Anna!
Nik bolted upright. The blanket covering his shoulders slipped to the stone floor. Around the chamber, many Maori stirred, some rubbing their eyes.
Anna!
A thunderbolt of pain ricocheted through Nik’s shoulder and side. He cried out.
Anna!
Was he still dreaming? Why was that girl’s name repeating in his head?
“Great One, what’s wrong?” Nanna stumbled from her blankets toward the back of the room.
Nik brought himself to full height as Joe stumbled into the chamber, holding his side. “They took her.”
“Who took who?” Nanna asked.
Nik didn’t need to listen for the answer. The deep ache sinking in his chest was not his own pain, but phantom terror filtering through the Kotahi bond. Even in human form, Nik and his dragon were still connected, and there was only one person whose loss could have affected Joe this much.
“Where’s Anna?”
A blast of heat seared Nik’s face. He stepped back as people screamed and ran from the entrance, where bright orange and yellow flames spewed into the room from the human doorway like someone pointed a flamethrower through the opening.
Blankets blazed to life. Smoke fogged the chamber. A child wailed.
Nik squinted in the chaos, backing away from the heat, but Anna’s long, dark hair was absent from the scrambling Maori. Finding the girl, though, was the least of their worries as a foggy, gray haze filled the room.
“Get down!” Nik yelled over the commotion. “Lay on the floor. The smoke will rise.”
His grandmother ran past him. “The cathedral, it will be ruined.”
What she thought she could do about it, he didn’t know. He grabbed her and tugged her back. The wind wafted from his lungs as she landed atop him.
“The sacred lights,” she cried.
“They’re just worms, Nanna.” They weren’t just worms to her, but right now they had the lives of human beings to worry about. A couple thousand blinking larvae would have to wait.
Nikau, help me! Puff’s voice exploded in his mind. Nik scanned the scrambling people, and found a Joe-shaped silhouette within the thickening smoke. He worked with a few other men, pulling at the rocks that had collapsed, blocking the human entrance. He still had trouble connecting the dragon’s inner voice to the platinum-haired man before him, but he needed to contain his awe. If they didn’t unblock the exit, everyone hiding in this cavern would die.
“Stay down. You’ll be able to breathe better closer to the floor,” Nik told Nanna, before stumbling toward the piled stone.
He winced from the heat coming off the rocks, but the flames had stopped, thank goodness. With dozens of uncontained fires still burning throughout the room, though, the smoke had thickened like a murky blanket, hiding everyone’s movement until Nik was nearly atop them. One of the men at the door was wrapping a torn, red cloth around his hands, while Joe and Connor grabbed boulders no human could lift alone and threw them to the side.
“Cover your hands,” Connor told Nik, before grabbing another stone.
The first man tied off the red cloth and handed Nik the rest of the fabric. The thick gray cloud burned Nik’s eyes and stung his lungs. He coughed, but it only seemed to deepen the pain.
Hands covered, Nik grabbed a side of a steaming boulder and helped shift the weight so it could be rolled. A few people tried to get through the narrow opening, but they pushed and shoved, allowing no one to exit.
A child fell, lost in the smoke.
A woman called out for someone named Stephen. No one answered her.
From every direction, the sound of panic and coughing bounced off the columns of smoke.
They had to work faster.
A vision of Anna laughing filled his mind before winking out. Shame struggled against a wrathful despair that cut deeper than the searing smoke. Joe fought alongside them, helping to widen the opening, but the only human he wanted, no—needed to save was no longer among them.
The certainty of Anna’s absence overwhelmed Nik. Somehow, even through the commotion, he could feel the lack of her presence. The knowledge tore holes through Joe deeper than the smoke and fire ever could. Anna was his to protect, and he’d lost her.
A whoosh of cool air filtered into the chamber as Joe and Connor rolled the largest free boulder from the entrance. Coughing people and crying children ambled past Nik and through the opening they’d created.
Joe stumbled, but Nik and Connor grabbed him, easing him to the ground outside the cave.
The smoke still rolled over their heads. Rags and boxes that had once been beds lay charred and smoldering inside. Several bodies littered the cavern floor. Such a senseless loss.
Joe held his head, staring at the ground. “I told her I’d keep her safe. Why did she go outside?”
Nik didn’t question how Joe knew she’d left. He barely understood the Kotahi link, but it was the most powerful connection he’d ever felt. He couldn’t even imagine what the bond would be like between a dragon and his intended mate.
Nik wished he could think of something to say that would actually help. ‘I’m sorry’ sounded so trite, so obvious. Joe hadn’t just lost a girl, but handed her into the talons of a creature that would most likely rip her to shreds once he was done with her.
“I can’t let that happen,” Joe said.
Nik eyed the red stain dripping down the pale man’s side. With a wound like that, now worse from the exertion of widening the entrance, there wasn’t much Joe would be able to do about Gale taking Anna, and they both knew it. “We need Tyler.”
“He won’t be joining us.” Connor eased down beside them. “There are two badly-burned bodies out here. I’m fairly certain one is him. The other is a young female.”
No, it couldn’t be. “Has anyone found Anna?” Nik asked, as Pops approached.
“It’s not her,” Joe whispered. “I can feel her terror. She’s hurt. She’s alone.” He grunted, standing slowly. “I need to help her.”
Pops pushed Joe back down with a two-fingered shove. “You are still the Great One, but not so great in health at the moment. You won’t be saving anyone.”
Joe winced, holding his side as he stood again. “I can’t leave her there.”
“But going to help her is suicide, and you know it,” Connor said.
Joe grunted through clenched teeth, shoving Connor with what looked like all this strength, but the older dragon barely moved.
Joe fell back to the rock behind him. “You’ve never chosen a female for more than an hour of pleasure. You have no idea what I’m going through.”
Connor pursed his lips. “I don’t know, I just might.” He lowered his eyes. “It seems I may have paid a few too many visits to my queen’s sister’s bed.”
“Sybil?” Joe asked.
Connor nodded. “I noticed a strange sensation the second time I went to her. After the third, I started to sense her.” He rubbed his eyes. “Last night she went to bed upset because I hadn’t come to her like I’d promised. Her emotions hit me worse than if I’d been staring into her beautiful eyes.”
Joe glanced at Nik, then back to Connor. “Then you understand, this isn’t a choice for me. I have to go after Anna.”
A stiff silence hung between them as the Maori threw partially-charred blankets over the dead. Dragons in movies were thrilling and fantastical. Dragons in real-life were the makings of a modern-day horror. Except for the two seated here, in their human form, talking about their human girlfriends.
Nik fingered the charred edge of his shirt. No one would believe any of this if he ever found the courage to tell someone.
Connor sighed. “I’ll help retrieve the queen.”
Wait. What?
Nik stood. “Are you two out of your minds? Neither of you can shift.” He pointed at Joe. “He’s bleeding again, and we’ve lost the closest thing we had to a doctor.”
Pops moved between them and jabbed a silver pole into the ground. The gleaming metal hummed with the effort.
“Even your odds,” Pops said, folding his arms.
Connor inched back from the dragon spear. “Neither of us can touch that.”
Nik stared at his reflection in the shiny metal. How many times had he stared at the head of this spear when mounted on their family room wall, and dreamed of being a dragon slayer like in the movies? In his childhood fantasies, though, the spear was never this long, and he was a muscular, accomplished hero, not an unemployed factory worker.
Joe stirred, pulling himself to his feet. He seemed to steel himself, before reaching for the spear.
“Wait.” Nik held up his arm, keeping Joe from the spear.
What was the legend?
The spear had been forged with normal metal, but mixed with ground-up talons and the venom from an amethyst dragon, which was acidic, especially to other dragons. Exactly how they’d been forged so long ago, without technology, was lost to time—part of the reason Nik always considered the relic a fraud. From the looks on Joe and Connor’s faces, however, it seems he was surely mistaken.
Nik drew his fingertips along the cool metal, before seizing the etched grip and yanking the spear from the ground.
Joe gaped, his eyes lowering to Nik’s hand.
No, boss, there’s no pain. Nik considered the silence hanging in the air. Connor and Joe exchanged a glance.
Yes, the Kotahi stood among them, human and weak, holding the only manmade weapon that the two of them knew could harm a dragon.
What he wouldn’t have given for a gun, or a goddamn rocket launcher. Not that he knew how to use either.
Anyway, here he was, weapon in-hand with a damsel in distress hidden somewhere in the mountains. In his fantasies, the beautiful girl was always his, and he’d never failed to save her.
Anna belonged to Joe, but the trickle of need sparking across the Kotahi bond itched into Nik’s soul. As insane as this all was, he needed to save her as much as Joe did.
The pressure in his chest lightened as his shoulders relaxed, but his heart still managed to pummel his ribcage. He took a steadying breath. “I’ll carry the spear. I’m going with you.”