My fingertips are pressed to his ribs.
I’m not sure if he saw me fight on the beach, but he called me a “wolf,” so he must know I’ve got claws. Maybe he doesn’t realize that I only have to extend them and they’ll pierce his lungs. He’ll lose the ability to breathe right before I rip open his torso.
I suppose he must think that my claws won’t be able to pierce his scales. Regular wolf claws wouldn’t be able to.
Still, I wait and allow him to think. A moment for him to decide what he’s going to do. Because it would be so much easier if he decided to call a truce. For one thing, I could go back to my breakfast.
“I’m going to kill you,” he says.
Sigh.
What a waste.
I ram my fingertips even harder against his ribs and release my claws. I sense them slide through his scales and into the flesh beneath?—
“Fuck!” he shouts.
Well, it seems the angelic-looking dragon can curse.
His arms fly wide, releasing me while his wings beat up a storm of wind around us, as if his first instinct is to get as far away from me as he can.
I catch a glint of light reflecting off golden bands he’s wearing around his forearms that weren’t visible to me before.
Then he grabs my hands and wrenches my claws away from his chest. Blood soaks through his shirt from the cuts, but he reacted so quickly that the tips of my claws didn’t descend deep enough to do any significant damage. Just nasty flesh wounds.
What’s more, his wings are thrashing so wildly that I can barely keep my balance. It’s only because my legs are still wrapped around his hips that I don’t tumble away through the air.
I grip as hard as I can with my thighs, using my stomach muscles to push back toward him, attempting to free my hands from his hold so I can slash my claws across his chest.
I come within an inch of slicing up his shirt when he gives his wings a single, powerful beat and I anticipate that he intends to shove me away from himself this time. He’ll push at my hands first, then wrench my legs off him and rid himself of me.
I’m shocked when, instead of shoving at me, he pulls my hands inward and upward. At the same time, the golden bands around his forearms unfurl, wrapping around my wrists in a flash and binding them together.
What the?—?
An instant later, my hands are wrenched high above my head. Not physically by him, but seemingly by the gold hewrapped around them. I’m sure he’s controlling it, although it feels like the metal has a mind of its own.
It happens so fast that my hands are high above my head before I can take a breath. But they don’t stop there. I’m jolted forward, my hands descending again—what I’d think was a reckless move on his part, except that he ducks under the triangle my arms have formed so that they land on top of his shoulders.
My hands—and my claws with them—are now trapped behind his head. My claws are pointing outward, away from his body, where I can’t do any damage with them.
I fight back, attempting to push against the force keeping my arms on his shoulder. I struggle with my legs, but moving them only increases my body weight and presses my arms more tightly down onto his shoulders.
I try closing my fists and angling my claws backward, hoping I can cut through the metal. Assuming I don’t cut through my own wrists first.
That’s when I sense the gold sliding across my arms. Not releasing them. I’m not sure what’s happening until golden bands appear at his sides and wrap around the front of his torso.
I can only imagine that the bands binding my wrists have stretched out into these long ribbons.
The two ends seal together across his upper chest and now I’m bound to him, unable to fight against whatever power lives in this gold.
Not that I’m about to give up.
I struggle even harder, snarling at him. “What the fuck is this?”
“Dragon’s gold,” he says. “Don’t try to fight it. It’s mine and will obey only me.”
Somehow, we’ve progressed farther to the far left of the beach, which was already alarmingly distant. I’d like to believethat shark shifters really do exist and somehow infest these waters, because if I fall in, I might be able to ask them for help. At least I might have a chance of reasoning with them, one dark creature to another.
