Chapter 8 Drayke
EIGHT
DRAYKE
She’s laughing.
The sound catches me off guard every time—bright and unguarded, so different from the wary tension she carried those first days.
We’re walking the forest trail that winds behind the cabin, ostensibly gathering medicinal herbs that grow in the shadowed places between the pines.
But I stopped paying attention to herbs twenty minutes ago.
I’ve been watching her instead.
The way she moves through the forest—confident, aware.
Five days of training have changed her. Sharpened her edges.
She still trips over roots occasionally, still curses when branches catch in her hair, but there’s a new alertness in the set of her shoulders.
A warrior’s awareness she’s developing without even realizing it.
“So let me get this straight.” She crouches beside a patch of feverfew, her fingers gentle as she harvests the stems. “Dragons hoard things. Not just gold—things that matter to them. Territory. Knowledge. Power.” She glances up at me, a grin playing at her lips.
“Is that why you keep showing up at my cabin? Am I part of your hoard now?”
Yes. The dragon’s answer is immediate. Absolute. She is ours. She has always been ours.
“I show up at your cabin because you have a talent for finding trouble.”
“Trouble finds me. There’s a difference.” She stands, brushing dirt from her knees. The afternoon light catches in her hair, turns it to burnished copper. “Besides, I’ve been very well-behaved lately. Training every day. Practicing my fire. Not taunting any rogues.”
“It’s been five days.”
“Five whole days of good behavior. That’s practically a lifetime for me.” She falls into step beside me as we continue down the trail. “My last boyfriend said I had impulse control issues. Right before I dumped his cheating ass in front of his entire office.”
“That sounds like excellent impulse control.”
She laughs again. The sound wraps around me, warm and unexpected.
We could make her laugh every day. We could—
I cut off the thought. Force my attention back to the forest. The dappled shadows. The rustle of wind through pine needles. The—
I stop walking.
Selene takes two more steps before she notices. “What?”
The scent hits me a second later. Sulfur. Rot. Two distinct sources, coming from different directions.
Coordinated.
“Selene.” My voice comes out wrong—deeper, rougher. The dragon is already clawing toward the surface. “Get down.”
“What—”
The first rogue drops from the canopy.
I shove her behind the nearest boulder as claws slice through the air where her head was a heartbeat ago. The rogue lands in a crouch—young, lean, eyes wild with bloodlust. Behind us, branches crack as a second one charges from the undergrowth.
Two of them. Attacking together. This isn’t a test or a random encounter.
This is an assassination attempt.
“DOWN!” I roar the command with every ounce of authority I possess, and the shift tears through me.
Faster than before. More violent. Desperation strips away the careful control I usually maintain, and the transformation rips through muscle and bone with brutal efficiency. Wings explode from my back. Scales erupt across my skin. My jaw cracks and reforms, filling with teeth meant for killing.
The first rogue shifts mid-leap, his own transformation a graceless thing—all desperation and fury, none of the power that comes with age. He’s smaller than me. Younger. But his claws are sharp and his eyes are fixed on Selene with hungry intent.
I intercept him before he can reach her.
We collide in midair, claws raking, fire blazing. The impact sends us both spiraling upward through the canopy, shredding branches, scattering birds. His teeth snap at my throat. I catch his jaw with my foreclaw and wrench sideways.
He’s fast. Feral. Fighting with the desperation of someone who knows failure means death—not from me, but from whatever master he serves. The rogues have been more organized lately. More willing to sacrifice themselves.
Which means someone is making them fear worse things than dying.
Below, I hear the second rogue moving. Circling. Stalking.
Stalking her.
MATE IN DANGER. The dragon roars, thrashing against my control. PROTECT. KILL. BURN THEM ALL.
I try to break away from the aerial fight, to get to Selene, but the rogue is relentless. Every time I disengage, he attacks again, driving me higher, keeping me occupied while his partner closes in on the real target.
“Fire-Bringer.” The second rogue’s voice drifts up from below—a wet rasp, amused and cruel. “The Guardian King can’t save you now. He’s rather busy, isn’t he?”
I hear Selene’s response. Steady despite the fear she must be feeling. “Funny. I don’t need saving.”
The rogue laughs. “Fire-Bringer will burn so prettily. Our master can’t wait to see your flames.”
The aerial rogue slams into me from above, driving his claws into my wing membrane. Pain lances through me—sharp, bright, distracting. I twist, breathe fire directly into his face, but he jerks away at the last second. The flame only grazes him.
Through the smoke and chaos, I catch glimpses of the forest floor. The second rogue has cornered Selene against a rock face. She’s holding her knife—that pitiful human blade—and her stance is good, balanced, exactly as I taught her.
But the rogue is twice her size in human form. In dragon form, he’d crush her without effort.
He’s not shifting. He’s savoring this. Playing with his prey.
Get to her. Have to get to her.
I feint left, then dive right, trying to slip past the aerial rogue. He anticipates, slashes across my flank. More pain. More blood. But I’m through, plummeting toward the ground, toward Selene—
The ground rogue lunges.
And Selene’s hands erupt in flame.
It happens in an instant.
One moment, the rogue is reaching for her—claws extended, mouth twisted in a predator’s grin. The next, fire explodes from her palms in a torrent of white-gold flame.
Not the careful, controlled flames she’s been practicing. This is raw power—primal, devastating, the kind of fire that exists at the heart of stars. It engulfs the rogue completely, pours into his mouth when he screams, burns him from the inside out.
Even from above, I can feel the heat. Can smell the char of scales and flesh. Can hear the rogue’s shriek cut short as fire consumes his lungs.
He doesn’t even have time to shift.
Within seconds, there’s nothing left but ash drifting on the wind.
Selene stands frozen, hands still raised, flames still licking at her fingers. Her face is pale. Her whole body is trembling.
“What the hell was that?” Her voice cracks. “What the HELL was that?”
The aerial rogue chooses that moment to dive.
Not at me. At her. He saw what she did to his partner, and now he’s abandoning strategy for rage—plummeting toward her with claws extended and murder in his eyes.
I slam into him from the side.
We crash through the trees, scales scraping bark, wings tangling in branches. I don’t bother with finesse. Don’t waste time on strategy. My claws find his throat and I rake deep, pouring fire into the wounds, letting the white-gold blaze that only a Guardian King commands consume him from within.
He burns.
I let him fall—ash and embers scattering through the canopy—and bank hard toward the ground.
Selene is still standing. Still trembling. The flames on her hands have died, but smoke curls from her fingertips.
And then I see the blood.
It’s spreading across her shoulder, soaking through her shirt in dark, wet blooms. Her left arm hangs at an odd angle, three parallel gashes carved from shoulder to elbow. Deep. Vicious. Made by claws that knew exactly where to strike.
The dying rogue. He must have lashed out with his claws before the fire consumed him. One final act of spite from a creature already burning to death.
I shift before I hit the ground, the transformation agonizing, too fast, bones cracking back into human form. I’m running before I’m fully changed, catching her as her knees buckle.
“Selene.” Her name tears from my throat. “Selene, look at me.”
Her eyes find mine. Glassy. Unfocused. The color is draining from her face with terrifying speed.
“Drayke?” Her voice is thin. Wrong. “I don’t... I don’t feel right.”
I examine the wounds. My blood turns to ice.
The edges are already blackening. Dark veins spread from the gashes, crawling beneath her skin like poison-filled roots.
Because that’s exactly what they are.
“Poison.” The word comes out broken. “They coated their claws in Fire-Bringer poison.”
“That’s... that’s a thing?” She tries to laugh. It comes out as a cough.
“It’s designed to suppress your fire. Weaken your blood.” I gather her into my arms, trying to be gentle, trying not to jostle the wounds. “We need to get you back to the cabin. I have antidotes—”
“Drayke.” Her hand finds my chest, presses weakly against my heart. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” The dragon howls inside me, rage and terror tangled together. “Don’t apologize.”
“I shouldn’t have... I didn’t mean to...” Her eyes flutter. “The fire just happened. I couldn’t control it.”
“You were magnificent.” The words rip from me before I can stop them, rough and raw and absolutely true. “Never apologize for being magnificent.”
Her lips curve. The faintest echo of a smile. “Magnificent. I like that.”
Then her eyes close, and she goes limp in my arms.
I run.
The forest blurs past me. Branches claw at my skin. My wounds from the aerial fight are still bleeding, but I don’t feel them. Don’t feel anything except the weight of her in my arms and the terror clawing at my chest.
She’s dying. Our mate is dying. Failed to protect her. Failed—
I shut out the dragon’s howling. Focus on the path. Focus on reaching the cabin.
The antidote is in my pack. Rurik prepared it years ago, after we learned the rogues were developing poisons specifically designed to target Fire-Bringers. We thought it was paranoia at the time. Overkill for a bloodline that had supposedly ended centuries ago.