Page 85 of Remington’s Mate

Colt wrapped his arms around Fernandez, and Remy grabbed his brother around the upper arms with his talons. Straining his wings, he tried to take off.

But the weight of the two men was too much for him. He couldn’t get off the ground.

“Colt! Change!”

“I can’t!” his brother yelled desperately. “Drugs!”

Remy called on all his strength, but it wasn’t enough. He needed leopard strength and size—only with fucking wings and talons.

Leopard strong? his leopard said.

With wings and talons? asked his owl.

For a second he saw them both in his mind, in the spirit world. And then they leaped towards each other, and merged.

Colt erupted into his leopard form, with huge taloned front feet. He shrugged his shoulders, and unfurled enormous feathered wings.

Holy fuck.

He bunched his hindquarters and leaped in the air, holding Colt and Fernandez with his huge talons. He cleared the hole in the ceiling and his wings caught the air. They were rising.

They were flying.

As he flew them out of the rubble, the wall swayed behind them and slowly toppled down, tons of debris filling the hole where they’d just been.

One minute Jaeda had been a freaking dragon, holding up the ceiling so Remy and Colt could escape. The next she was on a flat featureless plane under a gray-white sky—still a dragon—with a screaming twelve-year-old boy crumpled on the ground next to her, in obvious agony.

What had she done?

She could see a silver cord attaching her to him, with power running down it into her.

The boy was a dragon. She’d taken his form, but somehow she was leeching his magic away as well, through the cord.

She was killing him.

With all her might, Jaeda pushed the power back the other way. She let the dragon form go with it, the magic that created it whooshing out of it and back into him.

She was herself again, with only a faint tingle of magic.

“I’m sorry,” she said, kneeling down next to the boy. He huddled on the ground, looking exhausted. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you—I just needed to be something big. I thought I was only copying your form.”

After a moment he looked up at her. His eyes were green, and they glowed. Where had she seen eyes like that before?

“I’m all right,” he said. “I think.” He flexed his hand. A dragon talon manifested, and receded. He studied her. “You were scared.”

“My mate and my friends almost died,” she said.

“Did they get away?” he asked. “I hope they got away.”

“I think they did.” They had to have. She couldn’t lose them. She looked around. “Is this the spirit world?”

“Yes.”

“No offense, but it doesn’t look as nice as Remy described it.”

“This is only one aspect of it,” the boy said. “The easiest one for dragons to get to. But I can go anywhere, and make the spirit world anything I want it to be.”

He sounded like a typical teenage boy, trying to impress adults with his abilities, but she also heard something else in his voice. Loneliness?