Page 18 of Bound to the Dragon

Fingers clawed around my ankle, but my fingers brushed the green, pulsing shard embedded in Char’s chest. I had no grip. With just my fingertips touching; I shouldn’t have had the ability to pull, but the crystal seemed to suck to my skin. I felt heat bath me like an electrical current was zapping from the tips of my fingers through the path of least resistance, directly toward my ankle.

The vampire yanked me ass over teakettle, I was rolling through the air, but the crystal came with me, stuck to my hands. The landing was rough, but not nearly as rough as it should have been. It was as if the earth was there to catch me, cradling me, welcoming me back like a lost daughter. As I rolled, I collided with a tree, too far now from the prison to sense it. The tree seemed to bend down around me, its branches forming a protective cage.

Chardum had collapsed, a massive golden shape that was gushing blood from his chest wound. It soaked the earth, seeped through the ground and my stomach roiled. If it reached the prison, what would happen?

Yanking my hands to my chest, the large crystal shard came with them. Like glue, it was stuck to my hands, and the green was seeping from the stone and into my skin. Normally dark brown, now rivulets of green were curling up my wrists, curving along my elbows and beneath the sleeves of my shirt. It felt like each drop of power in that thing was migrating inside of me, arrowing for my heart.

Was that good or bad? I had no clue, and when I stumbled to my feet, the tree wouldn’t let me go. Was that the Galamut’s power? Was it holding me prisoner? Had I screwed up? Lost the battle? No! “Chardum! Wake up! We can’t lose!”

The vampire with her pale icy eyes and her long blonde hair was suddenly in front of my cage. Her face lit up with a gleeful smile, the first sign she could feel anything other than disdain. “But you did lose! You stupid little nymph. The power will be mine!” she turned her back on me and with a jerk of her head, several figures charged my tree cage and started ripping into the branches. They were about to get to me and tear me to shreds.

The crystal was almost empty, just a pale, translucent shard of glass. The strands of green weaving through my skin didn’t hurt, though they looked like they should. When I ripped my shirt down at the collar, I could see that they’d reached my heart. Before my eyes, they seemed to glow like emeralds, and then… nothing. They just became dark green lines on my flesh, no light, no feeling, and no pain.

A worry for later. I had to get out of this cage before I was shredded, and I had to get to Chardum. He was still alive; I was sure of it. I needed to reach him and stop the bleeding. Then I needed to get to the prison and stop the dragon blood from reaching it; somehow.

With the last hint of light gone from the crystal shard, it fell from my hands like it was never anything special at all. I rose to my feet, determined to do something. With a glare, the branches finally moved, whipping out and slamming the three beasts trying to get to me away. I ran from my cage and into a chaos I hadn’t expected.

The tiger was fighting with three wolves, the evil vampire was trading blows with two identical women I had never met before. I was pretty sure I recognized the guy from the tow truck, Gregory. Only he was seven feet tall and now his skin was covered in thick fur, and a wide set of horns rose proudly from his head.

Ignoring that bizarreness, relieved to see that allies had come to our aid, I charged for Chardum. My hands came down on his wound; it was too big to hold it closed. It was gushing all over me, and I could see his big chest shudder and stutter as his heartbeat slowed.

No, he called me lifegiver. Please let that be true in more ways than one! I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t do this without him at my side. I couldn’t imagine a life in which he wasn’t parading naked through my house and stealing the frosting from my cake. I couldn’t picture not having him in my bed again, or hearing his deep voice as he teased me.

The earth was the answer, the plants. I felt them call to me as I pleaded for his life. They covered him, vines growing all over him, clay rising from the soil that slid into his wound and sealed it. Then I called to his blood, the blood that soaked the earth beneath us, perilously close to reaching the slippery, cracked shell of the prison.

It rose up, drawing up through the earth in thick rivulets. Vines soaked it up and curled along his giant body, piercing the packed clay in his wound. It should have freaked me out, but it didn’t. It was like those vines became his IV, funneling all that blood he’d lost back into his giant body. A plant feeding a mountain, a mountain of flesh and scales, a mountain that held my heart and my soul.

Tears were streaming down my cheeks, but I barely gave them any thought. Biting down hard on my lip, I let my instincts rule, the power inside me roiling and surging as it heeded my heart’s desire. To restore my mate, to heal him, and to destroy the evil beneath us, to keep it from reaching out and touching the one I loved.

A scream rippled through the air, striking the core of me and all along my body, lines lit up, deep and cool and ancient. The power of the crystal surged inside of me in response to that call. Like it wanted to reach down through the earth and open the cage. No, never. Never could that cage open.

I tasted something rotten and foul in my mouth and felt evil, ghostly fingers yank on my flesh as if they wanted to rip those lines right from my skin. I pressed my hands harder against Chardum’s chest, praying he’d wake. The true battle had only just begun.

A drop of my dragon’s blood had reached the prison. I’d missed it, or it had been masked by the creature’s powers. It gave the evil inside it just enough power to stretch and push against the damaged prison. It wanted the key that my body had absorbed; it needed it to break the final shackles. I couldn’t let that happen.

And then I felt it. A warmth that caressed my back, hands that settled on my shoulders to offer support. The strength of a raging fire poured into me. A golden dragon's eye blinked open, and Chardum raised his head. I groaned as the battle continued to rage inside of me, invisible to anyone but the Galamut and me.

“You cannot have him! You cannot have freedom,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. And then I closed my eyes and did the very thing I’d been scared to do earlier. I called on all those powers I’d been discovering, and I let them grow all over the clearing, let roots rip into the ground, and tunnel through the earth. I let them curl around the prison and then I made them grow tight.

Root after root, I curled them around that thing. Beneath us, the earth bucked and buckled, trembling like an earthquake. I couldn’t technically see, but I knew that each new root was forming another knot, a noose that tightened and tightened. There was no key to this thing, there was no Galamut, there was only the earth, and this power wasmine, not his.

Hooks clawed at my flesh. Another rattling shriek echoed through me, and then… Silence. I trembled like the earth had, my body growing limp as the fight left me. “Char?” I breathed, and the dragon moved, his head coming toward me as I toppled from his chest.

Blackness claimed me, but it was warm and comforting. I wasn’t alone.

Chapter 22

Chardum

The clearing was a mess. Trees had toppled on all sides. The ground had churned up at the center, right beneath me, as if the prison had been ready to explode to the surface. Blood stained the grass, and wild vines had sprouted and climbed all over my body. A handful of bodies lay broken and bloody, scattered around me, and several wolves were standing over them, heads thrown back as they howled at the night.

My mate lay crumpled in my cupped paw, her eyes closed, her eyes rapidly moving beneath the lids. Her exposed arms and a portion of her neck were covered with fine tendrils of green, not on her skin, not around her, but curling through her flesh. A mark of magic, with a signature I recognized; the key.

From the trees lumbered the giant shape of Gregory in his Minotaur form. The body flung over his shoulder wore the torn and shredded remains of a pin-striped suit. The weretiger was out for the count, but he wasn’t dead. I thought I had crushed him beneath my paw, but it seemed he’d managed to crawl away after I collapsed.

Shifting, I caught Rosy in my arms and gently held her against my chest. The vines of the plants collapsed to earth when they could no longer climb along the massive body of my dragon shape. Clay clung to my bare chest, soaking Rosy’s shirt, and several tendrils ripped free from the packed but already rapidly healing wound when I strode across the clearing to where the wolves gathered.

Liz shifted when I reached them. Her body unfurled from a flash of gentle pink light, gray hair wildly curling around her face, her body clad in a simple nightdress and nothing else. “Is she alright, son?” she said, slipping easily into a warm, maternal role as she reached out and placed a soft palm across Rosy’s forehead.

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