Page 34 of Soar

She blinked big brown eyes up at him. “Thank you. I appreciate it. For the record, who are you?”

“Doctor Salem Hunter. I’m a pediatric surgeon at Mass General.”

“Ohhh,” she breathed, eyes lighting up. “You’re anawesomewitness. Do you happen to know the dragon?”

Might as well tell the truth to a lawyer. Scary things might happen otherwise. “I’m supposedly said dragon’s mate. He’s Gregori Valerii of the Ice Dragons.”

“Holy shit, do I have awesome rescuers. I might not have survived without you two.”

“Gregori did most of the heavy lifting on this one.”

Sirens came in louder and louder, and Salem was ever so grateful because trying to deal with this many patients on his own and without any equipment was stressful, to say the least. He carefully deposited the lawyer onto the bench.

“You stay right here, please. I’ll send EMTs in your direction.”

She held up a hand. “I’m fine, not high priority, make sure everyone else is okay first.”

He agreed with the assessment, so he gave a nod before turning on his heel and jogging back toward the disaster.

Gregori was busy ripping off car doors and helping people get out if they wanted out, so Salem dove back in. The EMTs swarmed the scene, and he quickly took charge of them, directing them to the worst patients first, then following up with one pregnant mother who was having cramps from all the stress.

Salem had her transported to the children’s hospital immediately, calling ahead for her and reading those on staff in on the situation so she could have the best possible care the second she cleared the doors. It was all he could do, but he trusted his colleagues. They had it from here.

In between patients, he kept stealing glances at Gregori. Salem found it impossible not to. He’d grown up hearing the same stories, reading the same history as everyone else on the planet. He’d known dragons were insanely strong and could counteract most disasters. Seeing it in action was worlds different. The brute force alone was incredible. Watching Gregori rip off car doors like they were paper mâché was just…hnnng. That did some funky things to Salem’s libido, no lie there.

Equally impressive was the magic he threw around. For all that history claimed mages were the most adept at magic, Gregori was clearly a master of the ice magic in his body. He could do incredibly delicate things with it at the children’s ward, but he apparently could also freeze whole stretches of cars without much trouble as well.

Honestly, Salem wasn’t sure at this point which one was more of a turn-on—the magic expertise or the displays of brute strength. He did know he would be very disappointed if Gregori didn’t manhandle him tonight. Very. Disappointed.

As quickly as it had all started, it stopped. Salem abruptly realized his last patient was loaded into an ambulance and on their way, leaving him with nothing to do. Well, he had to talk to the cops on scene so they could follow up with questions if they had any, but afterward there really was nothing else to do.

Maybe he could use the excuse of washing off Gregori to get him naked. Ooh, naked and wet, a combination he liked a lot.

A female voice called out, “Uh, Doctor Hunter?”

He turned to find a cop with an iPad looking a little frazzled, blond hair escaping her bun under her hat.

Salem had to slap the naughty images out of his head before he could respond. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Hi, I’m Parker with the MPD. I understand you were the first on scene along with Gregori.”

Since when was this woman on a first-name basis with his dragon? “I was, yes. You know Gregori?”

“Oh, we all do,” she assured him brightly. “He stopped by, said hi, told us if anything serious went down and we needed dragon power, to just call. He’s really cool.”

Well, yes, he was very cool, but Salem had mixed feelings about other people knowing this.

“Anyway, I wanted to get your statement real quick of what went down. Gregori said it was the Tesla at the hub of all this?”

Still a little testy about the way she used Gregori’s name so casually, Salem wanted to be snippy but repressed the urge. Stop it, stop it, you can’t very well refuse Gregori’s advances and yet monopolize him at the same time. Don’t be an ass, Salem.

He pinned a smile on and answered smoothly. “It was. The driver said the car went into some kind of software update and locked up completely. This seems to be true, from what I saw. Her car was rammed into the vehicle ahead of her after it shut down. She couldn’t even undo her seat belt. Gregori had to tear off door and seat belt so we could remove her from the vehicle.”

“Oooh, that’s bad.” She noted a few things on the iPad, pen moving quickly over the screen. “What else happened here?”

He gave his report, keeping his tone mild, reviewed what she had written up, and signed off on it. Good, that chore was done.

Now, where the hell was his dragon?

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