Page 8 of Ashborne: Defiance

And something was wrong.

Had I been injured? I felt no pain. Yet, my hands shook and my head rang. My body felt hot.

“There’s shelter,” I rasped, pulling her with me. “I left Kham near here. Water. A cave.” I knew my words didn’t make sense, but something had twisted my guts. My skin burned so that I wanted to strip my clothes off. Thoughts of the creek that my squad-brother Gil and I had found when we left the dragons here made me swallow, desperate to wet my mouth, and yet, hungry.

What the hell was happening to me?

I stumbled through the forest, reaching for Kham in his thoughts, begging him to remain far enough away to be safe. But with no response, I didn’t know if heard me.

He was gripped in the thrall of a matebond. Chasing his female. Dominating her.

That hunger in my belly twisted tight and my next breath hissed between my teeth as my hands tightened and the urge to stop and pull Grace to me, panic that she might be hurt, rage that she might run from me, roared through me like fire on my blood. Just Kham’s bond taking. I’m reflecting his emotions. That’s all.

It took mere minutes to make it to the slope of the foothill, where a creek fed a large pool between the trees, a cave squatted under a rocky outcropping, and the last of the sunlight glowed on patchy grass in the gap between tree lines.

I staggered to a halt, panting like I’d run for hours, which made no sense. My body hummed with a strange, crackling energy, and when I turned to look at Grace, to attempt to reassure her—the cave would be safe, the dragons couldn’t fit into the width of its mouth—the words died in my throat.

She clung to my hand, her chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes bright, but bloodshot. When our eyes met, hers widened, and a jolt of electric need crackled behind my ribs.

‘Mate… matematemate—’

I sucked in a breath and shoved Kham out of my head, but it was too late. The word echoed through me, made my blood boil, and my bones buzz.

“What… what just happened?” Grace stammered, her cheeks flushed. Her breathing didn’t slow.

Neither did mine.

“The… that dragon is my dragon’s mate. They’re… bonding. It’s consuming. They’ll be… they’re going to—”

Grace’s head snapped back and her eyes went round. “She says that your dragon, Kham, belongs to her?!” Her voice was high and thin.

The bolt of understanding, the sheer weight of what she’d just revealed, threatened to press me to my knees.

“You can hear her? She speaks to you?”

Grace’s eyes hooded as she nodded, her lower lip going slack and her breathing went shallow. “Yes, she’s… she was protecting me… but now—”

“She Chose you.” It wasn’t a question. The truth settled in my guts like a brick, even as my mind reeled.

She’d been Chosen. By a dragon. She was Flameborne. And if she trained and passed the tests, she’d become a fully fledged Furyknight. Like me.

But she was a spy! And that dragon was feral—did she even have a herd? Who would teach Grace how to ride her?

The Fyrehold Furyknights, I supposed. Except, that thought inexplicably sent a shrieking pang from my chest to my toes. I gasped, and flinched.

Grace’s eyes glazed and she swayed closer. “Vane, I… what is… I feel—”

Oh shit. I’d forgotten that was the name Bren gave her when we were introduced. But if I told her, she’d learn we had lied, and that Bren was much more than a simple companion to Donavyn. And that I was no guard.

She took one halting step closer, still panting and my eyes fell straight to the inch of cleavage visible between the V of her stable boy’s shirt, and the clasp of her cloak.

My being grew hot as I imagined reaching for that clasp, pinching it free so the cloak slid to the dirt behind her. Pulling her to me, one hand working the buttons of that shirt, the other clawed into her ass that was hugged tightly by those trousers—

Oh shit. Oh fuck, no.

No, no, no, no—

My dragon screamed in the distance and a spear of need cleaved me in two. Even with my mind closed to him, Kham’s feelings were so deep, so strong, so ecstatic, that our bond resonated with them.