Please don’t do anything stupid like try to find me, she willed him. If he got seriously injured or killed because of her, she’d never forgive herself.
Another blast of fire echoed, the thunder of it bouncing off the surrounding peaks. Humans climbed and hiked around this area, she’d bet. Never mind hearing the booms. Humans would be all sorts of panicked and shocked over dragons flying in the air in daylight. What was the Alliance, or whoever this was, thinking?
A shadow passed overhead, and the sudden chill as a dragon blocked the sun sent shivers scuttling down her spine.
“Don’t move,” Calla warned, her tight voice echoing in Hadyn’s head. “There’s one right above you.”
“Calla is watching,” this from Rune a beat later. “I know you can take care of yourself, but she’s got a bird’s-eye view where she is.”
Despite the danger, she almost relaxed at the sound of Rune’s voice in her head, all rumbly and familiar. He didn’t sound scared, more like pissed. He knew where she was, clearly.
Stay inside, she urged him even though he couldn’t hear her. Please.
“He’s coming back around,” Calla warned her. That dragged her full attention to the danger going on all around her.
“I’m close by,” Rune’s voice followed right after. “At the edge of the door. Calla says you’re a hundred feet above my location. I can get to you fast if I have to.”
The shadow skated over her, darker this time, the dragon closer to the ground, sending a shiver of apprehension zinging between her shoulder blades. Hunting. Could it smell her? She stayed as still and as small as she could, head ducked, and waited for claws to dig into her flesh as the thing plucked her from the mountainside.
Meanwhile, the breeze stirred the trees, sending the aspen leaves in a nearby grove dancing and shivering, as though nothing in the world could possibly be wrong. What else had this mountain seen before, its secrets lost in time and silence?
“He’s gone around the other side,” Calla said after a long, nerve-wracking length of time.
Another blast, this one even louder, was suddenly followed by the horrible, ominous roll of a different kind of thunder.
Avalanche.
Not snow. Though patches of it lingered under trees where the sunlight couldn’t get it, and up even higher it still covered the mountain peaks, most had melted. The rumble grew louder and small pebbles near her started to hop all around, as though they were popcorn kernels in hot oil.
“Landslide,” Calla warned. “It’s to your west, but close. Don’t move, though. There’s a dragon directly above you.”
To her west? That was going cover the entrance—
Oh my gods. Rune. He’d said he was standing in the doorway.
Tell him to get back, she wanted to screech at Calla, biting down on her fist to keep from doing that. She hoped like hell the dragoness was already doing that.
Hadyn’s entire body clenched as the rumble grew even louder. The crack of a tree snapping nearby had her flinching, but she held her position as Calla had said. A whoosh of wind hit her back, dust and dirt and tiny rocks pelting her as the worst of the landslide roared by off to her left. Hadyn held her breath as best she could and waited. And prayed.
The silence when it stopped might as well have been a scream it was so jarring. As if the entire world had exploded then come to a screeching halt.
“The dragons are leaving,” Calla said. “Wait five minutes, then it should be safe to come out. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll come get you.”
The tone of her voice was as grim as Hadyn had ever heard a dragon get. Her mate was in there, and they’d been blowing up tunnels all morning, starting with all the other exits. Deep was trapped in there. With Rune. With Hadyn’s parents. With the rest of the team.
Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods.
Waiting that five minutes for the dust and dragons to clear was the longest damn five minutes of her life.
“All clear,” Calla said.
On legs that shook and cramped from being so tightly packed into her hiding space, Hadyn came out from under the tree and held both her arms straight up in the air, making it easier for Calla.
The dragon’s shadow hit a heartbeat before Calla snatched her up, glided down the mountain, which she could now see had an entire strip of chaotic ruin—trees felled, boulders upended, and dirt hanging in the air—down an entire swath, covering where the door to the exit had been.
Suddenly the dragoness’s grip on her tightened, almost unbearably painful.
“Calla?” she asked, pushing at her scaled claw.
“Deep—”
She suddenly dove so sharply, Hadyn knew something was wrong. The dragon hardly pulled up before they were at the mountain. Calla set her down, then landed on top of the rubble near where Hadyn thought the entrance had been, and blasted a call at the mountain, the sound…heart-wrenching.
More than frantic, Calla was wildly desperate, her dragon making the strangest whimpering sounds, like the bleating of a terrified or trapped animal.
Gods above. What had happened?
…
Rune held his breath, waiting as the dust settled around him, unable to see a fucking thing in the pitch black. “Deep.”
No answer.
The landside outside had collapsed the tunnel where he and Deep had been standing, watching for Hadyn and Calla. They’d both tried to shift to hold it off. He was fairly certain he’d broken at least two ribs with the impact of falling rock, but at least he wasn’t pinned down. He could move all parts of himself. He didn’t dare shift out of his dragon form until he knew there wouldn’t be another collapse.
“Deep,” he called again.
A single, soft whine hit his ears, like a dog that had been hit by a car.
Fuck waiting. Rune stoked the fire in his belly and blew a stream upward. In the haze of dirt still hanging in the air and the confusion of rubble all around, he couldn’t see Deep.
“Calla.” His old friend’s voice, thready, pain-ridden and broken, hit his mind.
Rune’s dragon took over, picking up rocks and dropping them behind him. Trying to be careful not to dislodge anything important and hoping like hell he was going the right direction.
Trying to get to Deep. To Calla. Oh gods, to Hadyn. Had they taken her?
Desperation and panic had a taste. Like bile in his mouth, sour and stinging. He kept going, not stopping, despite the dull ache in his ribs. He kept the fire stoked in his chest to work by the light of the faint glow.
Finally, in a gap between several smaller boulders, he spotted the crushed, bloody stump of a blood-red wing. Severed by the crush.