Chapter Twenty-Four

Wing throbbing in agony, left leg doing the same, Rune had to use every wile, every trick, to dodge the onslaught of dragons hurling into the skies. Chaos reigned around him as his men flashed by or tangled with their foes. Fire and smoke filled the skies, obscuring his vision.

But no one came directly at Rune. He ripped one fucker off Drake only to turn around and have to duck the swipe of another’s tail. All around him dragons roared a challenge or screamed in pain.

Then that horrible sound reached him again.

Shunk-Snap.

“Protect,” he screamed through the others’ minds, hoping like hell the younger ones knew what the hell that meant.

In the same instant, he grabbed the tail of a navy-blue asshole flying by and yanked its body in front of him. The thuds of those fucking spears sounded like bugs on a windshield, and the dragon he’d used as a shield was dead in an instant, a small whine of air the only sound he made before going still.

Rune let it drop.

From nowhere, one of Mathai’s men tackled him midair, but it made the mistake of coming at him from below. Rookie move. In a flinging motion only black dragons could do because of the way their wings attached, he flipped them hard and fast, disorienting the other dragon. Then he struck with all the furor of a cornered wolverine, ripping and slashing, ignoring the bolts of pain lancing up his leg each time he struck, his talons cutting through the other’s softer underbelly scales, until the thing went limp.

As he let that fucker fall away, too, another dragon appeared. Only before they could engage, Drake flashed by, chasing a green opponent. He caught the red dragon facing off against Rune in the face with his barbed tail, sending the thing plummeting, scrabbling at his head with his front claws.

As Rune backed up, searching for his next fight, movement from above caught his attention. A flash in the moonlight.

Dragons. At least another thirty of them, bearing down from above. He caught sight of one black dragon in particular—young and untried, it bobbled in the air as another dragon rushed by. The damn kid from the boat. Apparently, the bounty hunters thought they’d still get paid for his capture or death.

Fuck.

Too many. Especially with Levi’s group still hidden or captured or dead.

Rune turned in time to see a gold dragon lunging for his throat. In a deliberate move, he yanked his wings in close and dropped, only to come down on top of another beast already waiting for him.

This time, his opponent had the advantage, attaching to his side and beating at him with his tail. A spike found its way through his scales and he grunted, keeping in a howl of pain. The gold dragon that had come at him dropped down, ready to take his throat again as the other held him. Except Hall and Kanta suddenly barreled into the fucker, tearing him to shreds in a coordinated attack. A century of working together as a group and in different combos proved helpful now, thank the gods.

Distracted by his compatriot’s fate, the dragon clinging to Rune let up. Rune took advantage and flipped over on him, then shredded his wings in a frenzy of fury, over so fast, the other dragon had no idea what hit him until he was falling back to earth.

Rune looked up to find Hall grinning at him from a mouth covered in blood, black against his neon green scales in the moonlight.

“We need more numbers,” he said. “Cover me. I’m going to find the rest of our people.”

“How are you going to—”

Kanta stopped asking as Rune shot into the night away from the fight. Before he could attack, first he had to disappear and make sure no one followed.

A yowl at his six told him Hall and Kanta had taken care of whoever tried to follow. As soon as he was far enough away, he turned to face the fighting, to make sure he was alone. What he found was pure defeat. Dragon bodies littered the ground. Hopefully more of Mathai’s than theirs. Dragons coming at them from every side had maneuvered his people into a compact space in the sky. Surrounded.

If he was going to help them, he couldn’t focus on that.

“Qara. We need numbers,” he shot the thought outward, hoping like fuck she’d be able to hear him. Even three more could make a difference.

Now, where were the others? Levi had said Mathai had them.

…

Hadyn stood on the second-floor balcony of the home they’d commandeered, or maybe owned, she wasn’t sure which. The mates were all inside, hidden in the basement just in case. The best they could do on such short notice.

No way was Hadyn waiting inside. She needed to see, and this balcony gave her a direct view of the Rocky Mountains, stretched out like silent sentinels in the night. She hoped like heck that the occasional flashes of light in the distance were lightning, not fire.

But she knew better.

Qara, Delaney, and Cami all stood at her side, all focused on the same sky. Hadyn didn’t bother asking them if they were hearing anything. She could tell by their pinched expressions, the desperation in their eyes, the way their bodies held so still, that they weren’t.

Beside her, Qara suddenly twitched, then gasped.

She glanced at Delaney and Cami. “Did you hear that?”

The other two women shook their heads.

“It was Rune,” Qara said.

Rune? Hadyn gripped the wood railing so hard, several splinters dug into her palms, but she hardly noticed, not pulling her focus from Qara.

“They need us,” her mother said to the other two dragon women. “They need numbers.”

Needing numbers so badly they pulled protection from the mates? Hadyn shook her head, trying to keep a trembling deep inside her from overtaking her body.

Fuck. The word punched through her.

Delaney and Cami didn’t hesitate, sprinting into the house and down the stairs, Qara right behind them and Hadyn fast behind her, though unable to keep up with their greater speed. By the time she made it outside, they were almost done shifting.

“Take me with you,” she begged.

“You know we can’t,” Qara’s voice sounded in her head. “Keep the mates safe. It’s what Rune would want.”

With that, Qara turned and followed Delaney and Cami into the night. She watched until their forms disappeared as the scales on their bellies reflected the starry sky above. Even after she couldn’t see them, Hadyn watched.

And waited.

Wind, not shadow, alerted her a heartbeat before a dragon’s bright blue claws closed around her and plucked her off the ground.

“Got you,” said a voice in her head. Something about that scratchy, smug voice tugged at a familiarity inside her.

Oh shit. The blue dragon from the mountain.

The one who’d walked away when it had been obvious what the green dragon who’d attacked her had in mind.

Rather than struggle, Hadyn did what she’d practiced a thousand times with Chaghan just in case something like this ever happened. She went limp in his grasp. As small as she was, a dragon this size would have trouble keeping hold of her, especially if he wasn’t expecting her to struggle.

“Where are you taking me?” she called against the wind as he flew her, gaining altitude, the dark world and homey lights of the small mountain town falling away rapidly.

“When he’s done with the Huracáns and their helpers, Mathai would like a word with you.”

“Who?” she asked. In case she was wrong in her assumptions. Also to keep him talking. At the same time, she very slowly tried to inch out the blade she had hidden in her boot.

Escaping this was going to take flawless timing, something that she hadn’t had last time she took a knife to a dragon shifter.

“You know who,” he said. “He wants to know how you control your sign before he sends you to the Mating Council.”

The blue dragon paused midair and turned to face the direction of the fighting. Had he been given orders to hold here? A flash of fire peaks away showed her where the clash was going on. Raging, she’d judge, based on that amount of fire.

She got a grip on her blade. Taking a long breath, she lay still for a moment, picturing what needed to happen next.

“You need a plan,” the memory of Chaghan’s words filled her.

They’d practiced so many different plans. This was one of the trickier ones because she needed to escape his grasp, but still hold on and somehow force him to the ground. Otherwise, she’d die in the fall.

In a move a gymnast would envy, she latched onto the knuckle above her head and shoved her feet straight up, between the digits, then flipped, ending up on the outside of his fist, where he couldn’t clamp down on her.

“What the fuck—”

She didn’t wait for his reaction. Jumping for the rounded curve of his hind knee, she found purchase, clinging to his scales. Chaghan would have been proud. Her heart pounding so hard she could hear it above the wind, she jumped again, landing on his back.

Hadyn shoved to her feet and ran, but the blue dragon flipped, and she had to dive to her stomach, holding on with her fingertips as he rolled, trying to dislodge her, no doubt. A smooth roll, because he had orders. Mathai apparently wanted her alive.

As soon as he leveled out, she was up and running again, ready for—in fact, hoping for—the next time he rolled.

And he did.

The exact same way he had. This time, she didn’t hold on. She ran the opposite direction of his barrel roll, keeping the dragon between her and the ground and using gravity to stay on him and upright. Up over his belly, past his wing, across his chest to the side of his neck as he came upright. She latched on there, but he gave a massive shake, trying to get her off. Out of desperation, she jabbed her dagger into his neck as a bigger handhold. Immediately, he steadied. Yanking the knife out, in a flash she climbed right up to the eye on that side of his head. She held the dagger right in front of his cornea.

“Take me safely to the ground or I blind you,” she demanded.

Chaghan had once told her that other than fire and flight a dragon relied most on his sense of sight. A blinded dragon was useless in a fight. Clearly, they’d never seen a blind human do the amazing things they did. Arrogant species that they were, she wasn’t surprised they underestimated those who weren’t deemed whole and worthy. Which meant she was also not surprised when the blue dragon immediately tipped his wings to spiral to the ground.

The second he touched down, Hadyn was off his back and on the ground, not too far from the home where the unmated women were hiding. Getting down might be a stupid idea, but she was banking on the whole he needed her alive thing. If she was going to get away without falling to her death, this was the only option.

“Come at me again, and I won’t warn you this time,” she snarled, doing her best to sound like Rune. “I’ll take both your eyes and more.”

Carefully, not turning her back to him, she backed toward a thick copse of trees.

“You bitch,” he snarled.

The roar of fire sounded a heartbeat before he opened his mouth, aiming it right at her, apparently not as worried about Mathai’s orders as she’d assumed. Hadyn dropped to the ground, covering her head with her arms, not that it would help.

But fire didn’t blast over her.

A choking sound had her cautiously raising her head to find the blue dragon jerking and thrashing. His neck glowed through his scales, turning bright and brighter, almost blinding. In the center of the brightness, a darker trickle of blood told her what had happened.

“Oh my gods,” she muttered while at the same time crawling for better cover behind a large boulder.

She must’ve pierced the pipe the fire came up when she’d stuck his neck with her dagger for a better grip. Getting behind the solid rock, she dared to poke her head up and over to see what was happening. The blue dragon whipped his head from side to side, horrendous choking noises clawing out of his throat. Then, without warning, his neck exploded in a conflagration of flame and dragon guts.

Blue fire erupted all around her, catching in the dry trees and going up like an inferno.

…

Rune remained in the air, far from the fighting, and searched the ground for the telling gouge in the earth. Finding it, he frowned. Levi’s massive golden body was gone. He couldn’t have turned to ash so quickly. Rune approached from the dark side, away from the flames. He had to shift to human form and walk the last bit, his limp slowing him. Frustrating the hell out of him. He gritted his teeth through it and pushed himself harder.

Keeping his nails as talons, he reached out with his mind. “Levi.”

A groaning from his right sounded among the tall pine trees. Rune moved as fast as he could while favoring his weaker leg, in the direction of the sound, finding first a blood trail. Following that, he discovered Levi, shifted to human and sitting propped up against the rough bark of a tree. He must’ve pulled the spears from his body before shifting. Multiple holes were oozing blood, glittering wet against the black of his shirt and pants.

“Fuck man.” Rune rushed to his side. Ripping Levi’s shirt off, he then tore it to strips and tried to tie them around the worst of the wounds.

“Lyndi,” Levi said, hardly able to get the words out, his voice wrecked and hoarse.

“Where are they?”

“A cave. Mathai guards it.”

Rune went to go, but Levi grabbed his shirt with surprising strength. “That’s not Mathai. It’s an illusion. I don’t know where the fucker is.”

Which explained why Levi hadn’t attacked him when he’d been let up.

Rune paused, looking his brother, a relationship forged in battle and life, in the eyes. “Don’t you fucking die,” he said.

Levi managed a lopsided grin that faded in an instant, urgency turning his eyes darker. “Go save my mate.”

Rune left him there and ran.

It would take longer, but rather than risk shifting and being seen, Rune made his way across the mountain by foot. His injury forced him to take it slow, the clash overhead driving his urgency.

There. A dark hole in the ground behind Mathai’s illusion. The warlock again? Impressive.

He studied the surroundings, searching for any hint that the real Mathai was nearby. Tempting to hunt down the red dragon leader of the Alliance, but if he failed, his people were fucked. With slow, deliberate moves, placing his feet carefully and staying in the shadows, he crept around a boulder and into the hidden cavern.

Carefully, he lit the flames in his eyes, giving him enough black light to see his way down the pit that dropped into the earth at a steep angle.

“Lyndi,” he called out with his mind.

No answer.

Were they unconscious? Magically spelled so they couldn’t use telepathy like Levi had been with that net thing? Use of a warlock in battle was also prohibited. Did Mathai hate them so much he was willing to risk himself like this, using illegal methods to win? Why would any dragon shifters follow him now?

Rune turned a small bend in the tunnel only to jerk to a halt. A massive door, round and thick like a bank vault, stood in his way.

They weren’t unconscious. He couldn’t hear them answer through the bunker where they were being kept.

As quickly and carefully as he could, Rune inspected the door. Not dragon size, but human size. As far as he could tell, the thing would require a master safecracker to get in the usual way. He had only one option available that he could see, and that was a long shot at best.

Don’t be dragonsteel.

Maybe he’d get lucky. Something this large, clearly built into this mountain right here, rather than created outside and placed inside later, wouldn’t be possible to forge out of dragonsteel in this tiny space. If this was human steel, he could melt it.

Unfortunately, he’d have to do this in human form, with no space to shift here.

Igniting the flames inside his belly, Rune breathed in slowly, risking the bellows sound as he stoked the flame hotter and hotter. Then he blew a concentrated stream of flame over the large metal hinges of the door. The black-tipped flames hit the slick metal and turned back in on him, obscuring his view of what he was doing, but he didn’t let up, holding the fire steady.

A small red glow appeared between his black and silver flames, and he cut himself off to inspect the damage. The hinges shone bright red, superheated and hopefully turning pliable. Dragonsteel wouldn’t do that, but human metals would’ve melted by now. This must be a hybrid of the two.

Fuck.

He stoked his fire and kept going, cutting off the flames only to take a break every so often.

“Who’s out there?” Lyndi’s voice pinged in his head.

She could do that? Shift a small part of herself? Impressive. Rune shut off and smiled at the melted mess of a hinge. Had he thinned it enough in one spot to hear her?

“Rune,” he thought back.

“Thank the gods,” she answered, though the words were slightly garbled, like listening through water. “They have Levi.”

Don’t thank the gods yet. Her mate was still out there, injured, and the rest of the team was losing.

“No time,” Rune said. “Is anyone with you who can blow a steady stream of fire in human form?”

Because he was running out.

A dragon without fire was like a lion without teeth. But they needed the numbers, and a lion without teeth still had claws.

“I’m here,” Keighan’s voice came through, garbled as well.

“Me too,” Jiǎ said.

“And me.” More voices came through. Aidan and Sera. Rivin. Shula and Bree and their people. Lyndi and Levi’s boys. All of them still alive. Thank the gods.

“Hit the hinges with your fire. Hold it as long as you have to. Take the top.”

Rune moved to the bottom hinge and resumed what he’d been doing, holding the stream until the flames started to spit and spark. Still, he kept going. They needed the metal so pliable they could break it open.

The fire started to dwindle, coming in fits and spurts as he sucked up the dregs of fuel stored inside his body. He still kept going. He blew until the pain behind his sternum told him he was retching, with nothing left to draw forward.

Gagging, Rune pitched forward, hands on his knees, chest heaving.

“Keighan?”

“Almost there,” came the immediate thought, louder now. “You’d better step back.”

Rune moved around the lip in the corridor that had hidden the door from him in the first place. An explosion reverberated, loud and harsh in the quiet of the caves. A quick check showed the door only barely ajar. Without waiting, Rune left his people to it. He couldn’t help from his side. They were going to have to bust their way out from inside, but the noise was going to alert someone outside.

Time to track down Mathai.

At the next slam of sound, he started running, using the booms coming fast and louder now to cover his footfall as he sprinted up the steep incline of the tunnel to the top.

A different explosion sounded as he burst into the forest lining the mouth of the cavern, the sound of something hitting hard rock.

“We’re out,” Rivin’s thought was exactly what Rune needed to hear.

“Get your asses up here and into the air. We’re outnumbered. And we’re losing.”

Even as he sent the thought back, he searched the area around the pit, but the illusion of Mathai’s red scales body no longer peeked through the gaps in the trees. Rune shifted, right there and then, pushing his animal to the front faster than either of them liked, but still retaining control.

That’s when he saw him. At first just a flash of red a good mile away, showing when fire erupted above.

Rune lost sight of the Alliance leader as his friends shot into the sky all around him, clashing with the other forces with audible thuds and bombs that ricocheted off the mountains.

Shula, the black dragoness, paused. “Are you coming?”

If he hit Mathai in force with others, they would all be deemed traitors, even more so than they already were. No. He needed to take that fuckwad out himself. “Be right there.”

After a pause she nodded. “Lyndi and Sera are with the boys. They’re staying down there with Vilsinn blocking the entrance so no one can get in.”

Then she launched herself into the air, joining the fight.

Rune hesitated only a moment. “Lyndi,” he thought at his friend. “Levi is injured.” He relayed the location to her. Up to her to find her mate.

That done, Rune turned his focus on Mathai. Still where he’d seen him. He would likely expect Rune or someone else to come at him from above. Which meant one thing. Shifting again, back to human form, Rune silently made his awkward, limp-ass way through the trees to where the leader stood.

He slowed as he neared the spot. Mathai was in a clearing in dragon form, his scales nearly black in the darkness. At his feet lay a man who’d been beaten badly.

Rune recognized him instantly. Zhuron. The representative for the Black Clan in the Alliance, his friend, and his insider within that council.

Fuck.

Time to be the stealthy motherfucker rumor had it he could be. Like any honorable creature, attacking from behind was anathema, but Rune needed this over fast. He made his way around the site where Mathai stood, his head tipped up and watching the clash of dragons above. Farther away until he found a clearing of trees large enough to allow him to shift on the ground without being detected.

As soon as he was in dragon form, crouched low to the ground like a cat, he gathered all his strength and readied himself. He had one shot at this.

In a move that was both a leap, mostly with his right leg which unbalanced him slightly, and a push with his wings, he still managed to shoot low over the treetops and tackled the red dragon, the impact jarring him hard. Together they rolled, beating at each other, scrambling with claws and jaws, both trying to get purchase.

By some miracle of skill and luck, and maybe because the other dragon was older and slower, they came to a stop with Rune on top, pinning Mathai to the ground, teeth at his jugular.

That had been too easy.

“Yield,” he ordered.

Only Mathai drew his dragon lips back, baring his teeth in a sinister smile. “What are you going to do, traitor? Kill me?”

The mental communication was going to every fucking dragon in the fight. He didn’t have to glance up to know that the fighting above them paused. The sudden silence told him that.

“You have used illegal weapons—a warlock, a Dragon Slayer—against your own people,” Rune growled, also letting the others hear. “I’m not the traitor.”

“Zhuron used those. I did not,” Mathai said. “He will be punished, of course.”

Rune looked the bastard in his self-satisfied eyes and knew those words for what they were. The red dragon was covering his own ass. “Lies,” Rune snarled.

But Mathai was smart. Blame the illegal weapons on another black dragon traitor within his own group, taking out Rune’s spy. If Rune killed Mathai here and now, he’d only justify his deaths and those of every dragon fighting with him.

But we’re dead already.

No. Fuck this. It ended now.

“Mathai Draxonis. I judge you to be a traitor to your own people—”

“Rune don’t,” Finn’s voice sounded in his head, for him alone.

Mathai’s eyes widened in shock, and he must’ve realized Rune was dead serious, because he started thrashing, but Rune had had time during their exchange to get a solid grip.

He continued his judgement. “You have sent mates to their deaths. You have kept and used a Dragon Slayer against your own people. You have used a warlock as well.”

A sound like a massive wave—like a shooshing thunder—told him the dragons fighting against them were coming for him now.

“Rune, stop.” Finn again. “They’re coming for you.”

“As an Enforcer, appointed by King Gorgon of the Black Clan to uphold the laws of all dragon shifters, and keep us safe from harm, even from our own kind, I sentence you to immediate death.”

With one hand he punched through the slightly softer scales of Mathai’s belly with a crunch of bones and a gurgle of blood, ignoring the pain and likely breaking a few of his own bones in the process. With a roar, he ripped out Mathai’s heart, holding it up for all to see, still beating in his hand.

“Traitor!” The cry went up from every dragon coming for him.

Rune flung it to the ground, then shot up into the air, using every technique he’d ever learned to disappear into the night sky. It helped that, in their shock at his action, almost all their attackers pulled up short, hovering in the air, not knowing what to do.

That’s when Rune caught sight of a glitter in the darkness. Fire. Bright blue fucking dragon fire nowhere near the site of the battle, pine trees exploding with visible pops in the conflagration.

“Dragon fire on the ground,” he called.

The flames were growing bigger by the second, no doubt finding plenty of fuel in the dry trees of the Rocky Mountains. Close to the small mountain town full of humans.

The place Qara had taken the women. Taken Hadyn.

All hell broke loose, the fight resuming, because the Huracáns hadn’t just waited to watch him be gutted, they’d followed the dragons coming for him.

Rune jerked in the direction of the blue flames rising higher into the sky, smoke starting to boil up like a witch’s cauldron, only to pull up sharply at Finn’s shouted, “We need you in this, Abaddon.”

“Someone has to go,” he snarled back.

“We got this,” came three voices.

Five of Lyndi’s boys—including William and Marin—too young to fight, but old enough to fly. They shot out of the tunnel in the ground so fast, they must’ve been waiting for their chance to join the fray.

“Do it,” Finn ordered.

Rune roared his frustration. Hadyn was there. Gods she was right there. But his people were in the fight of their lives. He shot straight up and flipped, aiming for the battle. Then he gained altitude, his color hiding him in the smoke and dark. As soon as he was over the battling dragons, he paused and took the lay of the field.

With a grim smile, he homed in on a red dragon hovering at the center, no doubt readying for his next face off. Rune dove, arrowing straight for the fucker.

“Boss.” One of Lyndi’s boys’ voices broke through every mind, even their foes, his voice high and urgent. “The fire is coming down on the town. Fast. We need to stop it now. The humans.”

Those words jerked Rune up from his dive and he shot sideways. Fuck orders. He wasn’t waiting.

Duty that had been ingrained in him flash heated with the need to protect Hadyn and the other women, and every single thought for himself went by the wayside.

“Huracáns on me,” he said. “We have to stop that fire from spreading, or everything we fight for is lost.”

He wasn’t even trying to hide himself at this point, allowing every dragon in the area in on his thoughts. All dragons would understand why that fire was the most dangerous thing happening right now. The number one priority of every enforcer was to protect their secret from humans and protect humans from dragons.

Discovery wasn’t an option.

But his next words were for those fighting against them. “Attack us or help us. Either way, we’re going to deal with this. Your decision.”