Kidnapped by the Dragon

by Kayla Wolf

  “Let’s go.”

  He spun. Angela, standing behind him. A fresh bruise swelling on her face where Taylor had struck her, but otherwise intact. More than could be said for him—or for the men at her feet. He didn’t understand, for a moment—then her face tightened with frustration, and her eyes flashed at him, and she extended her hand, almost stamping her foot with impatience.

  “Owen! Come on!”

  He’d always known how to follow an order. Owen’s body jerked without his permission, and he lurched after her. Took inventory as they ran towards the door. Legs: fine. Lower body in general, not bad. Some bleeding in the internals, of course, that was to be expected. Definitely some organ damage. At least six broken ribs and he didn’t much care for how they were jabbing at his lungs. The clavicle, snapped in half, giving an odd list to his torso. Definitely a few bones in his hands and wrists were broken, judging from the pain. And his head—the less said about his head, the better. They hadn’t broken his jaw, though. He knew from plentiful experience what a broken jaw felt like. The skull might have been fractured, though—hard to tell from inside of it.

  Shouldn’t shift. None of this would translate well. If he stayed human, he’d be mended in a few days. If he transformed…

  “I can’t get this off,” Angela told him urgently when they were outside. More dragons to come? Hard to say. He’d lost track of the ones he’d taken down inside. Her hand was clutching at the collar, fingers digging into the space between her neck and the metal. Owen looked down at his hands, saw that all of his fingers had shifted into claws. He looked monstrous.

  Seemed about right.

  Carefully, he reached out with one claw—she looked straight at him as he began to saw into the metal. It sparked and shorted as he filed away at it. More complicated than just silver, then, as he’d thought when they arrived. Of course. They’d been expecting a dragon, not a wolf. Helena. Would that have changed anything, if it had been Helena he’d been set to capture? He thought, briefly, of Art. It may well have.

  The collar fell to the ground. Then they were left, alone with each other. Her eyes were—well, better not to look at her eyes. He was in freefall. The pain of his injuries, drumming against his consciousness, putting fog in all his thoughts. Helpful fog. What could he do, here, really? What could he say? Better for her to just shift—to run off into the forest, wolf-shaped, find a way home if she could. Any more contact with him was poison.

  ”We have to get this back to Stephen.”

  Owen blinked. His body was trying to give out from underneath him. He wasn’t going to let it, but still—had he misheard? What was she talking about? Why wasn’t she screaming at him, trying to kill him? He blinked, his eyes focusing through the blood in them. She had the little dragon statue clutched safely in her hands. Must have swiped it off Violet in the chaos inside. She shoved it into the pocket of the cardigan she was wearing.

  ”Clever,” he managed.

  ”Oh, good, so you can still talk.” Was she scared of him? No—something else was running there, some other survival-mode subroutine. He recognized it. Any port in a storm. She was frightened, he was a little closer to being her ally than the white-eyed dragons—so he was the one she’d stick to. Shouldn’t read anything into it. “There have to be more of them. We should go. Are you good to fly?”

  Not remotely, he wanted to tell her, but instead, he just took a few lurching steps towards the center of the courtyard and let the shift take him. A death sentence, he thought remotely, this might well be a death sentence. Took stock of the injuries as his body changed. Broken ribs, stabbing at huge lungs—a broken collarbone was going to have a lot to say about his wings—the breakages in his hands manifesting in his forelegs, half-paralyzing his talons as they took form. Blood seeping from the much deeper wounds that suddenly littered his body. He had a quarter of an hour, maybe. And none of the finesse he was used to, not in his broken foreclaws, that was for certain.

  Shift, he told her. He’d have to clutch her tightly if he was going to carry her, and wolf fur was more resilient than human skin. She nodded, dropped to all fours as the fur rippled across her body. A big wolf, long, sleek white fur. He was used to Tarik’s grizzled old silver frame. She tilted her head, those silver eyes gleaming. And to his shock, he felt the brush of her mind against his. A kind of presence, immediate and strange—it was as though he could hear the ricocheting of her thoughts. Not just hear them—feel them. They were melding with his own.

  Fear, anger, betrayal—those three were all strong flavors, but they were on lockdown, a kind of temporary control he was all too familiar with. On the surface of her mind was determination—a grim fixation on getting the hell out of here. A need to get back, back to her family. And—his heart twisted. Something like concern for him. Worry about his injuries. He tried to chalk it up to self-interest—a half-dead dragon wasn’t going to be able to fly her all the way back to Colorado. But that wasn’t it.

  Owen shut down the connection as best as he could, but his reserves of strength were running out.

  He took her in his talons, as carefully as possible, but he felt her yelp a little at the rough way he had to grip her body—the broken bones in his forelegs screaming at the effort. Good. The pain would keep him awake. A few clumsy wingbeats got him up into the air, and he couldn’t suppress the rumble of pain as his wings yanked at the broken collarbone with every strike. He felt an offer from Angela to shift back, to lessen the weight on him, and he dismissed it. He’d tear her skin open.

  They made it maybe fifty miles—hard to tell, with the dark landscape flickering by below. Then he felt the bottom drop out of his consciousness and he was falling, spiraling, his body finally refusing to go any further. Not bad, he thought dizzily, scrabbling at himself to at least land with something approaching grace—and failing that, to cushion Angela’s body as they plummeted towards the rocky slope of a mountain. He landed hard on his shoulder and slid a few dozen feet, tearing a wing to ribbons on the stony ground. Cushioned the worst of the impact from Angela, at least.

  He’d tried. He’d tried his hardest. The thought wasn’t a comfort as his consciousness flickered like a candle in a gale—then winked out.

  Chapter 12

  When they dropped out of the sky, for a moment Angela confronted the very real possibility that this was how she’d die. There was a strange kind of peace in it—a flicker of regret that she hadn’t left her room in a tidier state, a pang of grief to be leaving her sister behind, but overall, not exactly the panic attack she’d always envisioned. But then Owen managed to twist midair somehow, and the impact was all absorbed by his shoulder, and by (she yelped in horror) one trailing wing, which ground across the earth beneath his great body. He’d been treating himself like a disposable resource since the tables had turned back at the white dragons’ camp—it seemed like he was running out of ways to brutalize himself for the common cause. Whatever that was.

  His talons loosened around her, and she pulled herself free, her paws crunching on the frost-littered rocks of the slope they’d landed on. Not a bad choice, as crashing-landings went—a mile further and they’d have hit much more unforgiving rock, but a mile sooner would have had them crash-landing among trees. And given the care he’d taken landing here, she imagined a landing among trees would have ended up with him impaled in a dozen places.

  He was unconscious—she could feel the blank space where he’d been. Strange, to realize that her mind seemed capable of contacting his. She’d never experienced that with anyone who wasn’t a wolf. She hadn’t dared to get any closer than the outskirts. If she was honest, he scared the hell out of her—not physically, but mentally, psychologically. What was inside that head of his? What lingered behind those black eyes? What kind of a man could lie to her like he had, could deliver her like a package to a pack of murderous slave-trading dragons with a grudge against her family… and then just as quickly seem to turn on a dime and defend her? She was almost glad they’d landed—she h
ad about a thousand questions, and the relief she’d felt when she realized he wasn’t going to leave her with the dragons was nowhere near strong enough to temper the burning rage she felt at everything he’d done.

  Why didn’t she want to get away from him? It had occurred to her when he’d told her to shift, that she could have just sprinted into the woods. That would have made a great deal more sense. But for some reason, it hadn’t been an option. She was with him—they’d go wherever they were going together. What was that? Stockholm syndrome? Why couldn’t she shake the idea that there was something at the core of him that was worth hanging around for? Probably because she was young, stupid, and naive. That’s probably what Jessica would say, anyway. She was already dreading telling this story to her sister.

  His body was shifting back to human, and she did the same, shivering a little at the wind that was whipping across the slope they’d crash-landed on. The sky wasn’t black any more—there was a hint of gray creeping into it from the east, the first tiny signs of dawn. This night had lasted forever, it felt like. She waited for him to sit up—but there was something wrong. His body lay still, sprawled out across the rocks, curled awkwardly on his side as though trying to protect his arm—

  “Owen? You still there?”

  Nothing. And it made no sense that she felt concern for him—no sense whatsoever that the sight of her kidnapper laying sprawled out on the rocks like a dead man made her stomach twist with dread. But she moved over to him, tried to find an angle where she could see his face, gently tried to take hold of his shoulder to shift his body into a more comfortable position. The shoulder moved—and he groaned, eyes fluttering open, his body twisting in protest. The way his shoulder moved—it was wrong. Very wrong. Something badly broken in there, pulverized by the fight, the descent, by everything he’d put himself through. And as she looked down at him in not much more than moonlight, she saw the blood shining wetly on his chin. Saw the unnatural twist of his arm, of his whole body. His nose was badly broken, his lips were split and torn, and there was a strange bulge to his shoulder, something deeply wrong with the way it connected to his body.

  ”Angela.” His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a grave.

  ”You’re not in great shape,” she told him, stupidly. As though he hadn’t noticed.

  ”Sorry I couldn’t get you home. There’s a town a few miles west—” He coughed, his whole body shuddering at the pain of it. “Get there. Get safe. Keep travelling—”

  ”What, and leave you here to die?” Her hands were shaking. “Don’t be stupid.”

  A long silence. He was lapsing in and out of consciousness. It felt strange to see him not in control—to see the feeling flickering behind his eyes, unchecked. She watched, waited, breathless.

  ”I betrayed you. I nearly got you killed.”

  ”And you can tell me all about what the hell you were thinking when you’re not on the brink of death, alright? Get—get better.” She didn’t know what to do. Shifters healed fast, much faster than humans, and they could take a lot of punishment, but this… this didn’t look good.

  A weak sound that could have been a chuckle. “Not much chance of that. Sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said, his black eyes on the stars. Did he know he was still talking? He seemed completely out of it—and that scared her. Scared the hell out of her, in fact. His eyes seeming to cloud over, she almost missed the next thing he said—whispered it, like a prayer, like something he was too ashamed to say too loudly. “I love you.”

  ”What?”

  Silence. Just the wind, whipping across the slope, toying with her hair. His eyes slid shut, and she tapped at his chest, trying to get his attention back, panicking.

  ”Owen!”

  Nothing. She was starting to panic. But there was one idea she had—an idea she’d been thinking about in the abstract for months now, if not years. An idea that she knew Stephen would kill her for. But what choice did she have? Could she really just sit here next to a dying man and let him slip away without at least trying some of what she’d been reading about?

  Despite the care he’d tried to take, she had a few nicks and cuts on her body from his handling of her in the air. One of them had translated to her forearm—a shallow wound with sharp edges, bleeding only a little, her own healing faculties already kicking in. Good. That was good. That meant the magic in her blood was up and running. She shut her eyes, trying to remember any details of what you were actually meant to do here—so many of the books she’d read spoke in the abstract, trying to detail the physiological effect of the magic rather than just explaining how to do it. Enough academics—where was the step-by-step guide? Where was the goddamn recipe?

  Well, step one was to get some blood. She squeezed her left arm, wincing a little—but sure enough, blood welled up in the cut, trickling a little down her arm. Angela looked down at Owen, his face lax, his body crumpled like a broken thing on the hillside. For all that he’d betrayed her—kidnapped her, taken her away, handed her over to those dragons—she couldn’t deny the truth. The truth was that she’d loved him since the minute they’d met.

  And as that truth hit her in the chest like a bullet, she felt a strange tingling in the wound on her arm. Her eyes widened a little as she looked down at the trickle of blood that was making its slow way down her arm, and for a moment she thought something had gone wrong—that some kind of metal had found its way onto her body, somehow. But no—it was her blood. It was shining metallic in the starlight, a color she recognized instantly. The shining silver of her sister’s eyes. The shade of the eyes she looked at in the mirror every morning.

  Instinctively, she scooped the blood up with the fingers of her other hand and turned to Owen. Something told her she needed to move fast. She daubed the shining silver—it didn’t feel like blood, somehow, not any more—on his bloodied lips, on his shattered nose. She scooped the blood from the wound on her arm, heedless of the way it stung, leaving shining traces of it across his ruined body wherever she could see damage. There was damage everywhere, of course, but she tried to prioritize the worst parts. The liquid gleamed there on the surface, reflecting the light but otherwise, it seemed, inert. She could feel something happening—feel her breath catching in her throat, a strange fatigue settling over her body as though she’d been running for days on end.

  But Owen didn’t stir, didn’t move. Just lay there, cold, still.

  She leaned in close, shutting her eyes as tears welled up, burning hot behind her eyelids. “I love you,” she whispered into his ear. Too late, her mind said dully. Too little, too late. She gathered him in her arms, pulling his powerful torso into her lap, his head cushioned carefully against her chest.

  She thought she’d dreamed it, at first. The sky was lightening now, the sun well and truly on its way. Her mind was full of nothing but emptiness, but a vague thought had been circling that sooner or later she’d need to get moving. Too tired. Too sad. Too much loss, too much hurt here in this strange little patch of oblivion she’d found her way to. And now she heard his voice again. Strong, this time, not rasping and desperate like it had been when he was dying.

  ”Angela?”

  She jumped, feeling him—to her shock and mounting delight—starting to move, starting to stir in her arms. A part of her didn’t believe it. Hadn’t he slipped away? Hadn’t she lost him?

  “It worked,” she whispered, staring at his face. He was struggling into a sitting position, his hands moving cautiously across his body. Taking inventory. Checking his ribcage, his collarbones, his shoulder. The blood that had been shining silver on his body had disappeared—but so, to her dawning astonishment, had his injuries. His face was crusted with dried blood, but there was no sign of the wounds it had come from, and when he brushed it away it revealed clean, healed skin beneath. “I did it.”

  ”You saved me,” he said, staring at her. “You saved my life. How?”

  ”Blood magic,” she said, her heart pounding. “It works! It does work!
Oh, my God, I can’t wait to tell Stephen—” She moved to get to her feet… then suddenly her field of view was full of stars, and she wavered, almost fell to the rocky ground before Owen was at her side. He caught her in his arms, worry on his face, those strange black eyes looking down at her with wonder—and with worry.

  ”It weakens you,” he said softly, pushing a strand of her hair out of her face. What had changed about his face? Something about it was—open, resolute. Honest. “You gave me some of your—your life force, the magic that keeps shifters alive.”

  ”You know about this?” Indignation rose in her chest. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  He stared down at her. “That’s what you’re angry about? That I didn’t tell you about blood magic? Of everything that’s happened—”

  ”I’m angry about everything else, too.”

  ”Oh. Good.”

  There was a long, strange silence. She tried to sort through all the questions she wanted to ask him, rank them in order of thorniness… and in order of importance. Her head was pounding, and she felt dizzy and exhausted, the way she always did after what Jessica called their ‘challenge runs’ (straight uphill for miles on end. Her sister was a maniac.) But she was conscious, and what she lacked in energy she could more than make up for in spite. She’d fight Death itself if it meant getting some actual information out of this man for once. “Where’d you learn about blood magic?”

  ”A place called the College,” he said. “I grew up there. They trained me.”

  ”Not a seaside pacifist dragon community.”

  He hesitated. “Not for most of my life, no.”

  ”What College?”

  He took a deep breath. “I should get you home—”

  ”Tell me. You owe me one.” She narrowed her eyes. “I actually think you owe me about a thousand, but we’ll start with one.”