Page 36 of Fae Reckoning

Shit, I’d made a crucial mistake. I projected frantically toward the sky. Way too big.

Einar belonged somewhere like the Nightguard Mountains. There, the dragons had an entire range of peaks just for themselves.

Hugging Saffron to my chest so the little guy wouldn’t keep bouncing against my back, I bolted through the bit of forest I’d crossed, and ran past Roan and Reed. Both men were red-faced, their focus ferocious. Roan was levitating the enormous tree trunk a foot off the collapsed roof, sweat beading upon his brow. Reed balanced atop the precariously tipped debris, leaning all his weight into the log, heaving it inch by slow inch off to one side. The veins in histemples bulged, as did the muscles in his arms and thighs. Ordinarily I would have paused to offer help or at the very least some encouragement. Not today.

“Dammit,” I muttered, and kept running, endlessly grateful that the superior healing of the fae had been activated in my body. After the damage I’d sustained in the queen’s hellhole of a doorway, Edsel had warned that I might have a limp for the rest of my days. Despite the dire urgency of the circumstances, I grinned. I didn’t quite feel myself yet, and every step jarred bits that ached, but I wasrunning—andno limp, motherfuckers!

Upon rounding the cabin, off to the farthest side of the clearing that was—yeah, much too small for a dragon like Einar—Larissa and West hunkered over Ramana, whom he clutched in his arms. Several other fae who were just as emaciated appeared to be sleeping beside them. I hoped that meant everyone from this location had survived. What a tragedy it would be to arrive to rescue the queen’s captives only to kill them through our efforts.

I drew to a stop, the dragonling burrowing against me, his ear pressed to my thundering heartbeat as if it calmed him.

Hiroshi and Ryder were emerging from the house with a dormant fae stretched between them. With a glance toward the sky—and the threat swooping ever closer—they shuffled over to where Larissa and West waited, lowering the body gently to the ground.Immediately, Larissa bent to check on the fae’s condition. With dark, long, greasy hair resting over their chest, sharply gaunt features, and cracked pale lips, I couldn’t tell if they were male or female.

I cast my attention upward.

he thundered.

he insisted as he circled so low that treetops brushed his scaled belly, snapping off large branches heavy with leaves, one after the other—craaaaack,craaaaaaackkkkk,craaackkkkk.

I tensed while I waited for them to fall. One pulled down another smaller branch as it crashed into it but landed innocuously at the forest’s edge. Another landed with a noisy crunch of foliage beyond my view. And a third thudded like a giant’s arrow, bouncing as it hit a patch of mottled grass mere feet from West.

“For fuck’s sake,” he yelled up at the dragon.

I snapped in Einar’s direction.

He flew by again, dragging down anotherlimb as he did. Thiscrackmade me and Saffron jump. The branch was the largest yet, dropping somewhere out in the woods with accompanying snaps of whatever dominoes it had taken out in its descent.

Shit, shit, shit, shit!Where was Rush? He could be out there, knocked out by any of those branches. My heart seemed to still. Saffron’s spine stiffened in my embrace in response.

“Rush,” I was bellowing before I could consider my actions. I ran out into the clearing. He’d called for me. Where the fuck was he? “Rush!”

Long seconds passed. I hadn’t even gotten to kiss him since we’d been reunited. We hadn’t hugged. And we certainly hadn’t made love.

“Rush,” I screamed.

“Here,” he grunted, sounding pained. “At the back.”

While my relief was so intense as to be overwhelming, he added, “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

Too fucking late for that.

“Deal with the dragons. We’ve got Ivar.”

At his use of the plural, I instantly felt like an absolute dick. “And Xeno? Is he alright?” Just because I didn’t love him the way I loved Rush didn’t mean I should forget about the one friend who’d always stood by me. By a dragon’s ingrown claw, what was happening to me?

Another dangeroussnapjerked my attention back to Einar. What a stubborn fuck he was turning out to be.

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