She turned her gaze northwest. Where are they?
…
Silence and nothingness settled around Rune in a black sky lit by stars and a full moon, and his left leg ached like a son of a bitch. They should have come across the Alliance group by now, or even their own people. The intercept course they’d plotted meant there should be dragons—lots of dragons—right fucking here.
“I don’t like this,” he sent the thought to Finn and to Levi. Levi, who still had yet to answer their mental attempts to reach him.
“Keep a weather eye,” Finn instructed, falling back into phrasing from his earlier lifetime. Which meant he wasn’t happy, either.
Rune checked his flank, not catching sight of the black dragon, one of their volunteers, flying on his six. Which was the point.
Rune was deliberately trying to be seen. The bait to draw out their attackers.
As soon as they showed themselves, if he got in trouble, his clanmate was backup. If he didn’t, they would both disappear up high, then start picking off Alliance dragons with stealth on their side. Finn had divided their group up by ability, which almost meant, to a certain extent, by clan.
Chaghan, a pale mint green, had joined Hall and Kanta, tasked to fly high. From there they would direct the flow of the fighting and also dive bomb. Not with stealth but speed and strength. Finn had taken the blue and white dragons, the most maneuverable in the sky, forming a spearhead to rip through their enemies and scatter them into chaos. The red and gold dragons were with Drake, bringing up the rear behind Finn’s group, the tanks, ready to plow through and pulverize.
“Levi,” Finn came through, as he had been every few minutes since they left the mountain. “Come in.”
Nothing. Still.
“Levi—”
Suddenly the flare of fire lit up the night, a long copper-tinted golden streamer of it…on the fucking ground.
“Hold,” Finn ordered. “Check your blinds.”
Rune, rather than hovering, spiraled upward, allowing him to check around himself in a three-hundred-sixty-degree pattern—around, overhead, and below—while, at the same time, tracking the action on the ground.
Levi’s flames illuminated the trees and rocks of the mountainside, revealing a nightmare scenario. The beta’s massive golden body lay spread out on the ground in a clearing, wings tethered to his sides. He was pinned flat by a system of what appeared to be ropes or some kind of netting. Why hadn’t he shifted to get out from under that?
Standing at his head was a red dragon, older and paler than last Rune had seen him in this form—Mathai. The motherfucker had bothered to show his face.
No other dragons or humans were anywhere in sight. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t see them,” Finn came back.
“Those ropes have to be enchanted,” this from Drake. “Or Levi would shift or talk to us.”
“That’s fucking illegal,” Kanta snarled.
“Send me down,” Rune said.
“No.”
He almost said fuck it and went anyway. He’d been calling his own shots for decades now, and technically, Finn was no longer his alpha. Rune was the alpha. But anarchy within their own ranks would only result in chaos and death, so he held. “He wants us to attack. Send me. Sacrificial pawn.”
“For what?”
“Information. Let me see how close I can get while you hold here.”
“Go.”
On that command, Rune pulled his wings in tight, shooting to the ground as fast as his aerodynamic body would allow it. If he saw a chance to get Levi free, he’d fucking take it.
Nothing and no one got in his way as he charged to his friend’s aid.
Levi wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he struggling? Was Drake right about the net?
Suddenly Levi’s body thrashed, then thrashed again. Then, strangely, the nets disappeared, and he shoved up from the ground. Mathai didn’t move as the gold dragon shook off his bonds. Instead of going for the red dragon’s throat, Levi launched into the air.
“Levi,” he called. “I’m right above you.”
“They have Lyndi,” came the pure growl of a pissed off mate. Clear and loud. Had that netting been cutting off his telepathy too?
How was that possible? There’d been no signs of a fight and his own group had lit out from the Alaz mountain with plenty of time to intercept.
“They have all of them,” Levi said. “Used Rivin as bait. Mathai has a warlock who forced Rivin into saying he’d escaped and joined you. We fell for it.”
“Is the warlock still here?”
“No. The coward ran when he saw the number of dragons coming. I—”
At a distinctive shunk Rune hadn’t heard in centuries, muscle memory kicked in. He automatically rolled then jerked to a stop and waited for the whistle of sound indicating where the spears would go. That telltale snap had been the sound of a Dragon Slayer. A contraption outlawed by the kings of long ago.
One that shot dragonsteel spears in a concentrated burst. How did Mathai have this? By rights he should be executed for even knowing of one in existence.
No warning whistle reached Rune’s ears. Instead, Levi’s form jerked in the air. With the desperate roar of a dragon going down, the coppery dragon plummeted to the ground. He hit with a massive boom, ploughing a visible trough, through the rock and dirt of the ground before coming to a stop. Levi heaved a shuddering breath then went ungodly still and didn’t move again.
It took a full five seconds for Rune to even process what happened. Levi was down. Maybe dead. In one terrible swoop they’d taken out the strongest of their numbers.
“Rune, don’t!”
He ignored Finn’s order and, dead silent, launched himself at the ground, right at the man responsible. Cut off the head of the snake, and the body would die. If he was fast enough, they wouldn’t have time to reload that fucking evil toy. Where in the seven hells had they got a Dragon Slayer anyway?
Shunk-Snap.
Fuck. He was wrong. They had two.
Rune dove and rolled while pulling all of himself in tight, wings flat against his sides, making his body small. The whistle of steel hit his ears a split second before pain tore through the membrane of his right wing. He flared both wings wide, jerking himself to a halt, then hovered there, grunting through the pain, and with his mouth yanked the dragonsteel rod the rest of the way through. They’d hit close to where it connected to his hand, and the damage was minimal. He could still fly.
“Get your ass back up here,” Finn’s voice had gone low and commanding in his head.