“Ready?” he asked, and before I could say anything—as if his word had been an order, not a question—he slid his arm around my waist.
I let out a surprised gasp as he lifted me up easily, holding me against his chest.
Then he ran forward, across the field, and suddenly, his dragon’s wings opened up. But he was still a man, still holding me, as his wings caught the wind.
We soared into the air, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even speak to tell him I was afraid, and what would it matter anyway? Did I want to be back on the ground with the wyrms?
“We’ll take care of these wyrms and get you healed.” He sounded brisk and calm.
The world was a blur of green beneath us. Too far beneath us. I turned my face into his shoulder, pressing myself against the smooth fabric of his tunic. My arms were locked around his throat in a death grip, and I wasn’t even sure when I’d grabbed him back.
“Hey, it’s all right,” he murmured, his voice changing, as if he’d noticed my fear. “You were fearless a moment ago.”
“I was not,” I said into his tunic, the words garbled.
If I looked down, I might see the spires of the pines far below us or the edge of the glittering blue lake. But as long as I melded myself to his shirt—or more embarrassingly, his chest—I could pretend that the only thing below us was a few feet of air.
“You fought off a wyrm without a weapon.”
“My sister was inside the school,” I managed. “I’m not a hero. I just had to. And I had a shovel.”
He was descending. It felt as if the air were rushing past us, and I opened my eyes despite myself.
We were going down into a farmer’s field. A few trees dotted the expanse, but mostly there was trampled wheat. The ripped-open body of a cow was a lump in the distance, red and gleaming, and bile rose in my throat.
There were two fighters on foot and two dragons, immense and beautiful with their rippling jewel-toned scales, holding the line against several advancing wyrms. I looked up, my heart in my throat, and saw the village with its temple spires. How close were we to the farm, to where Tay was in bed? It took a few seconds for me to make sense of where I was. Our farm was on the far side of the village.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get rid of the wyrms,” he said. The clearing was growing larger as we moved down, and he landed us between the fighters, ringed by wyrms. “Any others in the area should be here soon.”
He set me down on my feet. A dragon was blasting fire at the wyrms, and its heat beat painfully against my face even from here. The fighters were shouting.
His bright golden eyes were steady on mine as if nothing mattered ashe kept his arm around my waist. “Are you going to fall over if I leave you and kill some wyrms?”
“No,” I whispered, to make sure my voice didn’t betray me. Then, just as he was turning away, I added, “But I could use a weapon.”
He flashed me a grin. “Good girl.”
That devastatingly handsome grin, his inhuman gaze, and the words he said in that deep, rich voice lit me with a sudden sense of warmth.Don’t get distracted, Cara; you’re in rather dire risk of being eaten, and not by the attractive man.
I reached out as he pulled one of his weapons loose, but to my surprise, he took my hand and flattened my fingers out in his, laying the hilt of his long knife on my palm. “I’d give you my sword, but it’s too big for you to swing. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they never get close enough for you to need it.”
Then he was gone, running toward the wyrms.
My heart clenched with fear. My grip on the knife’s hilt was so tight that my fingers ached.
Two wyrms exploded out of the forest behind me.
“Dair, watch my mortal!” the shifter who’d rescued me shouted. “Maura, take him!”
The most drop-dead gorgeous man I’d ever seen, with black braids pulled into a ponytail—must be Dair—whipped his head around, and his eyes lit as he saw me. Almost at the same time, a sleek purple dragon launched herself into the air. She had a wyrm gripped in her powerful jaws that she spat out in two pieces, and Dair leaptoverthe rolling corpse pieces as she swooped toward him.
He made an inhumanly high jump, and she caught him out of the air, her talons wrapping his body, only to drop him beside me.
“Well, hello,” he purred, right before the twin wyrms reached us. Suddenly, a sword was in his hand.
He moved with inhuman speed, slicing one in half and turning to meet the other. The wyrm slithered across the ground fast, its terrible mouth gaping open at me with what felt like delight—as if it were only focused on swallowing me and not on the dangers.
But before he could attack the wyrm, the purple dragon—Maura—dove. I ducked, feeling a creeping up my spine at having her talons soclose, but she was just ripping the wyrm away from me. Dair’s slash opened up its soft underbelly as she yanked it up into the air.
