by Amelia Jade
A distant voice sounded as the dragon above her slumped to the side.
The pain in her leg faded away suddenly, numbed by the ice that she saw was covering it.
“Now Asher! You must bond with her now!”
Who was speaking? What did they mean by bond with her? She didn’t understand. Her head twisted slightly and her eyes focused on the dragon, who hooked its tail around and used a talon to peel a scale from it.
Why would the dragon—she realized belatedly it was Asher—why would Asher rip a scale off himself?
Her eyes went wide as he took the scale and pressed it to her skin. The ridged material bonded instantly, and Quinn screamed once more as the pain of it reached out and slapped her.
Then something happened inside her head, and Quinn lost all control. There was…something there. She looked around frantically, sitting up suddenly as control returned to her.
“Who’s there?” she screamed. “What are you doing?” Her eyes darted around everyone that was nearby, none of whom she recognized.
“Stop it! Get out of my head! Go away!” she screamed, pouring her pain and emotion into an all-out attack, somehow trying to figure out what was going on.
She was panicking, but it didn’t matter.
Beside her, Asher roared as the dragon thrashed about, and something hit Quinn so strongly she thought someone had punched her. But nobody was near her, and it wasn’t until she realized it that it became clear it was in her head.
She rolled around on the stones, agony and insanity warring inside her head as she tried to figure out what was going on.
Beside her, the magnificent dragon roared, clawing at its head before unleashing a blast of something—she wasn’t sure what it was—into the sky in an impressive display of power. She vaguely saw the dragon’s head roll around, still spewing whatever it was. Other people dove out of the way as the dragon made a wailing sound.
Quinn felt the sound as it impacted over her brain. She fought back with everything she could, trying to beat it back, to get it out of her head. She writhed back and forth on the ground, the movement sending new waves of agony into her body, pain that she channeled directly through her mind and against what it was inside of her.
The fight went back and forth, and beside her the dragon continued to shake and paw at the ground, its talons raking up huge furrows or dislodging massive stones from the circle as it went insane.
“Asher!” a voice bellowed over the din the two of them were making. “She is losing control, and is forcing the same from you. You must control it. Let your dragon free; let its power flow though you!”
Quinn screamed again as fresh pain filled her body and the dragon beside her roared its echoing call.
Then suddenly, something extremely powerful appeared, flowing through her defenses and entering her mind as if she were nothing. It couldn’t stop the pain in her leg, but it helped by diverting some of it to herself.
Immediately Quinn calmed, slumping to her side as the thoughts, emotions, and sensations began to subside.
The presence was still there, but they were no longer fighting. It was like they were allied.
Mates.
The thought wasn’t hers, but it came through loud and clear anyway. It was almost more of an emotional feeling than an actual word.
“What is going on?” she asked.
Beside her, the brilliant white dragon rolled over to look at her. And then, just like that, Quinn could see it. There, in her mind, was the presence of the majestic animal. The being that lived inside of someone and gave it the power. She could see it. Sitting on a mountainside, smiling and content as it spread its wings, the white membranes blocking not only the view, but the pain from her leg, and the jumble of thoughts that had been streaming into her mind.
The physical dragon next to her calmed as well, and their eyes met.
“Is that…is that you?” she asked, knowing somehow that he would understand what she was referring to.
“Yes,” he said softly.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered as the image in her mind began to fade into white.
There was a pulse of something in her brain. Awe. Wonder. Amazement.
It took her a moment to realize it hadn’t come from her.
“I can feel you,” she said slowly, her eyes tracking across Asher’s face. “In my mind. Your emotions.”
The big dragon stepped back slightly and white fog rose up swiftly, obscuring it. A blast of cold air charged with icy particles washed over her, but she didn’t feel any cold. That was weird. She always felt the cold when he shifted. It was like having a big freezer opened up as she walked by. But this time all she felt was the wind wash over her, and the impact of the miniature icicles themselves. But the cold? Nothing.
Then Asher was there, striding out of the rapidly fading mist as he knelt at her side.
“How are you doing that?” she asked as tenderness, care, and compassion all came flowing through her mind as he looked into her eyes.
A smile blossomed on his face. “We’re bonded,” he said, pulsing happiness out and through her.
An answering look appeared on her face as she felt it, though it faded as questions bubbled up in her. She looked at the other man hovering nearby.
“The scale has created a link between the two of you,” the other man said. She vaguely recalled other dragons, from before the scale had been affixed to her leg. Was he a dragon shifter too?
She ran her hand over the scale, hard to the touch, and yet it flexed with her muscle and skin as she touched it. It covered most of her upper thigh, where the giant gash in her leg had been.
“I don’t feel any pain,” she said, reaching out to Asher so that he could help her stand. “In fact, I feel better than I did before. No aches or pains. I have more energy than I’ve had in some time.” She glanced at Asher, then the other man. “Is that all because of this?”
“Yes,” the other man answered.
“How do you know all this?”
Asher stepped in. “Quinn, this is Daxxton, the Wing Commander of Top Scale Academy.”
The respect Asher had for the other man practically roiled off of him, and Quinn was immediately struck with the notion that he was a big deal in the shifter world. She reached out and shook his hand while trying to deal with the impressions she was getting from Asher.
“Having you in my head is going to take a little getting used to,” she said, closing her eyes.
“You can, if you wish, shut him out,” Daxxton said. “It will take practice, but if you work hard at it, it can be done.”
She looked up. “How?”
The elder shifter smiled. “Stick around, and I’ll teach you.”
Quinn nodded slowly. “Is this,” she tapped the scale, “is it a permanent thing? Or only until my leg heals?”
Daxxton shook his head. “It is permanent, I am afraid. You are tied to him now, for as long as he is alive.”
“You mean as long as I’m alive,” she corrected. “Don’t you shifters live for a long time?”
Sadness entered Daxxton’s eyes as he looked away for a moment, then back at her.
“No, I meant for as long as he is alive. You will never know illness, and on the day that he passes, you will too.”
Quinn was stunned. “Why do I suddenly die if he dies?”
“The scale saved you from death, my dear. When it is no longer part of him, the effects will come undone. That includes any sickness, aging, or other things it might have prevented.”
“This…prevents aging?” she asked slowly, looking down. “How well?”
Asher took her hand, staying silent as the Wing Commander spoke, but Quinn was thankful for his presence. She tried to send that through the link, and was greeted by a quick burst of support and encouragement.
“Well, most dragons can live to be over a thousand years old,” Daxxton said slowly. “So, somewhere around that.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped open. “I’m going t
o live for a thousand years?”
“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “It cannot prevent fatal injury, though you will heal faster. Not as fast as Asher, but much faster than any human. Enough harm, however, and you will die.”
Her hand tightened around Asher’s. “And if I die, will he?”
Daxxton swallowed and his eyes clouded over. “No,” he said softly. “If that happens, he will wander the world alone, until he eventually passes.”
Quinn couldn’t feel Daxxton’s pain like she knew she would if it were Asher. But his words and tone told her everything she needed to know.
“Thank you,” she said, giving him a respectful nod.
Daxxton just smiled sadly. “Enjoy your new lives together,” he said solemnly. “Now that you are bonded, you are welcome in Cadia. Your life has just changed completely. It won’t be easy, but Asher here—while a bit rambunctious—is a good man. I have the utmost confidence in you two from what I have seen.”
Quinn felt like she was going to blush, but Daxxton moved to a nearby circle and shifted into his magnificent golden dragon in a flash of fiery smoke, then took to the sky.
Motion to her right caught her eye. The others she didn’t know who had been there gave the two of them nods, and then headed back inside.
She waited till they were gone to look at Asher. “So, just like that, we’re stuck together for life?”
He smiled, and she felt warm happiness. “I couldn’t have wished for a better person to be in my head,” he said with a wink.”
Quinn nodded. Then an idea came over her.
“This is so inappropriate, and I have so many questions that still need answers. And I need to figure out my life. Holy shit.” She smirked at him.
“But?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
“I wonder how this works during sex.”
The slow blossom of intrigue that came through their link told her Asher was just as interested in the idea as she was.
“We’re going to have to find out. And soon,” he said.
“Of course. But first I want you to know I’m sorry,” she said.
Quinn backed up her words by letting her regret and guilt flow through her and into him, showing him just how truly sorry she was to have wronged him. She made no excuse for her earlier self, but she had changed since arriving in Cadia. That he and the other shifters had shown her the error of her ways.
“I believe you. And I want you to know I don’t hold any ill feelings against you. I’m glad that you’ve realized the truth about us. I find it sad that so many humans hold to your original opinions in the first place, but I don’t blame you for not seeing past it. Until you arrived here, there was no reason for you to have. You’ve shown me so much strength and intelligence in the two weeks since you fell in the mud in front of me. I’m amazed by everything that you are.”
Quinn blushed. Her cheeks were on fire from the compliment. “Thank you,” she replied.
“Can I show you to my room?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”
She tugged him along. “Hopefully not too exhausted.”
“For you?” he asked, his lustful passion washing over her in a wave that left her biting her lip in excitement. “Never.”
She grinned and took his hand, following him inside.
Chapter Fifteen
Asher
“Okay, let’s try this again! Asher, you first.”
He nodded mentally, focused instead on the task at hand. The three of them, Asher, Dominick, and Zeke, were flying in wingtip formation. But today they weren’t doing laps. Today, Zander had them doing aerial maneuvers.
Asher was the leftmost of the three dragons as they soared through the sky. His goal was to become the rightmost dragon. The first dozen times that they’d tried this, at least one, if not all three of the dragons had been sent tumbling from the sky, forced to recover from their spins mid-air and work back into position. It had been grueling work, and he was nearing the end of his stamina.
This time though. This time it’s going to work.
He was going to try something new. The instructors had only said he had to become the rightmost dragon. All the attempts so far had involved the dragons trying to slide under the bellies of the two other cadets. They hadn’t been told to do it that way; that’s just the way it had gone. Drop down and slide across before regaining your height. Unfortunately, if they came up too early, wings collided, dragons veered away, and the whole thing went south. Literally, straight toward the ground.
Not this time.
Asher gave a mighty flap of his wings and suddenly rose above the red and blue dragons. He tucked his right wing in and rolled upside down. As he inverted he snapped the wing back out and banked to what was now his left, sliding over top the others. Then he reached his final position, where he snapped the wing back in and completed the roll. At that point he spread both wings wide and made some more precise adjustments to slide perfectly back into formation.
“Well done, Asher,” Zander’s voice came from above, where he was watching everything as it happened. “Now Zeke, mimic the same.”
The red dragon completed his maneuver as well, with just a little bit less finesse than Asher had managed. Dominick, on the other hand, slid right into position, barely needing any correction at all when he spread his wings back out. Asher was a good flier, but it seemed like Dominick was going to be the most graceful of the three of them.
“Now Owens, again!”
Zander pushed them until they were actually moving in a never-ending loop. Two dragons were always moving at once, as if they were being juggled by some massive, unseen hand. After ten minutes of that, Zander told them to stop and head back to ground for a break before they tried something else.
Feeling accomplished, the trio banked back around Forlorn Peak.
Something caught his eye. It was the first red marker for The Course.
You’re tired as shit. Your reflexes are shot, and you have more to do later. You don’t have to do this.
But he did.
“See you back at the Academy, boys,” he said, and tucked in a wing as he banked down and over himself, beginning a swift drop.
Although she was the better part of four miles away, he felt a soft boost of encouragement from Quinn through the link. She couldn’t tell what he was doing, but she seemed to know he was focused on achieving something. Her support was all he needed as Asher whipped through the first part of the course.
He had this down to a science now. It called for speed, not tactics. Flying by reflex instead of calculating thought. As he reached the bank turn where Daxxton had attacked him before, he flipped through the curve and at the last moment, threw his wings out wide, killing his momentum. His talons dug deep into the rock face he’d been swiftly approaching, and Asher backflipped off of it, heading toward the ground and the next set of obstacles.
It had taken him a while to realize that simply dropping out of the previous loop would leave him with too much forward momentum. So he killed it completely. Now he was starting again, but speed was no longer of the essence as he navigated through a pass, having to turn sideways as he went.
Asher twisted up and through three hoops that made a loop like a rollercoaster, and then descended toward the opening of a canyon. He’d never made it this far. It was a new record.
Where did he go next? There were markers on either side of the canyon, and a big circle painted on a hanging rock off to the right. But there was nowhere for him to pass. A large wooden gate blocked the entrance to the next part of the course.
“Am I supposed to crash through it?”
He saw the painted rock sway in the wind, and the gate moved with it, ascending slightly and then dipping back down, in time with the rock. Suddenly it became clear.
I need to blast the rock apart with my breath.
Asher inhaled, but by then it was too late. He was about to smash into the gate, and he had to veer off, winging up and out of the valley and
going for higher ground.
“Dammit!” he said as only a cloud of misty fog erupted from this throat.
Asher was still having problems replicating his breath weapon. It only seemed to work whenever he was filled with extreme emotion of some sort. Simply racing through the obstacle course didn’t do it. Frustrated, he came in for a landing, shifting before his feet had even reached the ground.
“That was well done, Asher,” Blaine said as he landed nearby.
“You were watching?” he asked, looking back up into the sky. He hadn’t noticed Blaine anywhere, and after their first lesson at the Academy, all the cadets watched the sky around them religiously.
“Always,” Blaine said imperiously, then smiled. “I was enjoying the sun on Forlorn Peak itself. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss me in the sky.”
Asher sighed with the relief. The instructors tested them from time to time. They usually worked with them one at a time, but sometimes a second, or even third one would appear in the sky and make an attack run. If the cadets didn’t see them in time, they were forced to do extra laps.
Asher hated that part, and was glad he didn’t have to do it now.
“Thank you,” he said, appreciating the comment from Blaine.
“I meant it. That’s the farthest any cadet in stage one has gotten in roughly a hundred and thirty years. Give or take.”
He felt his eyebrows rise. “Really? Who was the one got farther?”
Blaine smiled, but didn’t say anything.
“You?” Asher asked in astonishment.
The green dragon shifter nodded. “My last day of stage one I was able to get the gate open. You’re close, Asher. Keep working hard, and you’ll graduate with high enough scores that people will talk about you as well.”
Asher wasn’t sure what to say, so he just dipped his head in thanks and went to find his fellow cadets. He was starved!
***
“Put the knife down!” he called, stepping through the back door.
Quinn laughed, and he felt her amusement pulsate through him.