Page 33 of Iced Heat

“I’ll call you when I’m finished,” he said like a surgeon about to perform brain surgery.

“Do you need me?” I asked.

“I’ll call you when I’m finished,” he said again, his dragon’s tone lacing his words.

The minutes that followed Sequin leaving the room were the longest half-hour of my life. Obviously, he didn’t need my help.Dragons had been laying eggs since the dawn of time without my help, but Sequin wasmydragon. Fuck that. Sequin was my whole fucking world. I couldn’t pry my attention away from our mating link the whole time he was away from me. He was quiet there but knowing he was conscious and not in distress were the only reasons I was able to give him the privacy he deserved.

“You gotta come see this,”he said into my thoughts, startling me from my worries.

“Are you alright?”I asked already heading to the nest room.

“I’m good. We’re good,”he said, his voice sleepy but content.“You’ll see when---”

He fell quiet when I pushed open the nesting room door. The egg was the color of ice – blue, white, and subtle silvers. It chilled the air around it. Our hatchling had definitely picked up something from my genetics. I climbed into the nest and ran a finger down its length. It was a bit bigger than the purple chicken eggs all the dragons here ate but it already radiated its element.

“Nice to see that someone was crazy enough to have you,” an all too familiar voice came from the shadows.

The baby-fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up and spun around ready to fight. I searched all the dark corners of the nesting room for her. My mother in her element. Only it wasn’t her element, was it? Her element had never been shadow. Perhaps she’d evolved enough to learn a new one.

Sequin instinctively moved to cover our egg, and I took a fighting stance ready to freeze her tits off the moment she showed her traitorous face.

“Always looking for a fight,” she tutted from the shadows. “You’ve had your fun. It’s time to come home and be the real you.”

“The real me? We don’t even have names there,” I spat at her. I’d withheld that detail from Sequin because it seemed like the most horrible thing to do to anyone – not give them a name. Awhole culture who had no sense of identity that wasn’t tied to the group was a horror house and I’d know. I grew up there.

“Names are for those who lack family. You’ve never lacked family. You’ve rejected us but never lacked us. Just as we could never lack you. There is no escaping your duty. You will lead when your time comes. Then you will have a name. It will be leader. It will be marti---”

Sequin pounced into the shadows. Fuck! Sequin didn’t have the first clue about elemental fights. Sure he was strong but fighting with our sort of magic--- My thoughts derailed. The egg was still in the nest and shadow tendrils made their way to it. I flicked my finger, freezing one in place as another one snatched at me. It froze on contact. Shadow was already a cold element. It was fire’s cast off. It was what fire became when it was nearly time for it to perish. Freezing it was easy.

Sequin slid across the floor on his back, my mother in her shadow form, pushing him along. His mouth opened in a scream and one of the tendrils dove down his throat. My ice reacted before I could. I was on her, freezing her atoms and cells into place but the tendril kept moving toward my mate’s fire.

“I’ll do it, child of mine! I’ll take his fire. I’ll consume him. He won’t be nothing but a pile of scales when I’m finished with him!”

“I’ll come with you!” I shouted, not knowing what else to offer her crazy ass.

Sequin garbled something that sounded like ‘No!’ but I didn’t have another choice. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in a volcano that I was staying with her but going wouldn’t be a problem. Once I lured her away from my mate and our egg I’d figure out how to defeat her. If she was already shadow --- my first thought that she was learning a new skill was wrong. She wasn’t evolving. She was fading.

The tendril withdrew from Sequin and the shadow’s focus turned to me. Magic filled the room, changing the whole scent of the house. Old magic that was young. New old magic?

“Selatris,” Sequin gasped.

My eyes settle on the little lion cub looking from me to the shadow. The fur on his back stood up as he stood in the doorway.

“LIATRIS!” I shouted.

My secret was gonna be out of the bag but whatever risk that held was worth it.

“LIATRIS!” I shouted again as one of the few unfrozen shadow tendrils slithered toward Selatris. The poor cub had probably sensed our egg’s coming into the solid world and wanted to visit. I pounced for the tendril but is snaked out of my reach. Selatris opened his mouth and I thought he was about to try to unleash one of his little adorable roars but instead backed up letting out a high pitched distress call.

Selt was the first to knock his way through whatever space was made of and crash through an unseen wall surrounding his son’s tiny door. Before I could explain the situation, he snatched at the tendril and managed to catch it. Using the back of his leg, he shoved his cub through the door and yanked on the tendril forcing her into a solid shape if she didn’t want to be wrapped around a dragon’s hand like an old, frayed rope.

I tackled low, grabbing her legs and taking her to the ground even as her shadow tendrils flailed against my skin. Then I gave into the ice I always was and coated her, freezing her fleshy form and shadow. Liatris was there. He and Sequin said a few words. There was a tiny door being dangled nearby. It was silver and attached to the tiniest locket I’d ever seen. Then the whole world went black.

“Keep them safe, Liatris,” I mumbled as my subconscious stopped trying to hold on.

Chapter Eighteen

Sequin

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