Chapter 6
Six
Dirk
Without warning, I was hurled backward with incredible force as something abruptly occupied the area I had been standing in. Wood exploded in a million splinters as I was thrown clear through the trunk of a tree that was thankfully not a brellwood and into the air.
My head ricocheted off another tree branch, spinning me around like a pinwheel, even as it tore a huge gash down my face. I hit the ground, bouncing several times while the world around me went insane.
I came to a stop facedown and spread my arms to get up, just as something very heavy crushed my left hand. Roaring in pain, I lifted my head, only to be greeted with the most incredible sight in front of me.
Ella’s dragon had come forth, and the sudden bulk was what had tossed me backward as she occupied all the space around her.
“Beautiful,” I whispered, staring at the white scales of an ice dragon, outlined in earthen browns and golds that darkened as they disappeared under the belly of the beast.
But the wonder of the moment was turned to horror as the beast spread its wings.
“Ella! No!” I cried, spitting blood. “You must stay on the ground. Don’t do it!”
But the newly freed dragon wasn’t listening to me, or to anyone, and it did the worst thing a newly shifted dragon could do it. It leapt into the air, wings beating frantically to carry it higher.
“Get up,” I growled at my battered body, the muscles taking longer to respond than I cared for. “You have to get up. Get to her.”
Ella had no idea how badly this could go. New dragons needed time. If she was high in the air when it happened …
Fear jolted through me, the lightning burst shooting me to my feet and helping me ignore the pain.
She needs you. Now.
My dragon surged forward, free to emerge as I shifted, mighty wings the color of icy tundra spreading wide.
I crouched and leapt into the sky, ignoring the strange groan that sounded from nearby.
The only thing I had eyes or time for was rapidly disappearing deeper into the mountains. I had to be fast. I had to catch her.
She is everything.
Thankfully my decades of experience worked in my favor. I was far more in tune with my beast, and we closed the gap rapidly.
Ella banked around an outcropping, but she took it a little wide. I cut closer to the cliff face, powering through the winds as we ascended higher and higher into the mountain range, all the while drawing nearer to our mate.
“Land!” I roared in dragon form as we shot between two peaks nearly side by side. I infused the word with a blast of alpha power, but it didn’t seem to have any effect other than to spur Ella on faster.
I went with her, not slowing. I would never give up on my mate, but time was running out.
Wings beating frantically, I climbed higher until I was directly above her. It would be dangerous, but I could force her down this way by adding my weight to hers.
“Just land!” I called once more over the wind as Ella went up and over a sharp rise and soared out over the nothingness below as the cliff dropped away at a nearly vertical decline, thousands of feet gone.
I saw it happen. The stiffening of her wings. The panic at being so high all of a sudden with nothing below her.
“Shit.” Dropping my wings, I was immediately angling down to a point far below her. But I was going to be too late.
The air shimmered and the dragon was gone, replaced simply by a flailing Ella and a rocky death two thousand feet below.
I plunged after her naked body, trying to ignore the marks along her right side as I focused on saving her life.
The bright blue marks. Mate marks. My mate marks.