Agony unlike any other ripped through his chest.
He roared mid-flight, the force of it cracking through him like a blade cleaving bone. Worse than the wounds he sustained from the falling ceiling of the secret chamber—worse than Tartarus. His wings faltered, the gale buffeting him sideways.
I love you,a faint whisper echoed in the winds.
Then nothing.
Remnants of her energy—fading threads in the air—reached him yet left him adrift. No tether.
No, no, no—Ash!Race propelled harder down the ragged mountain walls. He couldn’t fucking dematerialize. Malcarion’s dark magic still clung to him like tar, but that didn’t matter. He would reach her. Hehadto.
He fought against the blasted backdraft—wings thrashing harder, but every fucking thing worked against him.
Their bond wasgone.
Her warmth, her very pulse within him, snuffed out.
Noooo!He roared, the sound reverberating against granite.No. No!She couldn’t be dead. If she were, he’d have fallen too. And yet, the bond was gone.
He roared as he dove down harder.
Jagged peaks ripped past like spears?—
“Eracier!” Vaesarra shrieked, clinging to the rock shelf. He bellowed a furious snarl at her as he dove past.
Then he saw his heart.
Tumbling against the dark cliffs, her pink sweater soaked crimson, limbs limp as a broken doll. And too close to disaster.
Rage and terror fused into one blistering force. Race folded his wings and dove, the air shrieking against his scales.Faster. Faster.He couldn’t lose her. Not now. He refused!
ASHAYA!His roar thundered off the mountains.
Seconds before her body struck the knife-edged granite below, his talons closed around her. He drew her to his chest, his wings snapping wide to arrest their fall. The updraft howled as he heaved skyward, cradling her against the armored curve of his chest.
Her head lolled over his forelimb, blood streaking her tear-stained face. Panic swamped him, hollowing everything. He pressed the tip of his muzzle to her throat—no heartbeat. Nothing.
More agony flayed him, worse than Tartarus, at her silence.
Breathe, heart-fire,he begged through the shattered silence of their bond.Please. Just breathe for me.
Her chest stirred faintly. A broken sigh slipped free. Relief nearly crippled him, but rage blazed hot on its heels as he landed on the watch tower.
Skaldr shot up, hovering midair, Vaesarra clinging to him in her semi-shifted form, one wing charred, her face smeared with soot and tears. “You saved me, brother,” she sobbed. “The human tried to kill me. She burned my w-wing.”
Skaldr’s draconic eyes shut as he remained airborne, his massive wings beating once, twice.
Vaesarra lifted her head from his immense, tawny-scaled chest. “Skaldr?”
He roared, a sound of grief and rage intertwined. Then he let her go.
Vaesarra’s scream spiraled with the wind, echoing off the mountains as she fell, broken wing dragging her down into the dark abyss.
Her faint cry cut off.
Skaldr wheeled upward, vanishing into the churning clouds.
Chapter
