I was able to gauge his precise position with my Basilisk senses, even in the blind spot of him being directly over me, until the visual then returned via my windshield as he made his descent.
I tensed.
He wasn’t going to complete the jump.
The angle was slightly off.
I rapidly ran the calculations in split seconds, determining he would be two feet shy of a safe landing. His back wheel would drive into the hood.
I needn’t have worried, because shadows wove along the road directly in front of me. They rapidly swirled over the hood, higher, wider, until they formed a dark cloudy bridge that extended out fifty feet ahead.
“Whoo! Yeah, Win! Fucking yeah!” Zayn cried excitedly, a moment before I watched him and his Triumph soar right over my car, the shadows carrying him above the hood on the bridge. He tore along it, then spun around, performed a wheelie and came to a rough, jarring stop on the side of the road.
Unbelievable.
I looked out at Winter and he gave me a chin lift.
“Much appreciated, little death.”
He grinned. “Got your back.”
We both slowed as we neared Zayn, now dismounting.
Someone was eager for their punishment.
I’d just pulled in behind Winter on the right side of the road when Evira suddenly swept down and snatched Zayn up in one of her talons.
He shrieked in surprise as she soared up into the sky with him confined in her hold.
I climbed out of my car and Winter swung his leg over his bike and jogged up to me, the both of us looking up at the night sky.
We fell into a fit of laughter as Evira tickled Zayn with her free front claw, making him yelp, giggle, and writhe.
His power sparked and little cries escaped her as he tickled her back with it.
And then she proceeded to whip him up into the air with a flicker of her magic safeguarding him as she set him onto her back.
He grabbed onto one of the blade-like spines at the back of her neck and stroked her scales with the other, earning a sound much like a purr from her, which I’d never quite heard from a dragon before in their animal form.
It was truly wondrous.
“How does she do that, hmm?” Winter spoke, coming to me and tucking himself into my side in that affectionate way of his.
I held him to me, feeling it strange that he was in a brown leather jacket stretching across his broad chest instead of his usual hoodie. With him, I was so used to the soft cotton that hard leather didn’t compute. Although, it certainly served him well.
“Being effortlessly delightful, striking a unique combination between playful and enchantingly ferocious?”
He chuckled. “That, undoubtedly, but also being so sweet and sexy all at once. I’m both turned on and awestruck.”
“A heady combination,” I chuckled back, stroking his hair.
A sound reached me through Zayn’s excited exclamations.
A whine from Evira.
Pain.
She was in pain.
