I force myself to beat my wings harder.
The water blurs by underneath. The island slips away behind me. I cross the line where the frontline used to be.
My dragon and I hunt…together.
Mistveil grows up out of the haze ahead of me. The mist that gives the island its name has rolled in across the water in a thick band, low to the surface, white as cotton, hugging the coast in a wide ring.
I drop lower as I close in.
Then I see what’s happening at the coast.
The sky above the mist is full of dragons. Reds against Reds. It has to be Mistveil guards against the feral Reds.
The noise reaches me before I’m close enough to feel it. A wall of screeches and bellowing roars and the heavy crack of bodies colliding mid-air.
It’s no better here than back at Draig.
I scan the front of the mass for him. The one with the small shape in his claws.
Then I see him.
He’s used the chaos as cover. He’s threaded the inside line, dropping under the worst of the fighting. He’s diving for it, Carla still tucked tight against his belly.
I dive too.
A pair of fighting Reds come tumbling across my path, and I have to twist hard to avoid them. One of them snaps at me as I pass. All the while, I keep my eyes on the prize. I keep going. I tuck my wings in and let gravity do the work, plunging down to a wall of jungle.
The bastard is still ahead and further than I’d like. He banks hard, drops his shoulder, and dives for the canopy.
He goes in.
The trees swallow him.
I keep my gaze on the exact area.
I fly hard, praying I won’t be too late. That he won’t hurt her before I get there.
Hold on, Carla.
Please hold on.
I’m coming.
10
Carla
The world drops out from under me, and then the ground comes up to meet me, hard and fast. I hit the jungle floor on my side and roll, leaves and dirt and something wet smearing across my cheek. Everything spins. The canopy whirls overhead, green and gold, the light strobing through the branches in a way that makes my head swim. My ears are still roaring from the flight. From the wind and the screeching and the awful crack of dragons colliding somewhere above us.
I push up onto one elbow. My arms don’t want to work. My whole body feels wrong, like it belongs to someone else. There’s dirt in my mouth. I spit and blink hard, trying to get the trees to stop moving.
I roll over.
The dragon is shifting. Scales pull back into bronzed skin, wings fold down into themselves, that huge serpentine body collapsing inward like the air is being let out of it. Except what’s left isn’t small. What’s left is a huge male. He has to be close to seven feet tall, with wide shoulders like a linebacker. His beard iswild and thick. His hair too. There are red-inked tattoos snaking up his arms, and all over his torso. His muscles bulge so much that he has veins sticking out.
A Red.
Not just any Red but one of the feral ones.
