Outside, the town spun on. But nothing would get past me.
The next night, I felt the wrongness before I saw it. I’d flown the same route, glided the same thermals, clocked every outbuilding and road sign. The air was colder, the moon a sharper bladeabove the trees. But there was a flicker at the edge of my vision, something not animal, not natural, a pulse that read off to every organ in my body.
I cut altitude and swept a wider arc. The mate bond vibrated at a higher pitch, not panic yet, but close enough to get my hackles up. The anomaly pulsed again, a stutter in the magic field that rippled out from the woods north of the cottage.
I banked, turned into the wind, and braked hard. The shift from air to earth was quick, brutal, with no time for a pretty landing. I clawed down into the trees, branches whipping scales, the scent of mulch and sap jarring after the clean air above. I folded my wings, crouched low, and crept forward.
At the edge of the yard, I listened.
There. A whisper of movement, a scrape of shoe on bark. I went still, holding every breath in my body. It was close, maybe thirty feet away, down by the fence line where the cameras didn’t quite reach. I slipped from shadow to shadow, then let the change pull me back to human.
This time, the shift barely registered. My mind was too busy working the problem, running every scenario. Sweat cooled instantly on my skin as I crouched and waited.
A red camera blinked through the brush. I moved past it. The anomaly was stronger now, a taste in the back of my throat. metallic, sweet, and laced with an undercurrent of rot. It was magic, but not any Beck flavor. Something else.
I slid through the undergrowth, rolling heel-to-toe, predator quiet. Ahead, through the half-open slats of the fence, I spotted a figure. Small, dressed in black, hair pulled back in a hard tail. Vivienne. Of course.
She knelt in the grass, hands spread wide, her fingers weaving a slow pattern in the air. Light bled from her knuckles, faint, but visible. It wasn’t showy. If you didn’t know what to look for, you’d miss it.
But I knew.
She was siphoning, slow and precise. The energy built in a lattice, each line and node feeding off the last, the effect like a slow battery drain on everything around her. The trees wilted, the grass pressed flat in a circle at her feet. She worked methodically, with the detachment of a surgeon.
A hundred possible reactions flashed through my mind, but the dragon decided for me. Rage didn’t creep up. It detonated, shotgunning adrenaline through every nerve. My muscles burned, and I leaped the fence without thinking.
Vivienne didn’t flinch. She kept her hands moving, the spell tightening. The threads of light wrapped the side of the cottage, wormed into the cracks by Bryce’s window.
Inside, the boy was thrashing, his limbs pinwheeling under the covers. Sweat slicked his brow, his lips drawn back in a rictus of pain. The mate bond spiked, raw fear, then nothing, then fear again, hot and blinding.
I roared. No attempt at stealth, no attempt at cleverness. Just pure threat, the kind that empties the air and leaves everyone gasping.
Vivienne didn’t look up, but her spell faltered. That was enough.
I closed the last ten feet in a single lunge, grabbed her by the wrist, and squeezed. The magic snapped, visible as a shower of blue sparks that scattered over the grass.
Vivienne’s skin was cold, but her eyes burned. She met my gaze, steady as hell.
"You’re interrupting," she said, her tone clinical. "I was stabilizing him. His power was fluctuating."
I bared my teeth. "You’re draining him."
"He would have broken himself without intervention. It was building to a catastrophic event."
I squeezed harder, letting her feel the real danger. "If you touch my son again, you’ll wish for a catastrophic event."
Behind us, a window slammed open. Krystal’s head poked out, eyes wild, hair stuck flat to her cheek. She took it all in quickly. Me pinning Vivienne, our son writhing behind the glass, the lattice of broken magic in the air.
She was out the front door in seconds, barefoot, shirt half-buttoned. The mate bond doubled down, fusing our panic and anger into a single, feral focus.
She shouted unintelligibly, barreling toward us. Her canines had lengthened. I saw them even from here.
Vivienne was about to reach the find out stage.
Chapter 28
Krystal
I was halfwaydown the porch steps before the world blew apart.
