Page 52 of Dragon’s Rogue

He watched her, staying very still.

She stared at him, hypnotized, unable to reconcile this mythical, alien creature with the man she’d eaten pepperoni pizza with, who’d told her his story.

Who’d made stunning, amazing love to her.

He tilted his head slightly, as if studying her reaction, and then moved his snout slowly towards her until it just barely nudged her arm.

Hesitantly, she put her hand on his head.

The skin of his nose was made of the same tiny soft scales as his forepaws. It radiated heat, a reflection of the fire within him.

His mental voice was soft. Are you okay?

No, she wasn’t okay. She was scared and bone-tired, and she felt more alone than ever.

She said the first thing that spilled out of her heart. “They used to be my best friends. I loved them.”

They were from your coven?

She nodded.

But the idol changed them.

“Yeah.”

He paused a beat. Then he said, I’m sorry your friends are gone.

That was it. That was what hurt the most. Her friends were still alive, but they were gone. The love they’d felt for her was gone. All the games, the inside jokes, the late nights watching movies and practicing spells and talking about life.

Gone.

All of them sucked into that black hole the idol had created, their souls stolen. It was worse than them being dead.

Dragon Zane nuzzled her softly, and she leaned against his huge warm head, feeling his strength.

The moment was broken by a fierce wind blowing a shower of grit and dead leaves over them, and out of nowhere there appeared another huge dragon, coming in for a landing. It was bigger than Zane and darker blue, and it looked really pissed off.

Blaze clutched the horn on Zane’s nose and prepared a fire shield spell in her mind.

The dragon landed on the roof, holding up one back leg as if it were hurt. It shimmered, and then the air sucked back toward it, as if a fan had been turned on the wrong way. The dragon turned into Thorne Greystone. Large and imposing, wearing jeans and a t-shirt that hugged his scary-big chest, and a truly terrifying frown.

The Greystone brothers. Of course. They were all dragons.

She wondered if Thorne could breathe fire while he was in human form. She hoped not, but he looked like he would if he could. She kept the fire shield spell ready, just in case.

Blaze felt another huge inhale of air, and then the warmth of the dragon next to her was gone and Zane was standing beside her. For a moment his eyes still gleamed dragon-blue, pupils like slits, and then he blinked and he was just Zane again.

He, at least, seemed unintimidated by Thorne’s expression. “Are you okay?” he asked, taking a step toward his brother. “You look hurt. What happened?”

Thorne waved him off. “Landed too hard and broke a bone in my foot when I—never mind. It doesn’t matter. What the hell happened to you? The whole ridge was shaking. I got to Blaze’s just in time to see you go flying off the fucking balcony.”

Zane looked startled. “You were there? Did you get the sorcerers?”

Thorne shook his head. “They created a portal and booked off to where they came from. Do you have any idea how much power that takes?”

Blaze did, and the answer was somewhere in the neighborhood of ‘a fuck-ton.’ “They formed a portal? Inside my workroom? On the fly?”

Thorne turned his gaze on her, then back to Zane. He was a lot scarier than he’d seemed the other night, when she didn’t know what he was. “What’s she doing here? Does she have the Seal?”