Page 51 of Ashborne: Defiance

“Then why are you so angry? I’m not going back! I won’t!”

“You’ll do as you’re told, and you will not leave me to walk ignorantly into a trap ever again!”

“I didn’t—ack!”

He whirled on me so quickly he almost stepped on my toes before I scrambled back from him. But he kept coming and I stumbled and pushed at him, backing away, but I couldn’t get away fast enough.

Then I came up hard against an old, rotten tree trunk. I grunted and cringed as he loomed over me, lips peeled back from his teeth, pointing to the city and snarling.

“You are a spoiled, selfish, immature child. The world is so much bigger than your petty anxieties about marrying some rich, bored lord. You have bonded a fucking dragon—my dragon’s mate. Your priority should be her wellbeing, and by extension, his, and thereby, mine. Yet, you left me to wander into a fucking firestorm of scandal. If I’d been seen by one wrong person, or thoughtlessly offered one poorly chosen word—”

“I didn’t think—”

“Agreed. I am not an adventure, Grace! I’m not your escape from boredom! And the dragons are not playthings for your entertainment.”

“I never—”

“Sit your ass down. Shut the fuck up. And do as you’re told. We’re leaving.”

Head spinning. Heart pounding. My jaw dropped as he cursed bitterly, but stormed away as quickly as he’d turned on me. I soon heard the clink of the harness and the huff of the dragons and realized I was just standing there.

“I didn’t…” I swallowed because my voice shook. “I didn’t send you into danger. I told you I wouldn’t go back. I meant it. I would have left. You said you had to go—”

“Because other people’s lives are at stake!” he whisper-screamed. “You high and mighty nobles with your bloodlines and your estates think the entire world is there for your wasting, to do with as you will. They aren’t pawns in your game, Grace, they are people! And they’re in danger—and they’re my friends and my leaders and… fuck, I don’t even know why I’m trying to explain this to you. I hope Koa knocks some sense into you. You’ll never make it as a Flameborne if you won’t even warn your brothers about potential risks to help them remain safe on your behalf. God, the selfishness of you—”

“I am not selfish—” I insisted, frustrated when my voice broke. I sounded like a child. Was it any wonder he thought I was one?

“Stupid then?” he snapped back, turning back to the dragons. “Which is it, Grace? Do you want to put others in danger to save yourself, or are you just too much of an idiot to realize you’re doing it?”

I jerked and my breath rushed out of me. But before I could say a word, he did something with the harness. It jingled and slapped. Kham shuffled his feet, but Vane kept muttering under his breath, moving around the dragon, cursing and spitting, as my eyes blurred with tears and I swallowed hard to keep them back because I wasn’t going to give him a reason to call me a child again.

But then I caught the words he was muttering, and they weren’t simple insults.

“…return you to your kind and let them handle you. Like a child sent to their room. Maybe that would teach you—”

Panic shrieked in my head. I took off. Sprinting for the space between the trees, where the moonlight glowed. There was a road out there, I’d seen it when we flew in. I could get away. Koa could find me later when he wasn’t—

I didn’t even hear him approach. My foot caught on nothing while long, steel bars wrapped around my middle and I hit the ground with an “Oof!” but I was rolled before the impact shook me properly. And though I spat and shrieked and kicked, twisting like a cat, steel manacles clamped around my wrist, weight pressed me into the dirt and dark, furious eyes glared down at me.

“I’m not going back! You can’t make me—I won’t do it! I’ll kill myself first! You’re wrong—I’d never put anyone in their hands. I didn’t know! But I am not going back to that… that prison! I’ll… I’ll—”

Vane straddled my hips and had my hands clamped to the earth up near my head. His shoulders heaved with panting breaths and he flinched when I said the word prison. Then went very still, staring at me.

“I didn’t say I would take you back,” he seethed, but his tone was reluctant. Quiet. Dark.

I froze. “You… you said you’d return me—”

He sighed and shook his head. “No, Grace. I was complaining. Trying to get through to you. Saying you’re lucky I didn’t. God, I wouldn’t! I know what these men are like. I wouldn’t put you in their hands. I was just angry. You didn’t warn me.”

I tensed, but he turned to look back at his dragon. He blew out a breath and shook his head, but when he looked at me again, his tone was less furious.

“I said you have to stop thinking about no one but yourself. Do you want to be Flameborne? Want to train to become a Furyknight?”

I swallowed, a tiny thread of hope twisting through my chest. “If Koa wants to fight, I’ll ride her,” I said quietly.

He laughed. “Koa is a redscale. Trust me, she wants to fight.”

“You know that from her color?”