Chapter 40 Raven
Raven
It’s been almost two weeks since I helped rescue Isolde and fell from the sky.
Two weeks of feeling like half of myself.
Wearing this fiberglass cast thing is annoying as hell.
The constant pressure against my wing membrane makes my skin itch in places I can’t reach, and the weight throws off my balance when I walk.
I’ve caught myself leaning to the left to compensate, creating an ache in my lower back that never quite goes away.
Granted, with it on I’m down to just wearing a light, almost elastic band around my wing to keep me from extending it.
The fabric pulls every time I move wrong, a constant reminder of my limitations.
Until now, I never understood how much my wings are a part of my day until I can’t move one for fear of hurting it worse. They’re not just appendages—they’re part of how I express myself, how I balance, how I navigate the world. Without full use of them, I feel clipped. Grounded. Vulnerable.
I walk into Shadowcarve and feel like a shadow of myself.
The familiar stone corridors smell like combat training—sweat, leather, and the metallic tang of weapons being sharpened.
Students pass me in the halls, their conversations echoing off ancient stone.
But I can’t take part in any of it. I can’t spar with anyone for fear I may extend a wing to block out of habit.
I can’t do half of the training exercises again because I may try to use my wing for balance or leverage.
Growling to myself, I head to class, my boots echoing on the stone floor with each step.
The sound feels too loud, drawing attention I don’t want.
Every shadow feels like it could hide someone watching me.
The paranoia has been worse since the accident—knowing I can’t defend myself properly makes every corner a potential threat.
I’m halfway down the corridor when I find Keir waiting for me in the hallway, leaning against the wall like he has all the time in the world.
His head snaps up the moment I round the corner, like he sensed me before he saw me.
He smiles—soft and genuine—holding out a single wildflower to me.
It’s a delicate purple bloom with fuzzy petals that smells like summer meadows and sunshine.
My chest tightens at the sweet gesture from him.
“Thank you.” I accept the flower and bring it to my nose, inhaling deeply.
The scent fills my lungs, chasing away some of the anxiety that’s become my constant companion, and I purr without meaning to.
His cheeks flush pink before he turns away, bashful in a way that makes him look younger.
“You’re welcome.” He offers me his hand, and I take it, giving it a little squeeze.
His palm is warm and calloused against mine, the rough texture grounding me in the present moment.
“We’re going to be late for Callan’s class. ”
Before I can say anything, Keir steals my backpack from my shoulder with his free hand and swings it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing. The weight disappears from my back, and I realize how much the asymmetrical pull was bothering me.
“You don’t have to—” He surprises me by silencing me with a kiss.
His lips are pillow-soft and full for a man, pressing against mine with gentle insistence.
He almost steals my breath away, tasting like mint and something uniquely him—earthy and wild.
Slowly, his eyes bleed onyx, the color spreading from his pupils outward until they’re the soulless black orbs of his blink hound.
I shift mine to my dragon’s in response, sapphire bleeding to dragonic with vertical slits, and I feel like the world has stopped spinning.
The mate bond pulses between us like a living thing—incomplete but present, tugging at something deep in my chest. I pull back slowly, looking into his abyssal depths where I can see my reflection, and the pull reminds me I still need to claim him.
Complete what we started when I kissed him two weeks ago in the bedroom after he saved me.
My eyes search his face—the strong jaw dusted with stubble, the storm-gray eyes that have shifted back, the sandy brown hair that falls across his forehead.
All I see is a relaxed calm and love so pure it makes my throat tight.
“Can we go to dinner tonight? Just us?” I cup his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin and the slight rasp of stubble, staring into his eyes — human gray—like storm clouds after rain, churning with emotion.
“If that’s what you want, I can make it happen.
” He smiles so brightly it transforms his entire face, that is until his pack mates make some sort of bark-growl thing from down the hall.
The sound is territorial, challenging. His expression shifts instantly from soft to dangerous, and he vanishes from in front of me.
He reappears down the hall in less than a blink, his hand around his pack mate’s throat, lifting the other male off the ground.
The other blink hound’s feet dangle, kicking uselessly as he claws at Keir’s wrist. “She’s my mate.
..” The word mate is a deep, resonant growl that I feel in my bones.
I can see the fur racing up his arms like water flowing upstream—sand-colored and bristling with aggression.
The commotion catches Callan’s, Balor’s, and Abraxis’s attention, and they step out of their classrooms. Students gather, drawn by the smell of violence in the air.
Shit. I need to do something before this escalates into a full pack challenge.
I close the distance between us with quick strides and come up behind Keir, wrapping my arms around his waist and kissing the back of his neck.
My dragoness pushes harder against my skin, rising to the surface.
His scent reminds me of hot chocolate and marshmallows—warm and sweet and comforting and mine.
My teeth change without my permission, elongating and sharpening, and before I realize what I’m doing, I bite his shoulder through his shirt.
The fabric tears under my canines with a soft ripping sound.
Keir’s blood floods my mouth, and it tastes like happiness and warm caramel to me—sweet and rich and perfect.
The mate bond flares to life, stronger than before, connecting us in ways that go beyond the physical.
Everything around me sounds like it’s underwater. The shouting students, Callan calling for order, footsteps approaching—all of it fades away. All I hear is Keir’s heartbeat—steady, strong, mine. His pulse thunders in my ears, synchronizing with my own until I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
Then someone makes the fatal mistake of touching me. A hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me away from my unbonded mate.
I release Keir and spin around, talons extending from my fingertips with an audible snick as I roar.
The sound reverberates off of the stone walls, making several students stumble backward with their hands over their ears.
I launch whoever touched me into the crowd of onlookers—they fly backward, hitting the wall with a sickening thud that echoes down the corridor.
Blood smears the stone where they slide down.
The bone plates in my face shift, pressing against my skin from the inside in a way that’s both painful and satisfying.
I feel her—my dragoness is in a rage, clawing to get out.
Never come between a dragoness and her unbonded mate.
Especially if that dragoness is a black dragoness.
The edges of my vision pulse red, and I feel like I’m about to lose control completely.
My scales want to break through my skin.
I can feel them pressing beneath the surface, ready to erupt.
“Get her outside!” I hear my father’s voice as if he’s yelling through a pillow, distant and muffled by the blood rushing in my ears.
Arms band around me from behind, pulling me against a solid chest. Keir.
I recognize his scent, his warmth, and my rage falters for a moment.
Just long enough for recognition to cut through the haze.
Then we’re phasing somewhere. The sensation differs from Ziggy’s displacement—faster, sharper, more disorienting.
Reality bends and folds, and I feel like I’m being pulled through a straw.
By the time he releases me, we’re standing on a beach.
The ocean stretches before us, waves crashing against the shore with rhythmic violence.
I lose control of my dragoness the minute my feet hit sand, and I shift.
The transformation rips through me violently—bones breaking and reforming, skin splitting to make way for scales, my perspective shifting as I grow.
My injured wing extends fully for the first time in almost four weeks, and the relief is so intense I could cry.
I roar my rage at the sea, feeling my white-hot temper boiling under my skin like acid in my veins. Acid builds in my throat, begging to be released. The waves seem to draw back from the sound.
“Shift back, Raven! You can kill your soft-skinned mates like this!” My father’s voice cuts through my rage, and I blink, looking down.
All three of my mates stand there—Corvis, Hemlocke, and Keir.
They look tiny from this height, fragile.
Their shifts are smaller than mine. Corvis’s silver dragon form would barely reach my shoulder.
As my temper settles, the red haze clearing from my vision, I look back at my wing.
It has an odd bump to it where the break was—a thickening of the bone that will probably always be there, a permanent reminder.
But it’s standing on its own, fully extended without pain for the first time since the accident.
I flex it experimentally, feeling the muscles respond. Stiff, but functional.