Page 31 of The Dragon's Captured Heart
It was nothing like the short trip on dragonback we’d taken to get to the city.
“You going to be okay?” he asked as I clung to him for dear life, willing myself not to look down and not to scream.
I flew helicopters for a living. Being in the air was nothing new. I wasnotafraid of heights, and I was a soldier.
So, I nodded wildly as the wind whipped my hair around into a tangled mess, extremely thankful I didn’t have the necessary control over my lungs to tell him I may have peed a drop or two. Some things were best kept to myself. Including the number of drops.
Because it wasn’t just two.
Chapter Seventeen
Callum
The instant we landed, Madison took a step away from me and struck a pose. “So, how do I look?”
I looked her up and down, including the wild mess that was her hair. “Kissable.”
The air between us was silent enough I could have heard a pebble drop, whistling air or not.
Madison stared at me. I stared back, clamping my mouth shut.
After all, there was nothing to say after that. Nothing I could recover with.
The guards spared us.
“Clear the deck!” Dyson shouted at us, waving us off the landing pad. “Move it, come on, Cal. We have incoming! Priority drop!”
“Let’s go,” I said to Madison, craning my head skyward. “We have to get out of the way so she can land.”
“She?”
“The sovereign,” I said, reaching the edge of the landing pad and drawing up sharply to face the incoming ruler of all dragons.
“Took you long enough,” Dyson growled from his post nearby.
“Go choke on a donkey,” I fired back.
Dyson stiffened angrily at the dig into his past, but there was no time for him to retort before the sovereign landed and shifted. With her was Vicek, her son, and the human woman, Laura, who’d accompanied Vicek back to the Isles.
Two other dragons circled overhead, maintaining watch of the skies while a contingent of guards fell into place around her. At their fore was Jair, head of the sovereign's personal retinue.
“Callum,” she called, spotting me on the side.
At a gesture, Madison and I approached, falling into step.
“My sovereign,” I said respectfully before nodding politely to the others. “Vicek, Laura. Good to see you.”
“And you,” the heir to the kingdom said after his mother had graced me with a gesture of greeting.
“Have you made any progress?” the sovereign wanted to know as we went into the palace, heading for her office, not her throne.
“Besides pissing off Noa’s brother? No,” I said, unhappy to admit that in front of everyone.
The truth was, I hadn’t done any digging yet either.
“Very well. Let me know the moment anything comes up. I don’t tolerate premeditated murder of my subjects,” she said coldly. “I want justice.”
“Me, too,” I assured her. “Me, too.”
