But I didn’t care about the rest of the world. I only cared about her. Fine. Let’s hunt him and see it done. The sooner I killed the evil dragon the faster I could return to the only thing that mattered, the hunt for her.
“It’s cold.” Zach grumbled as I followed him down the narrow path. It was dark now, the winter wind snapping at our flesh like metal whips.
It was my turn then to shake my head and roll my eyes. He was wearing a coat, gloves, and heavy winter gear. I wore little, needing to be able to shift to dragon form quickly. Thanks for the weather report, I responded in my head as I stepped in front of him and cranked up my internal heat. He fell into step behind me, absorbing the magical warmth I provided. Or using me for a wind block. Probably both. But that was our way, our duty to one another. Dragon to Rider. Rider to Dragon. Where one went, so did the other. When one suffered, both suffered. From the day of our bonding, we lived or died together.
If something happened to Zach, I would follow him into the eternal night. I was strong enough to make the choice. I refused to become what we hunted. A Riven. A dragon whose soul was lost to evil. Dragons lived and died with our honor intact.
Or we were hunted down and removed from the world. As we should be.
The Riven was weak, and deserved the end I would give him.
“Thanks.” Zach’s teeth weren’t rattling when he spoke, so I took it as a sign of improvement. And since no response was needed, I held my tongue.
“Keep your eyes open; the Riven could be anywhere.”
Without speaking, I looked around the path. I was glad for any distraction from the cold. We kept walking, winding around the lake. The path went up and around a small hill then straight down into the water.
Let’s wait until late, after the humans have taken to their beds. Then we can take to the skies, I thought. Zach nodded in response and kept walking as we came to the edge of the water.
“I hope he’s not waiting for us out there,” Zach said, a shiver that he didn’t attempt to hide racing over his body.
I kicked a boulder, it rolled down the cliff and into the gentle waves below. Small slices of ice clung to the shoreline, the water most likely frigid. I shuddered. Even in the springtime, Lake Michigan was far too cold. As I stood there, dreading the thought of battling an ice dragon here, I realized that it didn’t matter how damned cold it was. I would kill him because I had to, to protect my mate.
Movement caught my eye as Zach dropped to the ground and started to look at the tracks in the sand. He lifted a leaf and sniffed it.
He loosened his hold and the wind took the fragile leaf from his hand, spinning the dried remnant of summer through the air before carrying it out over the water and out of sight. “Look at these tracks, they are his. In dragon form. But they don’t come from or go into the water.”
Well, that was the most heartening thing Zach had said the whole day.
Zach yanked me from my thoughts and from the daylight setting into darkness. “There is no way we’re going to be able to look the whole length of Lake Michigan. There’s over three hundred miles of coastline,” Zach said as he looked around.
I sniffed the air and looked around for a moment before stripping off my clothes. I wrapped them up and handed them to Zach. It was freezing, the wind scraping at my human skin like ice coated in sandpaper. I hate the cold.
“I know. Hurry up and shift so we can end this bastard and go home.” Home. Heat. Desert. The canyonlands of Arizona where we’d been assigned once I’d grown. My egg had lain dormant for over two hundred years in the queen’s true lair beneath Mt. Rainier, nourished by the pulse of Mother Earth, waiting for Zach to be born. We would claim our mate and take her home. Keep her safe. Take her often.
My cock stirred at the thought and not wanting to be any more uncomfortable than I already was, I called the magic of the Mother to me, of the elements, the ground beneath my feet, the fury of the skies and the bubbling power of the Earth’s core, the molten center rose up through the ground and through my feet. It burned. It always burned, but I embraced the pain. It was a small price to pay to be reborn in my true form.
Dragon.
Power rushed through every fiber of my being and I lifted my huge head, tested the long, curved amber wings. My scales were magnificent, the color of dark whiskey or brilliant gold depending on the light.
Zach ran his hand across my golden scales, patted me on the back and jumped on, securing my clothing and shoes in a collapsible pack he removed from his pocket for this purpose. He slung the small pack over his back and settled between my shoulders. The smell of the Riven burned on the tip of my tongue, like too much burned cinnamon.
I smell his blood. And burned scales. The thought gave me great satisfaction. He was not the only dragon to draw blood this day. My body was healed, but the battle still boiled in my blood. I pointed off in the distance with the clawed tip of my wing. His scent calls from that direction.
The odor was overwhelming. I shook my head to get the burning to stop. It didn’t do much good, but what little it did I was grateful for. I took to the skies, following the smell through the steep bluffs and ravines that ran north along the lake where his scent simply…disappeared.
It’s gone. He’s gone. From what I could tell, there was no evidence of the Riven anywhere around. We landed, and Zach climbed down, looking around the area for anything that might give us a clue.
“Do you think he went into the water to throw us off his scent?”
I walked to the edge of the water and easily picked up the other dragon’s scent. Yes. He entered here.
“He went into the water?” Zach shivered. I would have as well, however, that display of weakness was beneath me in this form. I was dragon. We feared nothing.
Apparently, he didn’t stick around Lake Michigan for long, I thought to Zach.
“Why lead us all the way up here?”
I scanned the horizon, my dragon’s eyes seeing for miles, the lights of Chicago a beacon in the night. So he could hunt without interference.
Zach turned, following my gaze and cursed. “Then we follow wherever he leads us.”
Which was mostly likely to a series of half eaten human corpses, but I didn’t say a word. Zach knew the cold, hard truth of a Riven as well as I did.
The sky was dark and cloudy. The thick, sticky humidity from the impending rain washed over my large amber scales. I hated the cold, the saturated feeling of standing in the humidity—it wasn’t quite as bad as diving into cold water, but still not a sensation I enjoyed.
Zach wiped at his hair, small pieces of ice falling from his head to shatter on the ground. He made his way back over to me and swung up onto my back. He’d gotten good at it over the years. He gently patted me on the neck, and I unfurled my wings. They were large, and it took some talent to jump high enough to allow my wings the acceptable room to freely move and get my thick, heavy, muscular ass into the air.
The fog grew thicker as I pressed forward into the starry dusk. I closed my large golden eyes, enjoying the feeling of being in flight—free and powerful. Relished the sensation of my wings slicing through the wind under the stars. I didn’t need to use my eyes to fly, I could feel the ground beneath me and the stars above me. They were part of me as I was part of them.
I was born of the magic of Earth, created to protect this planet and every living creature upon it. Dragons had been here for millions of years, evolving as humanity did, taking on new forms. Our history was long, the memories kept in the queen’s DNA and passed on to every Dragonborn to her and the king.
All life was sacred. But a Riven lost sight of that. The only thing he felt was power, the ultimate power, that of life and death. And to a Riven, humans were so deliciously terrified of going back into the arms of their mother Earth, dust to dust, as their churches said.
I would go gladly, if not for Zach…and the hope that my new mate might calm the fire and fury rising within me. But I didn’t have much time left, and both Zach
and I knew it.
One more reason to hunt this Riven and return to our mate. It was unlikely that my mother, the queen, would leave us alone for long. There was always a new threat, a new mission. Something urgent that had to be taken care of at once. The queen constantly sent all of her sons to do chores, but all fire dragons were under her command. The ice dragons answered to our father, the king, but she was still their mother. The creature we hunted now was my brother. We were all brothers. Brother hunting brother. Killing one another. Fighting for control of this world since the king had gone mad and set his ice dragons loose on the world.
King against queen. Ice against fire. The dragons had gone to war.
Chapter 5
Iavo
* * *
That fiasco had caused the last human ice age in 1645, nearly four hundred years ago. And the war raged still, so many dragons and riders lost that there weren’t many of us left, every unhatched egg in the queen’s cave guarded like a priceless treasure.
Whenever I thought of my mother’s ruby red scales, all I could think of was the fire she would bring down on us if we failed this mission. Zach and I had never failed our queen. But not out of love for her. She was as ruthless and calculating as her mate, her only true loyalty was to her sons and the planet she protected. She cared nothing for humans, tolerated the riders because her Dragonborn sons needed them, and cared little for the females we chose as mates. She was, as far as I knew, immortal, and the lives of the humans were too short for her to concern herself with. None of us knew how long she would live, and none dared ask. Theoretically, a dragon could live thousands of years…unless they were bound to a human; a dragon’s healing magic significantly extended the life of their human rider and mate but shortened his own. It was a necessary exchange, and one I did not regret.
Better a couple hundred years with Zach than a thousand as a heartless monster like my parents. The current king and queen had been ruling over Earth for at least a millennium.
More than once, we’d needed to stop the queen from burning a human city to the ground, reminding her that she might be killing a future rider, or a future mate.
“Pay attention. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Zach pointed to a well-lit human machine flying toward us, a small, private airplane.
My senses also picked up the scent and sound of thunderous air ahead. I snapped back to the present, the muscles in my back tightening beneath Zach’s legs. After noticing the impending company, Zach tightened his thigh muscles against my back. Pivoting slightly, I banked to the right and tucked us away into a full cloud until we couldn’t see the shadow any longer.
Though humans always regarded clouds as thick, fluffy puffs of entertainment—sometimes lying somewhere and staring up at them for hours on end—they were cold and wet. Regardless of the temperature, I did agree there was something magical about flying through them, especially if you were able to do it firsthand and not be secluded from their splendor inside of a flying metal deathtrap. I don’t know why humans ride in those things.
“They’re faster than walking.”
Dragons are faster.
“Agreed.” Zach threw his hands up into the cloud and shouted to the stars. We were heading back towards Chicago. The windy city was one of my least favorite places. It was quite literally everything I hated: cold and wet. Because of the water, the wind coming off the lake could be even chillier than the natural temperature of the air around us.
I couldn’t stand water, not unless it came from a hot spring. After all the time we’d spent together, Zach knew that little fact about me, yet he still loved humid places. His human ancestors were from the cold northern part of Europe. Vikings and Irish poets alike. Which explained his love of whiskey, exploring, and cold, damp air.
You are a freak. I should have chosen another rider.
“Stop whining. You have an internal heater. This is fantastic. It makes me feel alive.”
I couldn’t argue, not with his obvious joy bleeding through our telepathic link. I sighed and cranked up my internal fire. He might love the cold, but he was still small and human.
Taking advantage of the time we had left in the air, Zach leaned back on me and rested, absorbing my heat as we flew. It would take at least an hour to get back to the city, so I didn’t plan to get any rest for a while yet. I could do that when we landed.
Looking ahead, the clouds took on the pink and orange shimmer of reflecting the city lights. I searched the skies, but our prey was not in the air and I feared the worst, that he was already on the ground. Hunting.
As we drew nearer and broke out of the clouds, the light temporarily blinded me and I squinted at the city, looking for a likely place to land on the outskirts, somewhere we could escape human eyes. My wings cracked through the air as I made my way down into the smoggy city night.
Sensing the change in altitude, Zach woke up and held on as I pushed us harder and faster into the city.
I pressed into the trees and slowly lowered us to the ground next to the water, making sure there were no humans out to catch sight of us. Zach held tight to my back as I took the brunt of the landing on my large, scaled feet. Once we were safely on the ground, Zach climbed down to my wing so I could lower him safely from my back. He then stretched his legs, arching his back as he lifted his arms to stretch the rest of him.
Taking a deep breath, I lowered my head and closed my eyes, focusing on the vibrating energy circulating both around and inside of me. My entire body shook as I slowly transformed from my dragon form into my human one.
Rolling my head around for a moment as I stretched it along with the rest of my body, I held out my hand and glanced at the starry sky. It was a beautiful night. While we’d been buried in the clouds, I couldn’t appreciate it as much as I would have liked because I’d needed to concentrate on hunting. But down here, on the ground, where I could see between the breaks in them and focus on their song, I sighed in momentary contentment.
Zach handed me my clothes, his brows raised. “Listening to the stars again?”
Yes.
He grinned. “A dragon poet. Sure you’re not Irish?”
I ignored him and pulled on my clothing, grateful for even their small protection against the chill. Our mother told us when we were dragonlings that the stars were maps of the world put there by an ancient immortal race, our creators, protectors of all life. I had no idea if her words were true or merely fairy tales told to the young ones to make them feel special. Nor did I care. I was born of Earth, and Her magic held me, owned me. I had no desire to leave this planet and search the stars. My only desire was to find my mate and cool the fire burning inside me.
I would take Brittany in my arms and plunder her sweet mouth, learn her taste again and again as I touched every inch of her skin. Buried my fingers and my cock in her hot, wet core. Made her whimper and beg. Then I’d take her the dragon way, in her ass, filling her with dragon magic as Zach filled her with his seed, bonding her to us and creating a new life, a new member of the Dragonborn. Son or daughter made no difference to me. Dragonborn were special gifts, male and female. And Brittany. Mother help me, I could still taste her on my tongue. Could hardly think. I didn’t want to hunt. I needed. Her. Only her.
“First we hunt. Then we fuck. Stay with me.” Zach slapped me on the back and tossed my boots at my feet.
As a heavy sigh escaped me, I rubbed my tired hands through my long, blond hair. The wind chilled me once again. No one had warned me of the intense pain that came along with being in a squishy human form, and sure as hell, no one told me about being able to burn in the damn sun. The first time I’d allowed my human flesh to burn in the sun, I thought I was going to die. The more I thought about it, the more it baffled me. Did humans actually cook? Is that why they burned? Did the sun cook their flesh?
According to dragon lore, many humans had died a fiery death, not from the sun, but from dragons. At one time, the Dragonborn had nearly hunted humans to extinction. The queen norma
lly refused to speak of those dark days. According to her, it was like hell on earth. Dragons had ruled the world, and humans were our main source of food. I didn’t pay enough attention in history lessons to remember exactly when we were first forbidden to eat humans. The only thing I did know was that it was way before I came into this damned world. And that the binding between dragon and rider had been one of the reasons the dark times ended.
Zach’s voice broke me from my reverie as he reached into a trash bin along the sidewalk and pulled out an abandoned newspaper. “What the hell?”
Who still reads the newspaper? Don’t these humans have smartphones?
Zach frowned, scanning the headline. “You don’t.”
I am a dragon.
“Well, you aren’t the only one in Chicago.” He held out the paper and I read the headline. 26 Dead. Serial Killer Strikes Again.
Damn it. The Riven was definitely hunting here. I read the details, the bodies found torn in pieces, organs missing, and the victims scattered along the water’s edge, all within a thirty-mile radius.
The police had no clues, no suspects.
The public was panicked, avoiding the lake and parks all over the city.
The mayor was considering a curfew until the killer was caught.
He is hunting here. He will have a den nearby. With a Riven in Chicago, the last thing we needed was for me to be seen in my dragon form. No one would ever be caught by the human authorities. This was dragon business, and we took care of our own problems. A dragon who had lost control could do a lot of damage in a small amount of time, especially when it came to the humans.
“Do you still have his scent?” Zach asked, staring at the dark shadows among the trees lining the edge of the water.
Of course. It was late, but there were hours left until most humans would be sleeping in their beds. The Riven would be hunting. And so would we.
Zach
Marked at Midnight--Mark of the Dragon, Book 1 Page 5