The world is upside down and moving fast.
The arm clamped around my middle is as hard as a steel beam. My muddy hair hangs in my face. I can’t scream. I tried, the moment they burst out of the bushes, but a hand was clamped tightly over my mouth.
I know there are a few of them, but I can’t tell exactly how many.
There is the one carrying me and at least two up ahead. I’m sure there are more behind us, but I’m doubting myself because of how silent they are. The only sounds are my ragged breathing through my nose and my heart beating loudly in my ears. They move like nothing I’ve ever seen, flowing over roots and fallen trunks without breaking stride. Ink covers their shoulders and arms and backs, dark lines threaded through with crimson, and where the ink ends, scales begin. They ripple along forearms and collarbones like armor pushing up through skin.
I’ve been taken by a group of feral males.
Holy shit!
Do not panic!
The one carrying me leaps over something – a stream or a gully, I can’t tell. My stomach drops, and my ribs slam againsthis forearm, and the breath goes out of me. I claw at his arm. It’s like clawing at rock. He doesn’t even look down. His hand stays over my mouth.
Magma will come. He has to come.
We run and run, and the jungle changes around us, growing thicker and darker.
Then, without warning, we stop.
The one carrying me drops me. I hit the ground on my hip and my palms, and the pain flares for a good few moments. I suck in a hard breath, gritting my teeth. We’re in a gap between the trees. Five huge males stand in a rough circle around me.
And they’re all staring at me.
I make myself small. I pull my knees in and press my arms across my chest, hyperaware of how little I’m wearing. Mud streaks my skin. I managed to cover myself with it all over before they got me.
“She’s mine,” the biggest one says.
“No! Mine!” another one answers in a deep voice.
One of them is deep into his shift, but not quite a dragon. He has scales all over him with barely any skin showing. He says something in a thick, guttural voice that I can’t even understand. The others are not quite human, but close enough.
“Why do you get to keep her?” one with a huge bushy beard shouts.
When they talk, their lips pull back over teeth too long to be human. Their nails are claws. They all have scales scattered over various parts of their bodies.
“We’ll share her,” the smallest of the bunch announces, making me feel sick to my stomach. He leers at me, grinning. “I don’t even have to go first.”
Pig!
“I don’t share!” Bushy beard shouts.
The two of them collide. It happens so fast I flinch back into the dirt. One second, they’re circling, and the next, they’re a knot of muscle and fury, slamming into the trunk of a fallen tree, on the far side of the clearing. They hit it so hard that bark explodes off it.
“Mine!” the blond one says, banging his fist against his chest, over and over.
I look away from them, and my gaze snags on the gap in the trees to my left. If I could get ten feet into that, maybe I could disappear. Maybe they won’t notice me leaving.
The two grappling males crash to the ground, and every eye follows them. They’re making a big commotion.
This is my chance. I’m up and running, my ruined feet screaming as I try to get away.
Almost immediately, something hits me from the side, and the world spins, and there’s a hand around my ankle. I’m being dragged backward through the leaf litter, kicking, twisting. Then I’m dumped on the ground in the middle of the circle again.
“No running, female. Is dangerous,” the tall, wiry one tells me.
The fighting flares again as two of them start tearing into each other to the right of us. It’s a different pair this time. Bushy Beard wades in and hauls the two grapplers apart.
