Chapter 4 #2
Three hours ago, she was teasing me about Luke. Grinning at her phone. Talking about Instagram moments and damage control.
Now she’s gone.
Luke stands a few feet away, his back to me, watching the fire. Blood still runs down his neck from the head wound, but he hasn’t touched it. Hasn’t acknowledged it. He just stands there, rigid and controlled, like he’s carved from stone.
Except his hands. His hands are still scaled—slate gray catching the firelight—and they’re clenched into fists at his sides.
“You saved the wrong one.” The words come out flat. Broken. I don’t look at him when I say it. Can’t. “She has a family. Friends. People who need her. I’m just—”
“Don’t.” His voice cracks across the space between us. Not loud, but sharp enough to cut. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
I force myself to look at him. His profile is hard against the firelight, shoulders locked. The scales have faded from his hands, but I can still see the tension in them. The way they stay curled, like he’s fighting the urge to reach for something he can’t get to.
“Why?” The question scrapes my throat raw. “Why me and not her?”
For a long moment, he doesn’t answer. The fire pops and hisses in the chasm behind us. Somewhere in the distance, birds cry out, startled by the explosion, probably, fleeing whatever den or roost we just destroyed.
Finally, Luke turns to face me.
His eyes are dark again. Human. But there’s something in them I haven’t seen before, something that looks almost like pain.
“You were the one I could save.” The words come out low.
Careful. Like he’s choosing each one. “She was pinned. Unconscious. Even with dragon strength—” He stops.
Starts again. “My power wasn’t responding right.
I couldn’t move the wreckage. Couldn’t break her free.
But you were sliding. Still conscious. Still fighting. I had one chance to grab one of you.”
“So you chose.”
“So physics chose.” His jaw tightens. “And instinct. My dragon—” Another pause, longer this time. “It went for the one who could be saved.”
The flatness in his voice doesn’t match the tension in his body. I can see the cost of those words, the way they sit wrong in his mouth.
“You should have picked her.” My voice cracks. Guilt floods me.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he says. “If we live that long.”
Before I can respond, the ground shudders beneath us.
Not the helicopter. Not an explosion.
The earth itself, groaning and shifting as whatever structural damage the crash caused continues to spread. Cracks spiderweb out from the chasm’s edge, thin lines racing through dirt and rock like searching fingers.
Luke’s head snaps toward the sound. “Aftershock. The impact destabilized the formation. We need to—”
The crack nearest us widens with a sound like breaking ice.
He moves fast—faster than any human could—and his hands close around my shoulders. He hauls me up and away as the ground beneath where I was sitting drops six inches.
We don’t stop moving. Luke keeps one hand locked on my arm as we run, putting distance between ourselves and the collapsing earth.
My lungs burn. My legs scream. But fear drives me forward because behind us, I can hear the sound of destruction spreading; earth giving way, structures failing, the mountain itself reorganizing around the wound we’ve torn in it.
We make it to solid rock—an outcropping that juts from the hillside like a shelf—before the worst of it hits.
The ground gives way in a rush, and the fragmented rear section of the helicopter—our helicopter, the one that brought us here, the one Mara disappeared in—slides backward into the expanding hole.
More fire. More smoke. The colors still wrong.
Luke releases my arm. His hand stays raised for a moment, like he’s making sure I won’t bolt or collapse, before he lowers it to his side.
We stand there, breathing hard, watching our transport burn.
I stare at the flames rising from the chasm, my body refusing to process what just happened. The heat should hurt, but I can’t feel anything except the hollow space in my chest that horror wants to fill.
“We need to move.” Luke’s voice cuts through the roar of burning fuel. He’s scanning the treeline. “Now.”
I don’t move. Can’t move.
“Ember.” Sharper this time. He steps into my line of sight, blocking the fire. “The smoke will be visible for miles. If there’s anyone out here—Syndicate, Circle—they’ll come to investigate. We’re sitting targets.”
The words penetrate slowly. Right. We’re in the middle of nowhere. No backup. No way to call for help with the comms destroyed in the crash. In enemy territory.
And Mara—
“I know.” His voice gentles, just a fraction, as if reading my mind. “But we can’t help her now. What we can do is survive long enough to get back to safety.”
The practicality of it cuts through the fog. He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
I force myself to turn away. My legs shake, but they hold.
Luke’s already moving, pulling gear from the scattered wreckage. A survival pack, water bottles, anything that survived the fall. His movements are efficient, controlled, but I catch the way his jaw stays locked. The rigid set of his shoulders.
He’s feeling this too. He’s just better at hiding it.
“You good?” he asks without looking at me.
“Yes.” I wish I felt as strong as I sound.
“Then let’s go. We can’t shift to fly out until nightfall, or we’ll be seen. Until then, we’ll figure out our next steps on the move.” He pauses, and something flits across his face, too fast to name. “Stay close.”
He starts moving into the forest, and I follow because there’s nothing else to do.
The mountains stretch around us, empty and hostile. No roads. No signs of civilization. Just trees and rock and the smoke rising behind us like a funeral pyre.
But with every step, Mara’s face haunts me. The twisted metal. The moment she disappeared into the darkness.
And behind it all, one question burns hotter than the wreckage we’re leaving behind:
His dragon chose me. In that split second when everything was falling apart and death was reaching for both of us, his instinct—the most primal, honest part of him—reached for me instead.
Why?