“Take me with you,” she begged.
“You know we can’t,” Qara’s voice sounded in her head. “Keep the mates safe. It’s what Rune would want.”
With that, Qara turned and followed Delaney and Cami into the night. She watched until their forms disappeared as the scales on their bellies reflected the starry sky above. Even after she couldn’t see them, Hadyn watched.
And waited.
Wind, not shadow, alerted her a heartbeat before a dragon’s bright blue claws closed around her and plucked her off the ground.
“Got you,” said a voice in her head. Something about that scratchy, smug voice tugged at a familiarity inside her.
Oh shit. The blue dragon from the mountain.
The one who’d walked away when it had been obvious what the green dragon who’d attacked her had in mind.
Rather than struggle, Hadyn did what she’d practiced a thousand times with Chaghan just in case something like this ever happened. She went limp in his grasp. As small as she was, a dragon this size would have trouble keeping hold of her, especially if he wasn’t expecting her to struggle.
“Where are you taking me?” she called against the wind as he flew her, gaining altitude, the dark world and homey lights of the small mountain town falling away rapidly.
“When he’s done with the Huracáns and their helpers, Mathai would like a word with you.”
“Who?” she asked. In case she was wrong in her assumptions. Also to keep him talking. At the same time, she very slowly tried to inch out the blade she had hidden in her boot.
Escaping this was going to take flawless timing, something that she hadn’t had last time she took a knife to a dragon shifter.
“You know who,” he said. “He wants to know how you control your sign before he sends you to the Mating Council.”
The blue dragon paused midair and turned to face the direction of the fighting. Had he been given orders to hold here? A flash of fire peaks away showed her where the clash was going on. Raging, she’d judge, based on that amount of fire.
She got a grip on her blade. Taking a long breath, she lay still for a moment, picturing what needed to happen next.
“You need a plan,” the memory of Chaghan’s words filled her.
They’d practiced so many different plans. This was one of the trickier ones because she needed to escape his grasp, but still hold on and somehow force him to the ground. Otherwise, she’d die in the fall.
In a move a gymnast would envy, she latched onto the knuckle above her head and shoved her feet straight up, between the digits, then flipped, ending up on the outside of his fist, where he couldn’t clamp down on her.
“What the fuck—”
She didn’t wait for his reaction. Jumping for the rounded curve of his hind knee, she found purchase, clinging to his scales. Chaghan would have been proud. Her heart pounding so hard she could hear it above the wind, she jumped again, landing on his back.
Hadyn shoved to her feet and ran, but the blue dragon flipped, and she had to dive to her stomach, holding on with her fingertips as he rolled, trying to dislodge her, no doubt. A smooth roll, because he had orders. Mathai apparently wanted her alive.
As soon as he leveled out, she was up and running again, ready for—in fact, hoping for—the next time he rolled.
And he did.
The exact same way he had. This time, she didn’t hold on. She ran the opposite direction of his barrel roll, keeping the dragon between her and the ground and using gravity to stay on him and upright. Up over his belly, past his wing, across his chest to the side of his neck as he came upright. She latched on there, but he gave a massive shake, trying to get her off. Out of desperation, she jabbed her dagger into his neck as a bigger handhold. Immediately, he steadied. Yanking the knife out, in a flash she climbed right up to the eye on that side of his head. She held the dagger right in front of his cornea.
“Take me safely to the ground or I blind you,” she demanded.
Chaghan had once told her that other than fire and flight a dragon relied most on his sense of sight. A blinded dragon was useless in a fight. Clearly, they’d never seen a blind human do the amazing things they did. Arrogant species that they were, she wasn’t surprised they underestimated those who weren’t deemed whole and worthy. Which meant she was also not surprised when the blue dragon immediately tipped his wings to spiral to the ground.
The second he touched down, Hadyn was off his back and on the ground, not too far from the home where the unmated women were hiding. Getting down might be a stupid idea, but she was banking on the whole he needed her alive thing. If she was going to get away without falling to her death, this was the only option.
“Come at me again, and I won’t warn you this time,” she snarled, doing her best to sound like Rune. “I’ll take both your eyes and more.”
Carefully, not turning her back to him, she backed toward a thick copse of trees.
“You bitch,” he snarled.
The roar of fire sounded a heartbeat before he opened his mouth, aiming it right at her, apparently not as worried about Mathai’s orders as she’d assumed. Hadyn dropped to the ground, covering her head with her arms, not that it would help.
But fire didn’t blast over her.
A choking sound had her cautiously raising her head to find the blue dragon jerking and thrashing. His neck glowed through his scales, turning bright and brighter, almost blinding. In the center of the brightness, a darker trickle of blood told her what had happened.
“Oh my gods,” she muttered while at the same time crawling for better cover behind a large boulder.
She must’ve pierced the pipe the fire came up when she’d stuck his neck with her dagger for a better grip. Getting behind the solid rock, she dared to poke her head up and over to see what was happening. The blue dragon whipped his head from side to side, horrendous choking noises clawing out of his throat. Then, without warning, his neck exploded in a conflagration of flame and dragon guts.
Blue fire erupted all around her, catching in the dry trees and going up like an inferno.
…
Rune remained in the air, far from the fighting, and searched the ground for the telling gouge in the earth. Finding it, he frowned. Levi’s massive golden body was gone. He couldn’t have turned to ash so quickly. Rune approached from the dark side, away from the flames. He had to shift to human form and walk the last bit, his limp slowing him. Frustrating the hell out of him. He gritted his teeth through it and pushed himself harder.
Keeping his nails as talons, he reached out with his mind. “Levi.”
A groaning from his right sounded among the tall pine trees. Rune moved as fast as he could while favoring his weaker leg, in the direction of the sound, finding first a blood trail. Following that, he discovered Levi, shifted to human and sitting propped up against the rough bark of a tree. He must’ve pulled the spears from his body before shifting. Multiple holes were oozing blood, glittering wet against the black of his shirt and pants.