Protected by the Dragon

by Kayla Wolf

  He took a deep breath. “Let’s do it. I need to know she’s okay. If you can show me where she is, I’ll do a quick flyover just to make sure she’s not in danger—I won’t even let her see me.”

  “And if she is in danger?” Lisa asked, her eyes serious.

  “We’ll deal with that when we come to it.”

  If Samuel had been feeling cautiously confident about his technology use based on his experience with the phone, that confidence was banished entirely by watching Lisa on the tabletop device she turned to now. She tried to explain what she was doing as she scrolled through various screens, tapping furiously at the various keys on the machine, but he was hopelessly lost until she opened up a map. Then, he cried out in recognition.

  “That’s the valley! This is—wow. This is very detailed.” He craned his neck over her shoulder, studying the map. “Humans have gotten a lot better at maps since I was out and about.”

  “When was that, four hundred years ago? Yeah, we’ve improved.” Lisa was grinning that special ‘dragons are foolish old men’ grin that she had. For once, he felt it was warranted. This technology was amazing.

  “What’s that—that red dot?”

  “That’s where Jessica’s phone is. It looks like it’s moving.” She frowned, tapping a few buttons to zoom in on the map. “She’s not too far from here. Near a stream, it looks like—but heading east pretty quickly.”

  “Wolves can run for days on end,” Samuel said, thinking back to a text he’d read about the ancient war with the wolves. “They’re tireless.” As they looked at the screen, the red dot flickered then disappeared. Samuel frowned. “What happened?”

  “Her phone must have died,” Lisa said. “But at least we know what direction she’s heading. If I zoom out…” They both scrutinized the map, trying to figure out where Jessica’s red dot had been headed. “It looks like… is that a village?” Sure enough, there was a collection of buildings on the map, some distance away from where Jessica had been, but definitely in the direction she’d been travelling before her battery had given out. “I didn’t know humans lived up here.”

  “They don’t,” Samuel said flatly, a horrible certainty in the pit of his stomach. “That’s Fallhurst. A wolf village. We’re forbidden from going within fifty miles of it by an old truce. That’s where Jessica’s from.” He took a deep breath. “She’s going home.”

  “Why would she be going home, if her family was so terrible to her?”

  “Something must have changed. She was saying she had a sister back home, a sister she missed… she felt guilty for leaving her. Maybe she’s gone back to save her.” He smiled a little—that sounded like Jessica. She was incredibly brave.

  “Or maybe her sister’s in danger,” Lisa said flatly. “If those wolves are anything like the ones I met, they’re ruthless. They might have threatened Jessica’s sister as a way of getting her to come home.”

  “I have to help her. I have to go—they were trying to get her to marry someone she hated. I have to stop them.”

  “What about the truce?”

  “I’ll be careful,” he said rapidly, his mind racing. “I’ll stay in this form, hide in the trees. With any luck, nobody will know I’m there.”

  “You should tell Alex—”

  “No. Definitely not. If he knows about it, then it’s an act of war. If it’s just me—and I do get caught—Alexander can claim he had no knowledge of my actions, which is true. I’ll be punished, but the peace will be kept. I can’t plunge my people into war.” He took Lisa by the shoulders, trying to impress upon her the urgency of the situation. “Lisa—I promise I’ll be careful. But you can’t tell Alexander. Please, do this for me.”

  She took a deep breath. He could tell she was conflicted—she and her husband had a trusting relationship. They told each other everything. But she nodded. “I want you to take my phone with you, okay? I’ll teach you how to send messages. You can keep me in the loop—and if you get in trouble, promise me you’ll ask for help.”

  “Thank you.” He smiled, then pulled her into a bear hug. “You’re the best sister ever.”

  “I’m telling Helena,” she joked, grinning, but the worry in her eyes didn’t abate. “Now, I’ve got to teach you how to use a phone.”

  The lesson took a long time. He was impatient, but Lisa threatened to tell Alexander if Samuel didn’t dedicate himself fully to learning how to handle the phone. It was important to be in contact with home in case anything went wrong—and the draconic telepathy wouldn’t reach as far as Fallhurst. And at any rate, it was safest to fly after nightfall—less chance of being spotted by scouts.

  Lisa saw him off—they walked out to the heights together through a rarely-used passageway he knew of where they wouldn’t be disturbed. She was carrying a small bag she’d packed for him—it contained the phone, fully charged, as well as some rations and first aid supplies. Just in case, she’d said—and the darkness in her eyes revealed that she knew more about dragon-wolf relations than he’d thought. He transformed, feeling a little self-conscious about doing it in front of a human—but Lisa had seen Alexander’s transformations a hundred times, and wasn’t bothered by the enormous, serpentine dragon who stood before her, wings folded to his sides.

  “You’re shinier than Alexander,” she told him, grinning, and he tossed his head. The metallic shine of their scales was a family trait, but he’d always taken a little more care with his. He lowered his head, and Lisa attached the bag to his horns with the ease of practice. It was a lot more convenient than carrying it in his talons, though it made him feel a little silly—like he was wearing some kind of bonnet.

  “Good luck, Samuel,” she whispered, stepping back—he bowed his head, then spread his wings and jumped into the sky.

  God, it had been too long—the feeling of the air whipping past his scales was exhilarating. He’d been spending too much time in his human shape lately, he decided, beating his wings hard to get altitude—he’d need it to see where he was going. They’d studied the map closely, so he knew roughly which landmarks to search for, but still, Fallhurst wasn’t a place he’d ever visited. It would be best to search carefully for a good place to land before proceeding on foot.

  It wasn’t long before a familiar sweep of hill came into view, and he slowed his pace, circling in the night air to ascertain his exact location. That was Fallhurst, down below—he could make out a few twinkling lights still, despite the late hour. So that was where Jessica was from, he thought. He’d know it a little better soon enough. Scanning the trees around the village, he pinpointed a dense section of forest some miles outside of the village and winged his way down to land as lightly as he could among the trees. This far out, and this late at night, there were unlikely to be scouts, but he still transformed as quickly as he could, not wanting to be caught in his dragon form. The last thing he wanted was an all-out war with the wolves. Jessica had more than enough on her plate without adding that to the mix.

  Once transformed, he pulled a thick jacket out of the bag Lisa had packed—he’d been able to transform his closest layer of clothes easily enough, but warm winter jackets were tricky, and the night air was biting at his flesh. Then he switched on the phone, took a deep breath, and followed the steps Lisa had taught him to check the map with Jessica’s location saved in it. To his delight, when he switched it on, the red dot was there again. Jessica must have turned her phone back on. And sure enough, it was here in Fallhurst—achingly close to where he was standing. Full of purpose, he began to walk towards where he knew the village was, taking long, even strides to cover as much ground as possible. He had quite some distance to cover before daybreak.

  By the time the sun was creeping above the horizon, Samuel had reached the outskirts of the forest, where the trees became patchy, giving way to more cultivated ground. The outskirts of the town. He’d have to tread carefully. He checked the map on the phone again—Jessica was so unbelievably close that it was an effort not to simply run to her, take h
er in his arms and fly back home triumphantly. But that wouldn’t solve anything—it would start a war for certain, and probably get Jessica’s sister hurt as well. He needed to lie low. The streets were still abandoned this early in the morning, but he moved carefully all the same. A town this small would definitely notice a stranger creeping around.

  He found an old church, clearly abandoned—the building was half-collapsed and run down, and though it looked like some attempts were being made to repair it, he could tell it wasn’t often frequented by the people of the town. He crept into the yard, looking up at the building—and sure enough, there was some builder’s scaffolding erected on one side of the church. Perfect. It would give him a vantage point from which to inspect the village, get a sense of how many wolves he was dealing with. Maybe he’d even see Jessica if she was out and about.

  He had hardly settled at the top of the scaffolding when the distant sound of voices disturbed him. He hunkered down low, hiding behind a piece of plywood that would hopefully shield him from the view of the street. The crowd that came into view seemed to only be interested in what was right in front of them. What was this—some kind of parade? There were a huge number of people there—and Samuel’s stomach clenched as he saw a couple of enormous shaggy wolves among the crowd, unmistakably shifters. Wild wolves were nowhere near that size even at their largest.

  Yes, this was some kind of pack meeting, sure enough—they were headed for a clear area in front of the church, some kind of town square, where—now that Samuel looked at it—a raised platform seemed to have been erected. But what were they meeting for? What was at the center of the clump of people moving with such dogged purpose through the streets at such an early hour of the morning?

  A group of people moved aside, and Samuel’s heart leapt into his throat. It was Jessica. Her head was held high, and she was walking with dignity and confidence—but her hands were wrapped in chains that gleamed silver even in the dawn light. And there was a wolf keeping pace beside her with an unmistakable air of menace. A jet black wolf, its shoulder as high as Jessica’s, its head held high. The biggest wolf Samuel had ever seen—which, from what he knew, usually meant that it was the Alpha.

  Samuel’s heart pounded sickly in his chest. Was he witnessing a wedding?

  Chapter 11 – Jessica

  Jessica’s legs felt like lead as she trudged up the stairs to her room. It couldn’t be much later than midday, but she was so exhausted it may well have been the middle of the night. It felt like she hadn’t slept in weeks—months, even years. Her whole body felt like it was dragging her down, trying to make her give in, lie down on the stairs and just stop moving. What could they do to her, really? Could they make her get up? They could carry her, she supposed—and she pictured her father, gathering her up in his powerful arms and heaving her bodily to her room. When she’d been a little girl, being picked up by her father had made her feel like the most special person on the planet, with the strongest and most wonderful father in the world. Now, the idea made her feel sick to her stomach—mostly because she knew full well that if she didn’t go where he wanted her to go, he’d take her there by force.

  Her mother was at her side, one hand resting gently on her shoulder—but Jessica couldn’t bring herself to look at the woman. Her sympathy was too much to bear. Especially knowing what she knew, now, about her mother’s past—it was just too much to think about, too much to take on board at the moment. How many women? How many men? How many wolves of Fallhurst were kept prisoner here, against their will? Did her mother even love her father? Had she ever loved him? Was it even possible to love someone you loathed, someone you’d risked everyone to escape?

  Well, she supposed she was going to find out.

  “Try to get some rest,” her mother whispered again as she showed her into her room. The little space, always such a comfort to her in her younger days, now felt like the prison it was. She sat heavily on the bed as her mother locked the door from the outside, the dull clicking of the metallic locks setting her teeth on edge. As girls, she and Angela had shared a bedroom. When Jessica had started to shift forms, she’d been given her own room—a kind of coming of age. She’d been thrilled at the time, spent hours planning how to decorate it, which posters would go where, where she’d put the bed. Now, she’d give anything to have Angela there with her, her own neatly made bed standing in stark contrast to Jessica’s. She’d kill even for a fight with her sister, a bickering match about whose stuff was taking up the most room, who was the noisiest in the mornings, who snored the loudest.

  A flare of anger settled in her chest. The cowards still hadn’t let her see Angela—and she hadn’t received any messages from her in almost a day, which suggested they’d taken away her sister’s phone. Not that Jessica could check her own phone, anymore—at her tribunal the Alpha had taken it in his jaws and crushed it, to a genteel round of applause from the gathered villagers. Savagely, she hoped a piece of glass had lodged in his tongue. If he died of an infection, she wouldn’t have to marry him.

  For that had been the conclusion of the tribunal. It had been a farce, of course—the wolves of Fallhurst loved to pretend they had some semblance of a democratic process, but there had been nothing fair or just about the way she’d been dragged out of her bed in what felt like the middle of the night and shackled with silver that burned and throbbed on her wrists. Silver. As if she was some kind of war criminal, not a wolf who’d run away for a day or two to avoid a forced marriage. That was a war crime to the villagers though, she supposed, curling into a ball on her bed and dragging the rumpled covers over herself. Any kind of disobedience was punishable by silver. God, it was awful stuff. She remembered it from her younger days—they kept it on hand when the young wolves were being taught to shift voluntarily. For some reason, pure silver had the power to stop wolves changing form—it was useful as a tool to help young wolves who weren’t in control of themselves yet, but on an adult, it was nothing but a dire insult. Or torture, depending on how you looked at it.

  She rubbed her wrists absently, the memory of the sensation still strong in her body. Shackled with silver and dragged to the town square in the clothes she’d been wearing to sleep, completely disoriented and in terrible discomfort. Silver made her feel like every blood vessel in her body had been constricted, like her heart had to work terribly hard to keep the energy circulating around her veins. She had hated it as an adolescent and had worked hard in shifting class to get control of herself as swiftly as possible, so she’d never have to experience it again. She’d never foreseen this.

  They had marched her up onto a platform and recited her crimes to the crowd. It was a long list, artificially long—she knew full well that all she’d done wrong was leave the village, but words like ‘conspiracy’ and ‘abandonment’ littered the paragraphs that her father droned on and on. He made a short statement about how disappointed and ashamed he was that his own blood had betrayed the pack—she tuned out of it. Her father’s disappointment was a constant in her life. There was something grimly freeing about finally resigning to the fact that she’d never win his approval.

  She’d been given a ceremonial chance to defend herself, of course—that was the pack’s nod to democracy. But it was hard to speak eloquently in your own defense when your entire body felt like it couldn’t breathe. She’d asked for the silver to be removed before she spoke but had been denied—as a result, whatever she’d said had been incoherent and useless. Still, she had a suspicion that the pack would have rejected even an Oscar-worthy performance. If wolves could talk their way out of trouble, Fallhurst wouldn’t be the prison it was. She was a little shocked, still, at the treasonous thoughts that now felt completely at home in her head. Had being away for a day or two really changed her that much? Was it the distance from the pack that had done it? Or meeting those humans in the woods? Or—and her heart lurched painfully—was it Samuel? She’d been trying to avoid thinking about him as much as possible. It caused her too much pain, the idea
that she’d never see him again—never speak to him, either, now that her phone had been destroyed.

  Then Thomas had spoken. He’d stayed in wolf form to do it—an Alpha could make himself heard in his pack’s minds even if they were in wolf shape. She hated the touch of his mind and shuddered at it—it was worse than the silver, in a lot of ways. At least the silver had no malice behind it, no evil intent. Thomas announced that he was willing to break convention and to forgive Jessica for her flight—that he understood that she was overwhelmed at the prospect of being the Alpha’s wife, but that her true nature had shown in her willingness to return to Fallhurst when she’d come to her senses. If she was willing to take responsibility, now and always, then she would be forgiven. The villagers nodded their satisfaction—Jessica stared into all their faces, uncomprehending. Did they really believe that story? Didn’t any of them know the threat that had been made against her sister—that she’d only come back to save her baby sister from this monster? It had nothing to do with responsibility to the pack, or her sacred duty as a woman and a wolf—why the hell did everyone seem to believe Thomas?

  She searched the faces of the women most closely, working hard to overcome the nausea and misery of the silver. The horror began to build in her chest. Those weren’t real smiles. Every woman had the same closed, set expression—the look she’d seen on her own face in the mirror a thousand times when she steeled herself for another day of trying and failing to meet her father’s expectations. The look she’d seen on her mother’s face a thousand times when her father railed and ranted about the pack, and duty, and responsibility. It was the look of a woman giving the performance of a lifetime. It was the look of a hostage who’d decided that captivity was safer than the alternative.

  The wedding would be tomorrow. Jessica stood immobile as her father and Thomas made the ceremonial bows to each other. She wasn’t interested in watching the ritual of property transference.