Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Avery
“Jump!” The word threaded through her head. She didn’t know where it came from. Didn’t care. Didn’t stop to question it. She followed it. Jumping after Felix into the dark abyss.
It was funny. She never thought she would literally be falling for him.
The drop had her stomach lurching into her throat. Somehow, she wasn’t anxious. Her mind stilled as the wind screamed past her ears, tearing at her clothes and hair. She fell, and fell and fell. So close to Felix that she could almost reach out and touch him.
At least they’d die together. At least he wouldn’t be alone.
The last thing she saw was a massive talon coming down on top of her.
All the wind was knocked from her lungs as the enormous claw clasped around them, the impact jolting them upwards into its grip.
Her body almost crushed against Felix’s as talons the width of trees caged them in.
Each wingbeat sent them swaying, and Avery braced her hands against the rough scales to keep from being thrown into him again.
The sound of the gunfire and ocean grew fainter with each second, leaving only the sound of its wingbeats.
Her hands shook, adrenaline coursing through her body that had nowhere to go.
Holy shit. They had lived. Somehow, they had gotten out. Had they passed the wards?
“Wait! The wards!” Avery shouted upwards, her heart dropping.
“These puny wards are no match for me, witch, do not insult me like that.” The dragon’s voice was strange in her head, foreign compared to Felix.
Felix.
A rattling cough jerked her attention back to him, blood spurting from his mouth onto his chest and the scales around him.
Absolutely fucking not. He was not going to die here.
They had been through too much just for him to die in the cradle of a dragon.
Using her shadows, she ripped off the prison shirt.
Fear like Avery had never felt before sliced through her, like a thousand cuts all over her body.
Fresh tears burned a path down her face.
Some insane part of her tried to smile, mouth trembling with the effort.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise,” she said, hovering her hand over him.
A small lie, one that would help them both.
She rifled through her mind, pinching out any healing knowledge she could. She needed to stop bleeding.
Using one of Felix’s claws, she sliced her leg. It was ironic that to stop the bleeding, she must bleed herself. Something about that had to be poetic.
Her magic flared to life, and she pulled from the well inside of her, trying her best to concentrate on pulling the bullet out.
Using her shadows, she fashioned them into tweezers and carefully pulled out the bullet.
Felix’s breath came rapidly as he looked like he was trying not to scream.
Then she focused on knitting the skin’s surface together.
A dust bunny hopped from goddess knew where and sat on his chest, ripples of magic coming from its paws.
It was helping. The goddess was helping.
Her hands shook as she worked, power stuttering and fading out as Felix’s consciousness did. The dragon’s claw kept swaying, Felix kept bleeding, and she couldn’t get her breathing steady enough to channel properly. He winced as she worked, taking shallow, pained breaths.
After a few minutes, she managed to stop the bleeding. Still, his skin was deathly pale. There was something wrong with this wound. Something that was killing him from within. But there was nothing more she could do.
Another cough stopped her for a moment. Felix raised his good arm, his clawed hand finding her face. She leaned into his hand, where she should have felt warmth, but it was cold and clammy instead. A sudden sob racked her body. It couldn’t end like this. Please, goddess, don’t take him from me.
He opened his mouth to speak, but only a croak came out. He wasn’t even strong enough to speak. The tears flowed freely, falling and mixing with the residual blood on his chest. When she looked back up at him, the stupid cat had a smirk on his face.
“I love you, Avery.”
He loved her? Her breath caught in her throat, her chin wobbling as she spoke. “No, you don’t get to say that now.” A tear burned down her face. She barely got the next words out. “When you’re okay, you can tell me again.”
The smirk fell away from his face as his eyes rolled back into his head. Quickly, she put her ear to his chest. Not dead. Just unconscious. But he was barely holding on.
She didn’t let go of Felix’s hand as it dropped.
Using her free hand, she covered her mouth to keep the scream from coming out. Frustration, fear, love, hate, everything swirling through her like a violent hurricane. It was too much. It was all too fucking much. Her body threatened to shut down again, too numb. But she wouldn’t let it.
“No, you stupid cat, death will not do us fucking part!” she yelled at him. “Please go faster, Sparky!” she beckoned the dragon.
“It’s Kai.”
More than an hour had passed, but somehow Felix was still holding on. Each minute felt like an hour. Avery’s world became the rise and fall of his chest. She’d tried healing again, but whatever was lodged in his chest rejected her magic. She hoped this was only one of his nine lives.
The dragon started to slow, so she lowered Felix’s head and tried to stand up. Her legs protested, stiff from an hour of kneeling on scales, and she had to grip the talon for balance as the dragon banked into a turn.
Twinkling lights and skyscrapers came into view.
She immediately knew the London skyline, the human territory.
For only a moment, every worry was left behind as she looked at the cityscape.
All those late nights in her dorm, researching neighborhoods and imagining a life beyond the island’s reach, and here it was.
She never thought it would be like this, though.
In the clutches of a dragon and mated to a shifter.
How life could change.
Her ears popped from the pressure as the dragon glided lower and lower. The city gave way to darkness until he was soaring over the English farmland.
He was close to landing. She braced herself against the dragon as he touched down, his limbs shaking with the effort.
Slowly, he opened his claws, gently laying Felix onto a green and sprawling lawn. A gentle breeze brought the smell of fresh flowers and rain.
“We are here, witch.” The dragon’s rough voice shocked her as it came through her mind.
They were at the den. Felix had made it this far. The dust bunny hopped away and ran off into the night. Had she just introduced an invasive species? Oh well, really not her biggest problem right now.
When Kai moved his large talons away, the sight before Avery took her breath away.
It was a gigantic mansion. Green ivy clawed up the pale stone walls, which were dotted with floor-to-ceiling windows.
Warm lights spilled out from them, illuminating perfectly manicured hedges and autumnal garden beds teeming with life.
Large stone walls surrounded the building, with ornate gates in the middle.
Beyond the gates was a dense forest of oaks and pines, completely secluding the house from the outside world.
“Thank you,” Avery said to him.
“Don’t thank me yet, witch.”
Slightly ominous. Thanks, dickhead. Why did no one ever say what they meant?
But he was right to warn her.
Another dragon touched down next to Kai, shaking the ground. It was a wonder they didn’t set off earthquakes every minute.
This dragon’s scales were a glistening opal, and the warm lights from the mansion made them look almost golden. The two dragon heads moved like they were talking, which they likely were, but it wasn’t a conversation Avery was to be privy to.
Were all dragons so rude?
The new dragon transformed in front of her eyes, scales retracted into skin, wings folding into their shoulder blades. A giant beast becoming, well, a giant man.
Man was putting it lightly. He was as tall as Felix, if not taller.
Everything about him seemed absolutely lethal.
Even his jawline looked sharp enough to cut.
Long white hair flowed down to his waist, and poking through the sides were the tips of pointed ears.
Atop his head were twisting white horns with gold jewelry pierced in them, while golden tattoos shaped like fire covered the rest of him, like the very flames licked at his skin.
And he was stalking toward them, anger written into every feature. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. That was not a nice-looking lizard.
Avery took a step back as the man crossed the lawn in four strides. “What did you do to him, you fucking witch?”
“Don’t…” Felix’s voice cut through the tension, weary and pained. “Don’t talk about my mate,” he said through choked gasps. She hadn’t realized he had woken up. Or how much it must have taken him to speak at all, given the way his face went even paler after he’d finished.
The man’s head snaked like a serpent to Felix. “Mate?” he hissed.
“Let her explain…please, brother,” he said.
Brother? Like biological or like bro? Didn’t matter.
“Help him first,” Avery pleaded.
The dragon scowled at her, his lip moving so she could see the long fangs he was sporting.
The man put his fingers in his mouth. Was she about to be turned to ash? She always did want to be cremated.
Instead, what came out was a whistle, so loud that she instinctively put her hands up to her ears to cover them.
One second, the lawn was empty except for the four of them; the next, it was full of shifters, emerging from the shadows, dropping from trees, and some materializing out of thin air.