Page 48 of Dragon’s Rebel

Chapter 21

Thorne woke up hours later, with the setting sun streaming through the half-open curtains in Rebel’s bedroom.

He ached all over, and he felt weak.

For a second he couldn’t remember where he was or what had happened. Then he realized he was in bed with Rebel, their limbs tangled together, her warm skin pressed against the length of his body.

For a moment he was afraid to move. Afraid he would wake her, and find out that she didn’t want him after all.

That she’d been caught up in the moment, that she’d agreed to be his mate and made love to him out of pity and compassion—afraid he would die, and needing to do something to bring him back. Anything.

She was good at pushing people away, and he was terrible at letting them get close to him. He didn’t know how to make her keep wanting him, but the thought of her turning away was unbearable.

He just wanted to lie there and feel her skin and smell her hair and revel in how beautiful she was.

And think of better ways to woo her, now that he was human.

Human.

That realization brought him wide awake. The serum had worked, though it had nearly killed him. And his dragon…

He looked inside himself for his dragon. It wasn’t there.

Fear clutched his chest.

You knew this might happen, he told himself. It’s okay. You knew it might happen. But the fear only grew stronger. His dragon was a part of him. It couldn’t be gone.

He rolled gently away from Rebel, still careful not to wake her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he tried to blow a small bit of flame out of his mouth.

Just a little.

There was nothing. The fire that had always burned inside him was gone, as cold and dark as an empty fireplace.

He felt like he couldn’t breathe. No matter how many scientific reports he read, nothing could prepare him for finding the other half of himself had just… vanished.

He left the room and stumbled out into the backyard, still feeling like a weight was crushing his chest. Panic attack, he thought dimly. Dragons don’t have panic attacks.

But he wasn’t a dragon anymore.

Once he was out in the yard, he called his dragon and tried to Change. Nothing happened. He tried again, and again, as if somehow it wasn’t real, as if something would be different.

His heart was pounding now, and he sank to the ground. His dragon couldn’t be dead. It was just a neurological thing. The reports said it might wear off. It would wear off.

Unless it didn’t.

He tried to be logical and rational, repeating the statistics and percentages. But then he saw, amongst the grass, a scattering of dragon scales shimmering blue in the sunlight. Dropped from when he’d been here a few weeks ago, crazed with treasure fever, with Tyr and Rebel fighting him.

He gathered them up, slowly at first, then more and more frantically. When he couldn’t find any more, he sank to the ground in the middle of Rebel’s backyard, clutching the scales in his human hands.

Somewhere, dimly, he heard a low keening sound of grief.

Rebel woke all at once, sitting straight up and staring around the room.

Thorne was gone, and somewhere outside there was the saddest sound she’d ever heard.

Grabbing her t-shirt and pulling it on, she followed the sound out the back door and onto the porch. Thorne was sitting in the middle of her backyard, naked, staring down at his hands. He was quiet now, but his jaw was clenched with the effort of keeping his feelings inside.

She walked slowly over to him. He was holding a handful of dragon scales like the ones in her bracelet, holding them so tightly it seemed like they would cut into his palms.