Chapter 3 Drayke
THREE
DRAYKE
She doesn’t listen.
I told her to leave. Warned her about the dangers. Gave her every opportunity to walk away from this mountain and never look back.
Instead, she’s outside again. Exploring. Wandering through the forest with nothing but that hunting knife and her impossible stubbornness.
She’s going to get herself killed.
I track her from the ridgeline, staying downwind, keeping to the shadows between the pines. The afternoon sun slants through the canopy, painting everything gold. She moves with surprising grace for a human, picking her way over fallen logs and around dense undergrowth.
Her scent drifts up to me on the breeze. Wildflowers. Determination. That underlying note of fire that makes my dragon pace restlessly beneath my skin.
Closer, it demands. Need to be closer.
I ignore it. I’ve been ignoring it for two days now, ever since her car died on that mountain road and she walked straight into my territory. Two days of watching. Guarding. Fighting every instinct that screams at me to reveal myself, to claim her, to make her mine in every way that matters.
Two days of hell.
She stops at a clearing where wildflowers push through last year’s fallen leaves. Crouches down. Picks one and tucks it behind her ear with a small smile that does something uncomfortable to my chest.
Beautiful. Our mate is beautiful.
She’s not our mate. I dig my fingers into the bark of a nearby pine. She can’t be.
The dragon doesn’t argue. It doesn’t need to. We both know the truth.
I scent them before I see them.
Sulfur. Rot. The unmistakable stench of a rogue who’s been living on stolen kills and festering hatred.
My entire body goes rigid.
There. Moving through the trees. A rogue dragon in human form, scarred and lean, his movements careful. Hunting. He’s not looking at me.
He’s looking at her.
The dragon explodes against my control.
THREAT. KILL. PROTECT MATE.
I’m moving before conscious thought catches up. Down the ridge. Through the trees. Every step fighting the shift that claws at my bones, demanding release.
Not yet. Can’t shift yet. Have to get her clear first.
The rogue reaches the clearing before I do.
He steps out of the trees twenty feet from where Selene kneels, his lips peeling back from teeth that are already too sharp, too pointed. “Fire-Bringer.” His voice is a rasp, damaged from too many shifts, too little control. “You’ll come with me.”
Selene’s head snaps up. She’s on her feet in an instant, knife drawn, body coiled. “Hard pass.”
The rogue laughs—an ugly sound. “Wasn’t asking.”
I crash through the tree line.
The rogue whirls, his eyes widening as he recognizes me. “Guardian King.”
I don’t answer. I’m across the clearing in three strides, shoving Selene behind me, positioning my body between her and the threat. My vision sharpens. Colors brighten. The dragon is so close to the surface, I can feel scales threatening to erupt along my spine.
“Stay behind me.” My voice comes out wrong—deeper, rougher, barely human.
“What—”
“Do not move.” I shove her toward the massive oak at the clearing’s edge. “Stay here.”
“But what are you—”
“STAY!”
The command carries every ounce of authority I possess. Inhuman. Undeniable. She freezes mid-step, her breath catching, her eyes going wide.
The rogue grins, baring those too-sharp teeth. “Fire-Bringer will come with me, Guardian King. Our master wants to meet her.”
“Your master can burn.”
“Bold words.” He starts to shift, his body twisting, bones cracking. “Let’s see if you can back them up.”
I stop fighting.
The shift tears through me—violent, magnificent, every nerve screaming as my body breaks and reforms. Muscles expand.
Bones lengthen. Scales erupt from skin, bronze-gold armor spreading across my flesh.
My jaw cracks, reshapes, fills with teeth designed to rend and tear.
Wings rip free from my back, membrane stretching, spanning forty feet of lethal grace.
The pain is exquisite. The release even better.
MINE. The dragon’s roar tears from my throat, shaking the trees, sending birds exploding from the canopy. SHE IS MINE.
The rogue finishes his transformation. Smaller than me. Battle-scarred, with a torn wing membrane and gouges across his snout. But desperate, which makes him dangerous.
He lunges.
I catch his throat with my claws and hurl him sideways. He crashes through a stand of young pines, wood splintering, and comes up snarling.
Behind me, I hear Selene’s voice. Barely a whisper. “Holy shit.”
I don’t look. Can’t look. If I see her face—the fear, the horror, the disgust—
The rogue launches again. This time, he goes high, wings beating, trying to get above me. I meet him in the air.
We collide with a crack of scale against scale. Claws rake. Teeth snap. Fire blazes between us—his acid-green, mine white-hot gold. The heat is searing, even to me. We spiral upward, locked together, tearing at each other as we climb.
“The master will have her,” the rogue snarls through our grapple. “One way or another. Your protection means nothing.”
I answer with fire.
The blast catches him full in the chest, sends him tumbling. He recovers mid-fall, wings snapping open, and dives at me with claws extended.
We crash through the treetops. Branches shatter. Burning debris rains down toward the forest floor—toward the clearing where Selene stands.
PROTECT HER.
I wrench sideways, putting my body between the falling embers and the ground. The rogue takes advantage. His claws rake across my shoulder, my wing, tearing through scales into muscle beneath.
The pain is immediate. Brutal. But worse is what comes after—a cold burn spreading through my blood, numbing and sharpening at the same time.
Poison.
The dragon roars its fury. The poison doesn’t weaken it—it makes it stronger. More feral. The careful control I’ve spent centuries building starts to crack.
Kill. Destroy. BURN EVERYTHING.
I fight for focus. Below, Selene has pressed herself against the oak’s trunk, eyes tracking our battle across the sky. She’s not running. Not screaming.
She’s watching.
For her. Control for her.
The rogue comes at me again. I let him. Let him think the poison is working, that I’m weakening. He gets close—too close—and I strike.
My claws rake across his throat.
Fire follows—not ordinary flame, but the white-gold blaze that only a Guardian King can summon.
It pours from my claws into the wound, spreading through his veins, burning him from the inside out.
The rogue’s roar becomes a shriek. Then silence.
Golden fire erupts from his eyes, his mouth, the gaps between his scales.
He comes apart in midair, ash and embers scattering on the wind.
Nothing left. Not even bones.
The ash drifts down through the canopy, catching the afternoon light. Beautiful, almost. If you forget what it used to be.
Gone.
My wing falters. The poison spreads, cold fire in my veins. I’m losing altitude, the trees rushing up to meet me.
Get to her. Have to get to her.
I crash.
The shift back is agony.
Scales recede into skin. Bones crack and reform. Wings fold and disappear. The poison makes everything worse—every nerve raw, every muscle spasming as my body fights to purge the toxin.
I end up on my hands and knees in the churned earth, naked, bleeding, gasping for air. My shoulder and back are torn open, the wounds already trying to knit but struggling against the poison’s interference.
The dragon is still too close to the surface. I can feel it pacing, growling, wanting back out. My vision flickers between human sight and dragon perception. My hands flex against the ground, fingernails threatening to become claws.
Control. Maintain control.
Footsteps. Soft. Hesitant. Coming closer.
Run, I want to tell her. Run while you still can.
But when I look up, she’s not running.
She’s standing five feet away, holding something in her hands. A flannel shirt—one she’d been wearing over her tank top. Her face is pale, her breathing uneven, but her gaze is steady. Fixed on mine.
“You’re bleeding.”
Her voice is calmer than it has any right to be. I stare at her, waiting for the screaming to start. The accusations. The terror.
“You should be terrified.” My voice is still wrong. Still more dragon than man.
“I should be a lot of things.” She steps closer. Close enough that her scent wraps around me, wildflowers and fire cutting through the blood and poison. “Right now, I’m choosing practical. You need help.”
She crouches beside me. Holds out the flannel.
I should push her away. Every instinct screams that she’s too close, that the dragon is too near the surface, that one wrong move and I’ll lose what’s left of my control.
Instead, I take the shirt.
Our fingers brush. Heat shoots up my arm, straight to my chest. The dragon rumbles with satisfaction.
Mate. She touches us. She cares for us.
I tie the flannel around my waist, more for her comfort than mine. Try to stand. My leg buckles.
She catches me.
Her shoulder slides under my arm before I can protest. Her body presses against my side, warm and solid and impossibly brave. I tower over her, outweigh her by at least a hundred pounds, and she’s trying to support me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I can—”
“Shut up.” She adjusts her grip. “Lean on me. The cabin isn’t far.”
Bossy. Our mate is bossy.
I lean. Just a little. Let some of my weight settle onto her shoulders. She grunts with the effort but doesn’t buckle. Starts walking.
“Dragons.” She says it after a long silence, her voice strangely matter-of-fact. “You’re actually dragons.”
“Yes.”
“You just turned into a giant flying lizard and burned another giant flying lizard to ash with your claws.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m supposed to just... be okay with that?”
I glance down at her. She’s staring straight ahead, jaw set, wildflower still tucked behind her ear. “Most humans would be screaming by now.”