by Selena Scott
Solar was grateful to have his friend at his side in what was sure to be one of the longest waits of his life.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Weirdly enough, this was one of the most beautiful places that Zara had ever been. The pine trees climbed the mountain like soldiers, each one so stoic and dignified. She tried to draw strength as she hiked. She didn’t have a particular path in mind. The wind was changing today, blowing in a few different directions. They had all hoped that would mean that her scent would go farther that way. That there was a better chance of him seeking her out.
Personally, Zara didn’t really understand what the whole deal with the mating scent was. She didn’t think she smelled any different. But she supposed it didn’t really matter as long as this whole thing worked.
Zara sighed and kept walking. The forest was peaceful in the late afternoon sun, the air crisp and sharp, the way it is right before a snowfall. Zara found her nerves calming, settling the more she walked.
Until she heard a bird caw in a tree. She whirled around, caught sight of it about twenty yards away. A blackbird. Staring right at her. Dragons couldn’t communicate directly with blackbirds. But everyone knew they were smart animals. They had motivations, desires, fears. And this one was watching her.
A stick cracked to her left and she whirled again, scanning the forest. The tree line was thinner up here so there was a lot of light between the trees. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just a forest. And maybe that blackbird was an ordinary blackbird. She couldn’t completely turn her back to it, though. Instead, Zara changed directions, walked with the bird on her side. At least until it got out of sight.
She kept one eye on it as she willed herself to walk in a straight line. Head up. One foot in front of the other.
She was concentrating so hard on the bird that she didn’t see the man behind the tree, watching her with one wrinkled eye. His face much older, much beadier than the last time she saw him. And she didn’t see his dragon tail, the only part of him that shifted, rise up behind him like a scorpion. And she didn’t see the poison spikes on the reach out to her.
But she felt them. Her hand instantly covered the scratch on her shoulder; pulling it away, she saw blood on her palm.
At first, it was confusion that clouded her vision. And then it was the toxins swimming through her system. Zara felt herself sway on her feet. Looked up at the blue, blue sky. The same color as Solar’s scales. It was the last thought she’d have before her mind swam and she fell unconscious.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“It’s been too long,” Solar said as he flexed and folded his wings behind him. “Something’s wrong.”
The Oracle sat behind him, his wings folded over his head, giving him quiet and dark while he searched for his gift. Any clues as to what was going on with Zara. But when the Oracle looked up at him, Solar knew he’d had no luck. O’s dragon face was lined with fatigue and he looked more serious than he’d ever seen him.
“It hasn’t been as long as it feels like, Sol,” Javi said as he approached Solar’s flank. “But I agree that something doesn’t feel right. Should we send a scout?”
“No,” Solar shook his head. “If he scents the scout then this will all have been for nothing. We just have to trust her. Trust that she can do this. She’s strong.”
Keiko approached the men, a sudden, wild look in her eye. “What is that? Can you smell it? What is it?”
The three men all lifted their heads to the air, attempting to catch the scent she was talking about. They couldn’t. Keiko had a notoriously sharp sense of smell. She whipped her head in frustration as the wind changed.
“There! Now can you-”
“FUCK!” Solar yelled, instantly winging himself into the air, lifting off with three great beats of his wings.
“It’s poison,” Javi said, following suit immediately.
“And Dalyer,” O said, swinging into the air himself. “I’d know that stench anywhere.”
“Well, I’ll be damned if I’m staying here,” Keiko muttered to herself and took off after them. She had to admire the three of them as they jetted off in front of her. Solar in the lead by a long shot, midnight blue and streaking through the air like a bullet. Then Javi, a deep brown tank of a dragon. And last, the Oracle, a gorgeous turquoise blue, seeming almost to float on the air.
Solar flew faster than he’d ever flown in his life. His wings were the air itself; he wished his nose was better, he wished Keiko was a faster flyer and could tell him exactly where to go.
But then Solar didn’t need his nose to track Dalyer down. He just needed his eyes. The blood-red dragon lay in wait in the forest below. He must have smelled them coming and shifted. Because he was down there, waiting. Flicking his tail back and forth and standing over something.
Zara.
Laying inert on the ground. She looked like a doll a child had left behind. Solar’s heart died. Then caught on fire. He would kill Dalyer.
He had wanted to kill Dalyer for most of his life. First when Solar had grown up as a servant in the castle. He’d watched the disgusting tyrant run his household staff ragged. Never recognizing their humanity or treating them with anything resembling respect. And then when he’d learned that he’d taken Zara as a child bride. And again when Solar had to choose between the revolution and his best childhood friend, Amos. Amos had been Dalyer’s bodyguard. Born and bred. Solar had lost his family the day he’d walked away from Amos and Zara. But he’d done it because he believed in freedom. He believed in finding a way to depose Dalyer.
But the deposing days were done. The wait-him-out in the hills days were done. The gut-him-like-a-deer days were just beginning. Dalyer stood over Solar’s mate, keeping Solar from getting to her. Dalyer was going to die. He was going to feel tremendous amounts of pain. And then he was going to die.
Dalyer roared from below and Solar was infinitely grateful to see Zara stir. Solar dove at Dalyer but pulled up when he saw Dalyer’s spiky tail poised over top of Zara’s fragile body. He swooped up into the air, over the tops of the trees. At this point, the Oracle, Javi, and Keiko were circling overhead, all waiting for their moments to strike.
Solar knew it was only a matter of seconds before Javi charged the scene. He had never been a very patient fighter. But the man knew how to massacre. And it reassured Solar to have Keiko there as well. She wasn’t all that fast, but she was ferocious. There was nothing her teeth couldn’t tear. And then there was O. The strangest, most effective fighter that Solar had ever seen. He fought the way some men danced, fluid and almost romantic.
This was not a squad you’d want to take on single-handed.
Dalyer’s eyes narrowed at his winnowing odds against all these dragons. His feet stamped the ground and Solar felt his heart contract when one of those feet landed inches away from Zara. She stirred again. This time one of her hands came to her forehead. Please wake up. Please. Zara.
But then Solar’s attention was torn from his love and back to Dalyer. Solar watched as the blood-red dragon reared his head back in a strange stance. Jutting forward, he spat something through the air. Beside Solar, Javi made a guttural noise. He clutched at his throat as he flapped to the ground.
Dalyer was shooting poison. Solar lunged downward, trying to get to Javi, but Dalyer shot another barrage of whatever poisonous darts he’d just hit Javi with. Again, Solar was forced to pull up, back into the sky and out of range. He roared at Dalyer as he watched his friend plummet toward the ground.
But that didn’t stop the Oracle and Keiko. They used the way that Solar had drawn Dalyer’s attention to shoot to Javi’s side. They lunged together, by some miracle missing the cloud of poisonous darts Dalyer shot at them. Keiko landed with a thump next to Javi but O wasn’t so lucky.
Dalyer whipped out with his tail and caught O firmly on his shoulder and wing. The Oracle roared with pain as his wing was shredded like tissue paper. Dalyer reared back and struck with his tail again and a large, bloody chunk of O’s
flesh came flying off into the air. The Oracle spun out of control, hitting a tree and then the ground with a sickening thunk. He didn’t move. He didn’t get up. All he did was crumple.
Solar took his opportunity. He dive-bombed Dalyer. He wasn’t pulling up this time. He was going to destroy him. Two of his friends and his mate down. A fury like Solar had never known before was rising inside him. He could feel it burning like a cinder deep in his belly. He was going to smash Dalyer’s head against a tree. Spill his blood for the birds.
Recognizing the kind of attack that was headed his way, Dalyer preemptively lifted off the ground, into the air. Rushing at Solar. The two dragons collided in mid-air with a thunderous boom. Midnight blue on blood red. Their claws scraped and ripped at one another as they spun in the air. They broke apart and came back together. They were too close for their whipping tails to do much more than propel them aggressively through the air. So their fangs and claws did the work.
They sprang apart and lunged for one another. On this pass, Solar planted his claw directly over Dalyer’s heart. He dug in. He felt his claws break through the layer of scales, to the flesh beneath. He felt one of his claws scrape bone. He felt something soft and hot spill over his claw. Dalyer gave a vicious, rotting roar. Leaning forward, the tyrant king clamped his jaws directly over Solar’s neck. Solar’s vision tunneled as he felt something squeeze tight around his life. He felt Dalyer break his skin. There was no more air. There was only crushing. There was only a tight leash and his life, too short. The prophecy that O had given him echoed through his head. This was it. His wings kept him in the air only through muscle memory.
His vision was darkening as he lost air to his brain. Solar felt his own blood melting out of him, into the mouth of his enemy. Fuck the prophecy. He couldn’t die here. If he died here then so did Zara. He had to fight. He had to fight for Zara.
Zara.
Solar blinked his eyes because suddenly there was Zara. Her gray scales reflecting the blue sky around her. She was rising through the air in her dragon form. Pumping her gorgeous wings. An expression of pure, fierce hatred on her refined dragon face.
Zara planted one enormous claw on the top of Dalyer’s head. The blood-red dragon reflexively unhinged his jaw from Solar’s neck. Solar gasped for air and fought to stay in the air. His life flooded back to him in great, delicious gulps of cold air.
And then something happened that would change Solar for the rest of his life. Zara cranked back Dalyer’s neck so that he had to look right at her. Solar watched the woman he loved shoot hatred into the eyes of his mortal enemy. And then she opened her mouth and exploded. A river of fire poured out of Zara’s throat. Straight into Dalyer’s face.
Her fire was white with heat, purple at the edges and orange in the middle. This was no campfire, bubbling away. This was pure weaponry, plummeting out of her mouth with the force of a hurricane. Solar had never seen her look more beautiful.
Dragon fire was extremely rare. It only happened in the rare circumstance in which one dragon had to protect their true mate. It was the fiercest of all weapons.
Dalyer screamed in mortal pain before he spiraled back to the ground. Solar and Zara followed him there, both of their claws drawn.
“Look!” Keiko screamed. Still hovering over top of Javi, she nodded toward the sky. On one side, a wall of Surgere were headed toward them. At least forty dragons.
On the other side was an ocean of the king’s army. Five minutes distance. Hundreds if not thousands of dragons.
“We have to get them out of here!” Keiko screamed again. She was dancing back and forth between Javi, unconscious and foaming at the mouth, and O, bleeding profusely and moaning in pain.
Solar stalked toward where Dalyer had fallen. He was going to end this now.
“No!” Zara grabbed him by the wing. “The army is too close. We have to get O and Javi out of here or they’ll kill us all.”
Glancing back at the sky and seeing how fast the army was approaching, Solar cursed under his breath. O groaned again and that made the decision for Solar. Ducking one shoulder under O and one under Javi, with the women on either side, the dragons awkwardly lifted into the air, the injured ones dead weight on their backs. The injured bunch flew back toward the Surgere, refusing to look behind them at the army that gained and gained.
But once they reached the Surgere and there were other dragons to carry his injured comrades, Solar did turn and look. The ocean of militarized dragons had stopped. They fell into line at just about the place that Dalyer had fallen.
They awaited orders. But the king wasn’t giving them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The trip back to the jungle was the hardest two days of Zara’s life. And that was saying a lot. She’d had a lot of bad days. Javi had gotten better. Much better. He was even flying on his own, although the pace they were setting was too much for him. He had to be assisted by other dragons for much of it.
The Oracle, on the other hand, was still unconscious. Zara wasn’t the most trained nurse, and she certainly wasn’t a surgeon, but she didn’t think it would be possible to mend his wing. Which meant he wouldn’t be able to fly again. A dragon who couldn’t fly. They very idea of it struck her heart cleanly into two pieces.
Keiko ended up staying with the Oracle in a small town with a surgeon. One who had worked with the Surgere before. If he could be saved, it would be there. Neither Solar nor Zara had wanted to move on. They’d wanted to stay with the Oracle.
But in the end Solar had insisted they go home. Back to their jungle camp. They were all extremely weakened, by the journey and the battle, and they needed to go home. Regroup and recover. Keiko would stay with him.
They got back to the jungle the following night and the whole group was exhausted. But even so, they assembled around the campfire. Zara knew that Solar wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed with her, but he stayed. He knew the importance of his presence on a night like this.
Zara, however, insisted that Javi go to bed. He was too weak still to be burning the midnight oil.
When she got back to the campfire, the Surgere had formed a circle around the fire. There were questions fired at Solar, and he was answering them the best that he could.
“Is Dalyer dead?”
“Why didn’t the army come after us?”
“Will O recover?”
“Is Dalyer dead?”
“Did Zara kill Dalyer?”
Zara felt a pit grow in her stomach. All she wanted to do was shrink into the background, disappear into the jungle, and sleep for a year. But instead she walked to her mate’s side. She sat next to Solar and laced her fingers with his.
Solar squeezed her hand and cleared his throat. “I don’t know if Dalyer is dead. Zara damn near killed him with her fire. Our fire.” He turned and searched her eyes for a second. “But if he’s not dead, the fact that his army didn’t attack us is a good thing. It means that they are still following his orders, not their own righteous ideals about us. They didn’t strike us down simply because we’re the Surgere. They waited for orders that didn’t come. Hopefully because Dalyer is dead. But we won’t know. Not until he gives us some sign.”
“Power like his doesn’t like to stay dormant,” Zara said, and the attention of the group transferred to her. “Trust me. If he’s alive we’ll know it soon enough. Being thought to be dead is too much like impotence for Dalyer to stomach.”
The conversation around the fire swelled then, the Surgere discussing everything that had just happened. The future. The battle. The battles to come.
When the last few stragglers around the campfire dragged themselves off to bed around daybreak, Solar and Zara finally felt that they could, too. They held hands as they picked their way through the jungle. Feeling equal amounts of relief once they’d closed themselves in their little hut. They undressed and immediately climbed into bed, clutching each other, even in the raw heat of the jungle.
“I can’t stop seeing it,” Zara
eventually whispered into the darkness. “His jaws on your neck.”
“I can’t stop seeing your fire,” Solar said, turning to face her in the bed.
Zara squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t believe I did that. Solar, what does it mean?”
She opened her eyes and stared into him, her heart racing.
“You know what it means, Zara.” He gripped her hands. His eyes were gems in the dark. “You know that it means that we’re true mates. Fated. Perfect. Unbreakable.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she clutched her true mate to her breast. She already knew that, of course, but it was the fire that confused her. “But Solar, if there was fire, doesn’t it mean, doesn’t it mean...” Zara couldn’t finish. Instead she pressed the flat of her hand over her stomach.
Solar’s hand met hers there. “Yes,” he said. And for the first time in days, a smile broke out over his face. Zara could have wept with the joy of it. “Yes. We’re true mates in the real sense, Zara. We’ve mated. We’re going to have a hatchling.”
His lips found hers in the dark and Zara clutched her belly. Her family was there.
Solar’s hands stroked along her body. “I’m going to love you forever, Zara. Until the day I die.”
His words were right, but she could feel the uncertainty uncoil within him. Something was wrong. “Solar, what is it?”
He pushed himself up from the bed and paced in front of her. “I have to tell you something. And you might hate me for it.”
She almost laughed out loud. Hate Solar? Not possible.
“A few years ago, I asked O for a prophecy. He gave me one. It wasn’t good.”
Zara felt her stomach drop out. “What did it say?” Her voice was a whisper in the dark.
Solar recited from memory. “Thirty summers before your life as you knew it sunsets. Your image will be your legacy.”