Terror clamped around her throat. Fingers locked around her arm.
“Let me go!” Ash tried to tug free, but he dragged her back into the main cavern.
He laughed. Her gaze locked onto a mountain of a man, his tangled blond mane catching the torchlight, his wild, rusty gold eyes bright with delight. His clothes reeked, like he’d wrestled a goat in shit and lost.
“I followed the dragon’s scent I caught in the alley and tracked him down to kill him, but I found something even better—ahuman,” he said,so casually, it sent ice skittering over her skin. “Since he killed my kin, you now belong to me. The blood claim is mine.”
With his free hand, he yanked at her tunic collar, tearing the fabric clean off her shoulder. “Unclaimed. Good. Come along, pretty human. We must distance ourselves before your dragon returns. You will fetch a chest of gold for me at the auction house. Perhaps you’ll even catch the king’s attention if I’m lucky.” He seized her wrists in one giant hand and hauled her toward the exit.
“No—” Ash twisted, yanking against his hold, his stench gagging her, bile burning the back of her throat. “Let me go, you revolting sack of shit!”
“You are payment, human,” he snarled, spittle flying. “That whoreson murdered my brother.”
She shrieked and kicked his shin. His growl split the cavern, and he backhanded her. Pain exploded across her cheek, and she stumbled back, out of his grasp. Her face stung, tears scalding her eyes?—
Unadulterated rage tore free, and lightning erupted across her hands. She lunged, grabbed his wrist, and let her power loose. A sizzling bolt of white spread over his arm.
“Cindress!” he spat, reeling back as sparks licked over his flesh, scorching it. He snarled and grabbed both her wrists again, twisting them behind her. “I am a dragon. You think that pitiful flicker can harm me?”
Agony shot through her arms as he tugged her out of the cave and through the trees. The sparks flickered uselessly against his skin, burning her as much as him.
Terror beat like another heartbeat in her chest. Ash let out a blood-curdling scream. “Race!”
A roar split the sky.
Her captor flung her aside. Ash hit the slope, rolling through underbrush before slamming into a tree trunk. Pain blazed down her spine and hips. She groaned, dragging herself up, clutching a low branch for balance?—
Her attacker shifted, flesh and bone tearing as a massive rust-colored dragon erupted where the man had been. His long throat glowed with building fire?—
The air darkened as something as vast as death itself tore through the canopy of trees.
Another roar split the sky, so loud her ears rang. Branches snapped. Trunks splintered.
Her gaze locked onto an enormous black dragon, silver-tipped spines bristling down its back, as it burst through the trees, shattering limbs, sending bark and leaves raining down.
Race.
He slammed into her abductor. The impact cracked timber like gunfire. Trees toppled under the force as their massive bodies plowed through the undergrowth. Talons raked. Wings thrashed. Their roars were pure brutality.
Then Race’s enormous jaws locked around the other dragon’s throat, tearing through armor-like scales as if they were parchment. Blood sprayed like rain as the Rust thrashed and clawed, scoring deep gashes across Race’s chest.
But the black dragon was unstoppable. With a bone-chilling growl, he snapped the Rust’s neck back and tore the head from his body. Blood gushed as the body hurtled through the bleed-cedars, scattering them like kindling.
Ash screamed and scrambled aside, barely avoiding the avalanche of muscle and bone.
Panting for air, eyes wide, she stared at the flattened, bloody trail left by her attacker’s dragon form. His body and head landed in two separate places before they both morphed into his humanoid form.
“Ash!” Race bellowed, his voice breaking through the sheer horror holding her in its grips.
She dragged her gaze away from the decapitated corpse as he strode toward where she crouched, his chest heaving. Naked, wounded, and covered in blood. Race’s wild gaze locked onto hers.
He hunkered down near her, and Ash pressed her back against the tree trunk. With startling gentleness, he touched her burning cheek. “He hit you.”
Swallowing hard, she shook her head, then nodded, her gaze locked on the smears of blood on his face, his mouth. “I-I’m fine.”
Without a word, he scooped her into his arms, and Ash squeezed her eyes shut as he dematerialized them. The brutal savagery of Race—of his enormous black dragon side—replayed in her head. Wings shredding through trees. Massive jaws crushing bone like twigs. Violence incarnate.
Yet, he hadn’t terrified her.
