That couldn’t happen.
I blew strands of hair out of my eyes and kept going. Stopping to collect myself and catch my breath would be the end. The moment they took me.
I shook myself once, hard, determined to stay on my feet. I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached, keeping upright, pushing past the discomfort, and facing my attackers.
There were two. The boy was younger than me, but bigger, theplanes of his face wide, forehead and chin like the blunted edges of a rock. He was as strong and unmovable as the oldest trees in the Crags, thick roots burrowing sideways, deep into the jagged mountain slopes. The throbbing in my head attested to his strength. I still felt the reverberations from his thick fist against my face.
He snaked about me so quickly that my eyes struggled to keep track of him, coiling like wind around me. Damn. He was fast. Usually, my speed gave me the advantage, but he darted left and right, his feet barely touching the ground.
My other attacker slowly drew closer, seemingly mild and nonaggressive … innocent, harmless with her much smaller size and lovely hazel-bronze eyes that offered the lie of gentleness.
I knew better than to be disarmed by her.
The most brutal, the most savage things came in small packages. That was what I had learned—to never underestimate an opponent.
Nothing was as it seemed in this world. There were all types of dragons, but sometimes the smallest ones, the prettiest ones with their mesmerizing eyes in colors I never even knew existed, were the deadliest.
Safety was never a guarantee. An enemy was always an enemy, but a friend was not always a friend. My experience with Stig had proved that true. I’d made a mistake in trusting him and had very nearly paid the price with my life—if not for Fell.
Fell.
My throat thickened the way it always did when my thoughts drifted to him. My eyes stung, nose suddenly congested and stuffy, the center of my chest aching dully.
Fell had saved me. He’d shown himself to me then—who he really was, the core of him, his very heart.
He’d been brought up to believe dragons were the monsters—unaware that he himself was one of them—but he’d saved my life anyway.
Except none of that mattered now.
I would never know what we could have been.
I would never have the future of us. We would not be together. And that loss was another hurt, a profound ache layered upon all the rest meted out to me every day.
And yet I pushed on. Fell would want that for me.
I couldn’t stop, couldn’t quit.
Here, each day was a struggle. A constant battle to train, to prepare. I accepted that. Accepted that I must learn to bethis—the thing that I was.
I went through the motions, the routines of life in the pride with vigorous, single-minded intent. I performed my assigned duties, volunteering for more, training, fighting until I bled. I worked myself until muscles I never knew I possessed burned and quivered. It was necessary. The thing to do to prove myself.
Each night I collapsed into my furs and succumbed to a sleep so deep and consuming that it edged on death. In the morning I would wake and start the process all over again, fighting alongside those who viewed me with distrust and wariness as the girl raised among humans. With brethren that didn’t feel like brethren.
And yet my place could be nowhere else. It was here. Even without Fell. Even with the X on my palm always pumping with the reminder of him.
I forgot the pang in my hand when the girl lunged for me.
Instantly I dodged her, whirling in a circle.
The boy seized his opportunity. They worked together, brutality in tandem, trying to overcome me. They had a lifetime of practice on me. At some point they had decided to ally themselves against me.
Here, I was the outsider. The one on the fringes looking in. I doubted that would ever change. In their eyes, I would never shake off my beginnings.
Their alliance worked, as usual. I could hold my own one-on-one, but two-to-one odds were not in my favor. Fairness did not apply here. Inequity was never an excuse. Not in the arena. Because in the real world it wouldn’t matter either.
Taking advantage of my divided attention, the boy tackled me,bringing me down hard. His bigger body pinned me to the ground. He grinned in triumph, flashing his teeth, a littletoopointy, the blunt edges of his human teeth giving way to his fangs.
“Not so tough, are you,fire-breather?” he panted in my face, his skin flushing red in a mix of delight and exertion. And something else. His flesh winked in and out—one moment the skin of a dragon, gold red and glimmering. The next moment … not. Just the ordinary flesh of a boy, as though he could not quite settle on what he was—human or dragon.
