Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
Ash peered around Race’s biceps as twilight gathered, casting deeper shadows across the clearing. She easily made out the three shifters—the same ones who’d confronted them at the abbey.
But meeting Skaldr’s amber stare, she narrowed her eyes.
Not finished with you yet, you pillock.
Race flipped his black dagger. “You found me. Still don’t care.”
The older one stepped forward, his pewter-gray hair gleaming like tempered steel against his teakwood skin. Determination radiated from him. “Eracier, you might no longer care about this world, but we need you.” His gilded eyes hardened. “We aren’t leaving.”
Jaw set, Race palmed her lower back and nudged her into the cave.
The three followed them but remained near the entrance.
The temperature inside had dropped with the onset of evening, the stone walls exhaling their stored chill, and Ash shivered as she settled onto the broad, flat rock near the dying fire, holding the torn neckline of her tunic closed, grateful she had on a tank top under it.
While she gave the arses her best death stare, Race pointedly ignored the males, treating them like unwanted shadows as he gathered the few remaining twigs.
He fed the fire with precision, coaxing a thin thread of flame from the sputtering embers—when he could have summoned fire and finished the job in a second.
His stiff, clipped movements betrayed his barely leashed anger.
For once, he stayed close instead of stalking the perimeter or guarding the entrance. The three dragons remained at the mouth like carved sentries. Then the blond one left.
Race sat on the boulder near her, picked up a fallen piece of timber, and, with his obsidian dagger, whittled the ends.
“Oh, they’re vampires, then, not dragons, huh?” she teased.
He looked up at her, and a glint of amusement flickered in his claret eyes.
Footsteps scuffed on gravel, and the blond reappeared, arms full of dry wood. He crossed to them and laid the bundle down.
“I don’t need your help,” Race snapped.
“It’s to keep her warm.” He gave Ash a quick smile, his eyes bright like new copper pennies. The guy fed dry branches into the fire. Up close, he looked younger—until she remembered they, like Race, probably measured years in millennia.
Skaldr drifted closer, and Race continued to shave the timber to a precision point.
“Good to see you are safe, female,” he said, with that lazy arrogance only a dragon could pull off. “You vanished from the cave. It was a bit of a worry—”
“A bit of a worry?” Ash exploded, shooting to her feet. “You left me in a sky-high cave while she-dragons tried to flame-grill me!” She stalked toward him, her fists clenched, fury funneling through her veins. “If Race hadn’t shown up, I’d be charcoal—”
She lashed out, but Race caught her wrist a breath before her fist met Skaldr’s jaw, his grip like iron.
“He put me in danger!” she shouted, struggling against his hold. “Now, you’re stopping me, because he’s your bloody friend?”
“No.” His voice dripped ice. A ripple of black scales flickered across the bare planes of his abdomen like living shadows—enough to hush the cave. “Because I’m gonna kill him.”
The blond shifter slowly rose to his feet.
Race pivoted and rammed his fist into Skaldr’s face. The enormous male lurched backward. A snarl broke free, and he lunged for Race—fists flew, their guttural roars echoing.
Ash stumbled back, heart hammering. Oh, brilliant. Desperate idiots, the lot of them, picking the worst way possible to ask for help—by abducting her.
“By the flames,” the older shifter snapped. “We have bigger fires to worry about than past grievances—”
“Stay out of it, Attor!” Skaldr barked, swiping at his bleeding mouth before lunging again.
He and Race blurred together, each hit faster than the last. With a furious snarl, he smashed a fist into Race’s ribs.
He grunted and doubled over, then twisted, bringing his elbow up hard into Skaldr’s sternum. The other man stumbled back and roared.
Ash shuddered as both males swelled, shoulders widening, scales rippling beneath their skin. They tore into each other, the sounds of fists pounding flesh echoing.
“Oh, God—” she gasped as their claws slashed across granite, shards spraying like shrapnel. She knew exactly how brutal Race could be. He grabbed Skaldr by the throat.
“Race, no!” She darted forward.
“Female, don’t.” A steely arm locked around her waist. The blond hauled her back. “Step between fighting shifters, and you’ll end up as mulch.”
“Let me go!” She tried to wrench free, but his grip remained unbreakable. “Race is going to kill him.”
“Then Skaldr deserves the bruising if he can’t hold his own.” He didn’t seem bothered at all that his friend could die. “Besides, they’re holding back.”
“Holding back?” she yelled. “They’re trying to shred each other into ribbons!”
He flicked her a grin before his attention returned to the brawl. “You’ll know it’s lethal when the fire starts. Cave’s still dark, isn’t it?”
Shifters and their bloody warped humor.
Race and Skaldr slammed into the wall, gravel raining down as their talons screeched orange sparks off the granite. Panic cinched Ash’s throat. She’d seen Race behead a dragon just hours earlier—hell, she didn’t need an encore.
“Race, stop,” she shouted.
Skaldr roared, staggering back, with three smoking puncture wounds gouged through his stomach. Blood sheeted between his fingers, clamped over the wounds.
Ash stood frozen, her mouth unhinged.
Race spat crimson, expression feral. “Touch her again, and I’ll finish the job.”
He pivoted, narrowing his eyes, and the blond shifter instantly let her go.
Ash dashed toward Race as his semi-shifted form receded, but then she halted, glancing at the wounded Skaldr, who had collapsed on a rock near the wall.
“I only meant to punch him,” she whispered.
“Debt’s paid.” Race swiped at his bleeding mouth, stalked past her, and sat on a boulder by the firepit, his expression like granite. He picked up his fallen dagger and the wood.
Ash followed, slumping onto her stone seat near him, rubbing the back of her neck.
A rough sigh echoed, and she looked up.
“That’s tonight’s blood quota sorted,” Attor muttered, crouching across from them. He jabbed a branch into the flames, and sparks spiraled upward. “Now maybe we can talk before anyone else leaks. Eracier, all we ask is a few minutes of your time.”
Race’s knife whispered against the wood, each precise slice louder than words. He didn’t so much as glance up.
Ash wasn’t prone to silence when questions clawed at her.
She shot back to her feet. “Who is Malcarion?” she demanded, glaring across at Skaldr. “I heard you and your friend whispering about him in that high cave. And your little she-dragon problem?” She scowled.
“You never warned me how lethal they are!”
He shrugged and leaned against the wall. “She-dragons are vipers. Malcarion is the usurper king.” Then he dipped his head, his amber eyes steady despite his battered appearance. “My apologies for leaving you alone.”
Ash exhaled wearily and settled on her rock again, leaning her forearms on her thighs. “So, you lot are rebels, then?”
Skaldr shifted and grimaced. He peeled off what was left of his shirt and pressed it to his bloodied abs.
“We are the Resistance. We intend to restore the crown to its rightful line, to stop innocents dying by the day.” His jaw set, his eyes flared like banked coals.
“But some prefer to play the martyr, it seems.”
Ash frowned at the dig. Under all that muscle and edge, a dark bitterness simmered.
Race ignored him and kept shaving thin curls off the stick, each flick of his blade deliberate. The other two remained silent, watchful.
And the quiet stretched, grew heavier.
Oh, boy. It was going to be a rather looong night—
“Damn, so much noise, can’t think clearly,” the blond murmured dryly, catching her eye, a grin forming.
Ash huffed, fidgeting with the torn neckline of her tunic. Of the three, he seemed more affable.
“By the way, I’m Koal,” he told her, brushing back loose strands of his tied-back mane.
“Ash.”
His copper eyes widened. “In this place, surrounded by ash? You’re far too lovely for that.”
She laughed at his flirting. “It’s short for Ashaya.”
“Beautiful—”
“Get out, all of you!” Race snarled, violence darkening his eyes further. “She needs rest, and I need quiet.”
“Glad your manners survived exile,” Attor drawled and stalked out.
Skaldr followed, and Koal gave Ash a wry little bow before disappearing as well.
Whatever gnawed at Race wound him tighter with every passing second. However, she had another problem demanding her attention. “I need to go outside for a bit.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “Nature calls. Unless you’d like to do that for me?”
Expression still grim, he strode for the cave mouth.
Dammit. Ash glanced around for her coat, which the Rust dragon had torn off her and flung aside. She found it near the wall. She pulled it on and rushed after Race, slipping outside into the darkness, shivering as the cold air pierced her clothes.
Night had fallen, and the three shifters were nowhere in sight.
“Are they gone?” she asked, looking around, but everything appeared still, the moonlight dappling through the canopy above.
“If only.” Race’s nostrils flared. “They’ll be circling.”
He dematerialized them to the stream.
Ash ducked behind a shrub, took care of business, then hurried back. Race waited in the shadows, barely discernible, his back to her as he kept watch.
She shivered, stripped off her coat, and scooped up the icy water, washing as best she could before the cold bit deep. Teeth chattering, she fumbled on her outerwear again before she became a bloody icicle with goosebumps. “I’m f-finished.”