Page 1 of Dragons' Future

CHAPTER 1

Kit

Splinters fly everywhere. Massive talons and red scales tear violently through the small shelter protecting us from the mountain’s blizzard. One of my mates grabs me, tossing me clear of the onslaught as the roof and walls, our safety, all explode in a shower of broken branches and scattered pine needles.

I land in a pile of snow. The freezing particles sting my face, and the chilling wind immediately assaults my skin and my sensitive scales. I’m not human anymore, but my dragon nature is not a shield—it’s a magnifying glass that amplifies each sensation a hundred fold.

I scramble to my feet, my boots sinking into the snow. My forearm comes up to protect my face against the howling wind.

Tavias, Cyril, and Hauck form a protective circle around me, their swords out and magic crackling over their skin. Ahead of them, Quinton shoves someone forward at sword point.

The dragon who’d crashed into our shelter lets out a roar and raises its wings. Or tries to. As my senses finally adjust to the harsh elements and my mind starts to process the scene, I realize that the dragon’s scales aren’t truly red. At least they didn’t used to be.

“He’s hurt,” I shout over the wind. He is screaming, struggling to move as blood pours from his wounds. One of his wings is clearly broken. The other is torn. He hadn’t attacked us, he’d fallen from the sky. I rush toward him. “We need to help him.”

“Don’t touch him!” A chorus of voices rings out at once.

They are too many to belong to my males alone. I turn.

Quinton is hauling Leesandra forward, a sword at her throat. She is pale except for her flaming hair and pink, cold-bitten skin. Three of the four dragons in Lee’s pack trail on either side of Quinton. They are weaponless, their hands raised into the air. Two of the brothers watch Quinton’s every breath, their scales quivering each time Lee’s breath brings her throat closer to Quinton’s blade. But the third, the pack leader who I think is named Darren, stumbles toward me, his palms shoving the air in a desperate halting motion.

“Don’t go near Sethis!” Darren shouts at me over the wind. “He’s hurt. Badly. He’ll attack.”

I hesitate.

“See, even the prisoners have more sense than you do,” Cyril says into my ear. He has gotten a cloak from somewhere and now lays it over my shoulders.

Turning away from the injured dragon for the moment, I focus on the other unfolding disaster—that of my mate trying to kill my friend. Cyril curls a hand around my hip and presses me back against his hard body. I’m not sure if he’s protecting me from Lee’s pack or from myself.

“Quinton,” I shout, pulling the hood up to cover my face before the others can get a look at the scales now climbing my temples or the newly elongated points of my ears. “That’s Lee. Let her go.”

Quinton keeps his blade in place and twists Lee to face Darren. “Why are you here?”

"We mean no ill will.” Darren still has his hands up, his palms placating. “We…” the tips of his scales color in shame, but he raises his face into the howling wind. “We’ve come to seek aid.”

“What manner of aid?” Quinton demands. Lee shivers with cold but he gives her no quarter.

“We were attacked.” Darren must shout to be heard above the wind. “Sethis was too greatly injured to stay in the air. We... we had nowhere else to go."

"I told Lee she’d be welcome here,” I say quickly, wriggling out of Cyril’s hold. Through the newly forged mating bond, I can feel my mates vibrating with an instinct to protect. An instinct that’s bordering on homicidal. No, not bordering. We are far beyond borders. Darren and the others are a threat to my secret, and that has my mates a hair’s breadth from violence. “I told her how to find our camp.”

"And she’s found it," says Quinton. "Mission accomplished. Now she dies."

“No, she doesn’t.” I stalk toward where Quinton holds Lee. Her eyes are wide above her freckles, her fear a coppery tang coating my tongue. “Lee is my friend, Quinton. And this pack helped us in the last trial. Take a bloody breath and think beyond the overprotective male thing.”

Quinton’s lip rises in a snarl.

I cross my arms.

My mates remember. I know they do. They just don’t care right now. Not with the rawness of the mating bond.

“No one is eviscerating anyone,” I say with all the authority I can muster. "Or beheading them. Or anything of the sort. Seriously. Quinton. Let Lee go."

I walk even closer to them.

“Kit,” Cyril shouts. “Stop. You know?—”

I do know. Another few steps and even Lee’s human eyes will see who I truly am now. But what’s the alternative? If we turn Lee’s pack away, they are going to die. I don’t want to lose them. Not Lee, and not her males either.

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