Three
REGINA
The dragon’s green fire pours from its jaws, and I can’t look away.
Not because Iwantto watch.
But because my body won’t move.
Killian’s blood is hot against my palms and his heartbeat is getting weaker, and somewhere in the chaos of the last few minutes my brain has decided to just... stop processing new information.
The werewolf doesn’t have that luxury.
The flames hit it like a wall.
No. Like asun.
The green fire engulfs the creature completely, so bright I have to squeeze my eyes shut, and even through my closed lids I can see the light. I hear a sound that might be a scream, except it’s not human and it’s not wolf.
It’s not anything that should exist in nature.
When I open my eyes again, the werewolf is a charred silhouette. Black and smoking, frozen mid-step like some kind of macabre statue.
Then the wind picks up, and it crumbles.
Just... dissolves. Into ash and dust and nothing. The thing that scarred me, that haunted my nightmares for three years, that nearly killed the man I love—gone. Like it never existed at all.
I should feel something about that. Relief, maybe. Closure or some other kind of cathartic release.
Instead, all I feel is Killian slipping away beneath my hands.
The dragon lands.
The impact shakes the ground hard enough that I have to brace myself to keep from toppling over. Rowan, Micah, and Sean are closing ranks around me and Killian, forming a snarling wall between us and the massive creature that just incinerated a werewolf like it was kindling.
The dragon is enormous. Its head alone is bigger than Killian’s massive wolf form, and its body stretches back in a length of scales that shimmer between black and emerald in the fading light. Those eyes, impossibly green and burning with ancient light, fix on me through the gap between my wolves.
I should be terrified.
Somehow, I’m not.
There’s something about those eyes. They’re familiar in a way I can’t explain. Like looking at a painting you’ve seen in a dream, or hearing a song you’ve known your whole life but can’t quite remember the words to.
The dragon is…beautiful.
That’s the thought that cuts through everything else, absurd and inappropriate yet completely true.
The most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.
And for a creature that’s supposed to be extinct, it looks pretty fucking alive to me.
The dragon’s wings fold against its body and then the scales are shifting, shrinking, reforming into something more familiar, and where the dragon crouched a moment ago…
Professor Elias fucking Villeneuve.
He straightens to his full height, brushing nonexistent dust from his impeccable charcoal suit like he just stepped out of a faculty meeting instead of transforming from afuckingdragoninto a human being.
Of course.
