snaps of his jaws but got him by the back of the heel on the third.
The dragon grunted at the impact and retaliated by curling his body around Rune and battering his underside with a lethal, barbed tail.
“Let me go!” Hadyn yelled.
To fall to her death instead? “No.”
Even in his head the word was a grunt of pain as one of the spikes from that mace-like damn tail slipped past a single scale, penetrating his gut.
“Trust me!” she yelled louder.
Every protective instinct he had screamed at him to ignore her and hold tighter, but he wouldn’t get this jackhole off him hampered by protecting her. His dragon snarled as Rune forced the claws holding her to open. Immediately, she was gone.
Panic threatened to distract him, and he jerked his head around to search the dark for her body plummeting to earth, only to feel something soft and light crawling up his side with impressive speed.
Holy shit, she’s using my scales as grips. Rock climber, a damn talented one, too. More than that, she knew how to maneuver around a dragon in flight. Chaghan and Qara must have drilled this skill into her.
He should have given her more credit.
Still wrapped up, unable to move, with the ground rushing at him, Rune couldn’t do a damn thing. He didn’t dare thrash, or he risked dislodging her. Only Hadyn wasn’t trying to get out of the way while still holding on. She went straight for the other dragon.
The thing wasn’t expecting a pixie of a human woman to suddenly appear in front of his face and attack. With a cry like a banshee, a dagger flashed in the bare light of the stars a heartbeat before she plunged her hand up the nasal cavity of his attacker.
Immediately, Rune was released. The other dragon screeched, swiping at his nose with both front claws, probably doing more damage. As it fell backward, its tail, still lodged in Rune’s belly, yanked at him before it pulled free. The violet jerk sent Hadyn tumbling backward, arms windmilling as she pitched into the sky.
Rune managed to flip to his back, catching her on the smoother scales of his underside. “Got you.”
She didn’t waste words, up on her feet and running for his shoulder where she found purchase. Seeing what she was doing, Rune flipped at the moment when she could hold on so that he was belly to earth, his wings flared, slowing their fall.
Mountain rocks shot upward at him, or that’s how it appeared. “Hold on,” he yelled.
Wings wide, catching as much air as he could, Rune gritted his teeth as he forced his hurtling body to pull up from the steep dive without breaking a wing at the force. Finally, his trajectory changed, only to have a craggy outcropping loom out of the darkness like an iceberg in an ocean. Rune put out all four feet as he crashed into it, cushioning the brunt of the impact before using the rock to catapult himself back into the sky.
He had no idea where the other two dragons were at this point. A minute after he steadied, the telltale tickle of Hadyn moving tapped at his nerve endings, each scale she used lifting slightly, as though she was curling her hands around to the underside. She scrambled her way up his shoulder and to the spiked ridge that lined his back. Usually, to cut noise and wind resistance, he kept them flat. Now, he raised them to standing. Slipping between two of the spikes at the base of his shoulders and neck, she straddled him.