Chapter Two
Dray
“Briony!” I yell, cupping my hands around my mouth as the dragon lifts my little mate into the swirling abyss of the clouds up above, dragging her through my fingers and out of my reach. Damn that fucking dragon – I knew he was trouble. “Briony, fuck, Briony!”
Beside me, Beau scrubs his hands down his face, screwing up his eyes like he’s been physically wounded, stabbed in the heart, punched in the gut.
“Shit, Beau, what do we do?” I ask frantically, because every single second she’s being pulled further and further away from us. “How do we stop her?”
Beau doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t open his eyes. I feel the pull of my magic, the magic I placed inside her chest, whipping up into the sky, becoming fainter with every lash of the dragon’s wings.
I don’t know what to do.
For the first time in my damned life, I don’t know what the hell to do.
“Beau, Beau,” I say, my voice even more desperate. “What do we do?”
Beaufort always knows what to do. He always has a plan. He’s always calm, collected, cool. I’d follow him to the ends of the earth and back because he’s smart – smarter than me, though I’d never tell the asshole.
“I don’t know,” he whispers, finally looking at me with wide helpless eyes. I’ve never seen him look like that. Never. It has my head spinning.
She’s going. Briony is going to the demon realm and we don’t know how to stop her.
“Should I blast her out of the sky? Blast the dragon?” I ask next, scrabbling around for some sort of action.
“N-n-n-n-no!” he stutters. “You could kill her.”
“She’s going to get herself killed if she makes it out of the realm!” I snap.
“I know that!”
“We have to stop her.”
“I don’t know how,” he snaps right back, so viciously it has me freezing on the spot.
“If it were the other way ‘round,” Thorne says quietly, “if Briony were out there in the demon realm, would anything or anyone be able to stop you from going after her?”
“I wouldn’t be stupid enough to fuck off like that without a freaking plan.” Thorne stares at me. “Fuck off,” I snap because we both know I’m lying. Nothing would stop me, and I wouldn’t even hesitate. I’d be gone in a flash. We would all do the same.
And so I make up my mind. I’m going after her. I’m not letting her face whatever is out there alone. I will protect her. I will keep her safe.
Without another word, I transform, my body stretching, snapping and bending in a blink of an eye, and then my white wolf falling to his four great paws.
My gaze snaps up to the sky and then I’m racing away, following the dragon along the ground, trying to keep pace with him.
“Dray!!” I hear them call after me, but I’m thundering across the landscape as fast as my four legs will carry me, leaping over gorse bushes, smashing through thick heather, hurtling over the rough ground.
The dragon flies high in the sky, nothing more than a distant insect, and I’m resigned to squint up as best I can, my powers of scent useless when he’s so far away.
I see fire stream from his jaws, lighting up the heavy clouds. I see his tail swing like a whip behind him, and I watch him fall and lift in the sky.
Our mate is nothing but a doll, clinging to his back, so fragile, so small.
Mine.
My wolf feels it even more strongly, even more innately than I do. If he’d caught a hint of her scent that very first day at the academy train station, he’d have hunted her down and claimed her as ours then and there. We wouldn’t have needed Beaufort and his visions to tell us she was ours.
He’s frantic now and determined. He will rip the dragon to shreds for stealing her away from us. He will destroy every demon that even looks her way.
I race onward, the dragon nothing but glinting metal in the dark and vast ocean of the sky.
I won’t lose her. My wolf will swim across rivers, climb over mountains, and smash through forests to find her.
The hard earth, the rough stones, the sharp vegetation, cut and scrape at the soles of my paws. Soon they’re damp with blood, a trail of crimson paw-prints marking our path. My legs scream with agony, my muscles cramp, my joints ache.
Still, my wolf continues. Chasing after our mate, feeling that pull of our magic sitting in her chest. He won’t ever stop. She’s ours, and we will run to the ends of the universe just to keep her close.