Page 31 of Dragon's Flame
He flicked the claw across her skin, making her gasp as it tore her, and then he put his hand to it, not to stop the blood, but so that his magic could flood the area and pull the tracker out.
Kenna gasped above him, jaw slack, pain flashing across her face. His stomach twisted—until she put a hand on his shoulder for balance.
She trusted him.
Not Seris—but this girl, here with him now.
Kenna.
He felt a tugging inside of her as his magic found the tracker’s margins and made sure he had all of its boundaries clipped off—then with a final pull, he yanked it from her hip. Her hand clawed against him, but she didn’t say a thing.
“Is it over?” she asked, as he withdrew his hand. Blood was pouring out of the wound he’d given her, and they both saw it. “Fuck,” she muttered, and moved to push her skirt down to cover it.
“No, no, no,” he said, biting the thumb of his free hand quickly. Green blood welled up. He smeared it across her cut, and they both watched it close.
“Imagine my surprise,” she murmured, “to discover that you are full of aloe vera.”
He looked up at her, utterly confused. “I do not know what that is.”
“It’s okay,” she said, with a small laugh. “Did that...work? Did you get it?”
Tarian opened his other hand, so that they could both see what’d landed inside. Separated from her body, the tracker had taken on a hideous physical shape, looking like angry white spheres of flesh—and it had a particularly foul scent to it that made his lips curl.
Kenna seemed unaffected by it though. “Shit,” she whispered. “And all this time, I just figured I had some endometriosis.”
Tarian shook his head again. “I do not know what that is, either.”
“Of course not. You’re a man.” She bent down, grabbed a stone, and—because she waswho she was—poked it. “It looks cancerous.”
“You would know better than I,” he said, rather than acknowledge that he was uncertain of that word, too.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked before dropping her skirt and suddenly stepping back, letting go of his shoulder, and breaking their connection.
“My inclination is to burn it,” he said, picking up his arm to do just that—he would like nothing better than to watch the thing that’d endangered his mate die in the fire.
“But if they’re following it—what if instead, you take it far away from here? And send them on a goose chase?”
He did not know what a goose chase was, either...but the idea had merit.
“I will be back,” he said, standing immediately. “Rocky, guard her.”
He pointed between the two of them, and ran outside of the cave, only pausing long enough to take his pants off as human before flying up.
23
KENNA
Okay, so . . . dragonness confirmed.
Kenna ran after Tarian—just in time to see the massive beast he became launch into the sky and vanish into clouds.
“Did you see that?” she asked the dog, without looking down.
The dog yipped something that sounded awfully like a “Yes,” and she kept staring for the horizon.
He was a motherfucking dragon.
“Can you understand me?” she asked the dog, without true curiosity, still trying to process what it was that she’d just seen.
