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Nolan’s skin felt blistered. When he moved his mouth, his lips cracked and stung. Someone’s heavy leg was draped over one of his. He heaved it off of him as he sat up.
Trees swept past them, trunks and branches blurring together when Nolan let his gaze unfocus. The occasional bumps jostled Nolan and his skin screamed with each disturbance. The cage was moving.
Scents of charred flesh and hair filled his nose. Derrickson was sitting up, his head leaning against one of the cage bars. Most of his shirt was gone, or melted to his chest. He stared back at Nolan, eyes filled with despair and pain.
Next to Nolan and prone on his back was Grant, his light brown hair sticking out on one side of his head, burnt away on the other. His arm was twisted unnaturally; it had to be broken, at that angle. His chest rose and fell with short, shallow breaths. Injured, but alive.
Collings, though. Collings had taken the brunt of the flames. Nolan flicked his gaze toward the other end of the cage. A pathetic shape lay across the width of the cage, unmoving. No breath lifted the blackened torso.
“Dead,” Nolan said aloud, forcing the word through his scorched windpipe.
“Aye,” Derrickson confirmed. “He took his final breath an hour or so ago. He was a good warrior and a good man.”
“I’m sorry we lost him,” Nolan said.
“Yes, me, too,” Derrickson said.
Something unfurled in Nolan’s chest, like a flower blossoming. It felt at odds with what he saw before him, but then he remembered. He’d dreamed of Tamryn. He’d spoken to her. She was safe, alive. He wondered whether or not to share the information with Derrickson, then decided that it couldn’t hurt anything.
“Tamryn is alive and unharmed,” Nolan said.
Derrickson shot him a suspicious look. “And you would know this how, exactly?”
“Dreamed her,” Nolan said simply.
“That isn’t the most outlandish thing I’ve ever heard,” Derrickson said.
Grant moaned. He moved his arm as if he’d pick himself up, then stopped suddenly. His moan turned into an anguished cry.
“Tommy,” Derrickson said. “Wake up, mate.”
It took Nolan a moment to remember that “mate” also meant “friend” to the English.
Grant opened his eyes. Nolan helped him sit up so he wouldn’t need to put weight on the broken arm. Wincing, Grant leaned against the side of the cage. His eyes found Collings’s body and his expression shuttered.
“I should’ve been the one to take the flames,” Grant said. “It wasn’t truly his turn; it was mine.”
“He died a hero,” Derrickson said, eyes flashing.
“Yes, well, that’s quite like Collings,” Grant said. “Always stealing the glory.”
Nolan watched, perplexed, as the two men smiled at each other. They started to laugh, but their laughter dissolved into pained coughing.
“He’ll be missed,” Grant said once he could speak again.
“Aye, he will,” Derrickson said, sobering.
The truck pulling their cage came to a stop. Nolan looked up in alarm.
“They’re going to move a fallen tree or somesuch,” Derrickson said. “The road isn’t well-maintained, apparently. They’ve had to stop several times. I’d wager we haven’t traveled more than a mile since leaving the camp.”
“How many vehicles?” Nolan asked, trying to remember how many he’d seen at the campsite. “Two?”
“This one pulling us along, and another in front of it,” Derrickson said. “You’d think they might move faster with these modern machines.”
“We should use this stop to our advantage,” Nolan said, lowering his voice.
“You have ideas?” Derrickson asked.
Even Grant perked up.
Nolan looked down at his body. He was in no condition to fight. Angry red burns covered his legs and much of his torso. Even his dick had been burnt. He’d heal, but everything looked raw and hurt like a motherfucker.
They had to get out of here before that asshole decided it was time to test them again. He didn’t want to see another one of these men die, and he sure as hell had more to live for than he’d ever had before in his life. Tamryn. The thought of her out there, struggling to find safety, steeled his resolve.
“You’re not gonna like my idea,” Nolan said.
Derrickson flicked his gaze to Nolan. “Whatever it is, we’ll do it.”
“We use Collings,” Nolan said.
“It’s not as if they’ll remove his body. They don’t care if he’s dead in here with us,” Grant said.
“They will if we tell them he’s shifting to heal,” Nolan said. “They don’t know he’s dead, do they?”
“We can’t fake the glowing light of a shift,” Derrickson said. “Not unless we’re actually shifting into our dragons.”
The sound of a chainsaw started up as Bronson’s men began to take care of whatever tree had fallen across the old road.
“I can shift, and there’s light when I do it,” Nolan said, pointing to himself. “You two can get in front of me and Collings, like you’re trying to hide what he’s doing. I’ll be behind, shifting.”
Grant looked skeptical.
Nolan shrugged. “We have to make them think we don’t want them to open the cage, but we also don’t want to get squished by a dragon shifting within the bars. Hopefully they won’t think to count who’s standing.”
“I said we would do it, whatever it was,” Derrickson said, rising up to stand. “Come on, Tommy.”
Grant’s arm was already starting to heal, and he moved it carefully back and forth as he came to stand beside Derrickson. Nolan and Derrickson eased Collings’s body to the rear of the cage, where Nolan and the body would be mostly out of sight.
“Hey, no,” Derrickson said loudly over the chainsaw. “You can’t do that, Collings!”
“Shut up,” Grant said at a slightly lower volume, but still loud enough for the others to hear from the front of the truck.
The chainsaw’s motor stopped, and Nolan started his shift. He’d spent so much time in his life rushing the change that he wasn’t sure how to delay it. But he wanted to keep the white glow for as long as possible, and that meant keeping himself between forms. He gritted his changing teeth and jaw against the pain of holding off the completion. He was half man, half beast, and nature wanted him to choose. Beast, or man.
Two of Bronson’s guys appeared. Nolan couldn’t see them through the shining light surrounding him and Collins’s body, but he could hear them approach.
“Hey, Wallen, we got another one!” one of the men shouted.
“Probably trying to heal himself after Barr’s session with them,” one of the other guys said.
He sounded so delighted about it, Nolan couldn’t wait to rake his claws across the man’s face. Let them try to survive dragon fire and see if it filled them with joy.
“I’m coming with the tranqs,” another voice said. “Open ’er up and I’ll get the others out of the way.”
The cage door opened, and Nolan completed the change, mentally stepping over the balance of half man, half beast—all the way into beast.
He heard the metal clanging on the door, then the fwip sound of a dart gun. Derrickson and Grant dove out of the way, and the dart hit Nolan. He brushed it out of his thick fur before it could do any damage.
The cage door was open. Nolan barreled forward and smacked the tranq gun from one of the men’s hands, then raked his paw over the guy’s face. One of his claws hooked on the man’s jugular and Nolan felt the satisfying sensation of tearing out the throat of his enemy.
He roared and leaped at curly-haired Wallen, who stood at the front of the group.
Derrickson and Grant spilled out of the cage after Nolan, fists swinging. One of Bronson’s men came around the side of the truck, lifting a now-running chainsaw. Derrickson, weaponless, ran straight for him. He dodged the chainsaw and tackled the man to the ground. The chainsaw went flying and smashed into a tree.
Grant had gotten another guy in a headlock and was blocking his air.
A roar came from the sky.
Nolan growled and looked up, expecting to see Charles, or maybe Ponytail wearing the orange pelt. If the dragon came after them, they were fucked.
But the scaled creature that came into sight was neither green nor orange—it was violet.
Violet like Tamryn’s eyes.
The dragon breathed fire into the sky, a show of strength, a warning.
“Aw, shit,” Wallen said.
Nolan backed away from him, but he didn’t need to, because the guy was already running. The dragon in the air swooped down low and blew fire at the guy. He screamed and dropped his gun, then fell to the ground, writhing.
Flames erupted from the dragon’s mouth again and swallowed one of the other men. Nolan roared in encouragement. That was his mate up there, kicking ass.
She spun in the sky, her lavender wings folded to give her more speed.
Then, looking down at Nolan, Derrickson, and Grant, she screeched and flapped her great wings to climb higher.
The two men stripped out of their clothes. Ethereal, colored light surrounded each of them, blue surrounding Derrickson, green around Grant. Moments later, dragons stood where the men had been. Derrickson had transformed into a sapphire-blue dragon, and Grant was a deep forest green. They roared up at the sky, then launched upward to join their queen.
The three dragons coasted over the road as if searching for something. They made passes in turn, their heads tilted. Nolan backed into the trees. The dragons obviously had a purpose, and better that he didn’t get in the way of whatever they had in mind.
Still in his bear form, he collected Grant’s and Derrickson’s clothes and took cover in the forest. He wasn’t sure how many of their captors survived. Wallen and Ponytail were dead, and good fuckin’ riddance.
On Tamryn’s next pass over the road, she breathed fire over the black SUV that had been towing the cage. Nolan felt the heat of her fire against his face, but he stood his ground and waited to see what was next.
The blue-scaled dragon, Derrickson, torched the truck that had been in front of the SUV.
Nolan bellowed and stood up on his hind legs in triumph. Fuck yeah. The dragons were laying waste to their enemies.