Once. Twice. The wood splintered.
Claws tore through his fingers, white and gleaming, until he forced them back before the guards who hovered nearby noticed. He roared and felt the sound rip out of his chest.
“Why did you come into my life,” he snarled, “little human…”
He pressed his forehead against the shattered dummy and breathed hard.
She had smiled at him like he was something good. She had trusted him without knowing what he was capable of. Without knowing that loving her meant breaking laws older than stone.
Jakob straightened slowly.
“I will stay away,” he vowed to the cold wind that swirled around him. “Even if it kills me.”
The dragon rumbled, unconvinced.
It didn’t kill him but it came close.
Two hours later, the dragon shattered his resolve with a single, brutal truth:
She is leaving our skies forever.
Jakob didn’t think. He ran.
He tore through the village. His boots pounded the stone as he ignored shouted warnings. He took the steep path and sent rocks skittering into the ravine below. When it was safe, he took to the sky for the short flight. His dragon soared straight and true.
By the time he regained two legs and reached the airport, his heart ached and his hands shook.
He burst through the doors just in time to see it. The plane, her plane, lifting from the runway.
“No,” Jakob breathed.
He skidded to a stop behind the barrier as the aircraft rose and sunlight flashed off its wings. For a heartbeat, he let himself imagine she might feel him watching. That she might touch the ache in her chest and wonder why it hurt.
The dragon surged, screaming to follow, to shift, to chase the metal bird into the clouds.
Jakob locked his knees and watched until the plane became a speck.
Until it vanished.
Only then did he bend forward with his hands braced on his thighs. The sound that tore from him was low and broken.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the mountains, to the guardian that had seen too much,and to the woman already beyond his reach.
The mountains stayed silent.
And somewhere deep beneath his skin, the dragon mourned.
CHAPTER 12
Mallory
Home did not feel the same. It felt hollow and empty.
Maybe it was the long flight back in which Brooke and Jenna continued to give her the cold shoulder. They still thought she was keeping secrets, and Mallory couldn’t blame them. She still didn’t understand herself.
Mallory sat in the university library three days later, surrounded by books and hushed voices, and felt like she was underwater. Sound reached her, but her ears refused to listen to anything specific. Light filtered in but she could no longer see any warmth in it.
Even though everything looked exactly the same, from the same scarred wooden tables, the same dust-heavy shelves, and the same half-finished coffee cooling beside her laptop, she wasn’t the same.
