Page 55 of Dragon's Flame
Then the cocoon she was wound in shook, there was a sound like thunder, and through the veil of webs, a smattering of bright light.
Tarian.
Finally.
She struggled—not against her bindings anymore, but just to keep herself awake. Alive.
As alive as she’d felt when she’d started this adventure just a few days ago.
Like her whole prior life reallyhadbeen a cocoon, preparing her for this, turning her into some kind of butterfly for a magical moment in time by the beach...before she went and got herself pinned.
She made a sound through closed lips as the structure she was encased in shook, hoping that Tarian would hear, and he did—he ripped through webs to see her. At finding her, he shoutedwith a dragon’s force through the throat of a man, and she felt his side of their bond pulse, flowing energy to her—which the creatures she was surrounded by promptly sucked out for themselves, leaving her even less alive than she had been just moments before.
Tarian reached for her, his hands sweeping over her, knocking hundreds of the creatures away, and she could feel them tug out of her like so many barbed needles—but then she was swarmed by a hundred more.
“No!” he shouted.
“I love you,” she breathed through gritted teeth, still determined to keep any of them from getting inside of her.
“Kenna!” he called, obviously at a loss, trying to free her, inadvertently making everything worse, because the ones he was knocking off were full, and the ones they were replaced with were hungry.
“I love you so much,” she said, tears tracing down her cheeks, where the creatures there eagerly shifted to drink them. “And I have burned before.”
“No!” he howled as she closed her eyes, trying to keep the ones swarming her from following her tears to their source—she didn’t want their scaled bellies to be the last thing she saw.
She felt his hands sweep over her again, once, twice, and then his pressure disappeared, and she heard shouts from the surrounding men as they regained their arms. She suspected they’d been nervous about shooting Tarian when he was closer, because they didn’t want to hit her, but surely they but felt much safer aiming at a dragon.
Which meant . . . she knew what he was about to do.
She clenched her eyes shut, held her breath, and waited.
50
TARIAN
He shifted back into his dragon, and the bursts of gunfire and artillery that were bouncing off of him now were nothing compared to the beating of his heart.
Kenna had told him what to do.
Now it was up to him.
He needed to do it before she hurt any more—she’d already hurt enough because of him, in this lifetime, and who knew how many others, when he’d cursed her with his magic.
He had to put an end to this, here, even if it killed him.
The thing was, though, that it wouldn’t.
He would endure, like he was doomed to, whereas she would be gone by his hand—by his paw—by hismagic.
He felt the fire he knew he had to breathe stoke inside him, hated himself for it, and then hated himself more for his selfish hesitance, before spouting it out in an agonized flame that was half a howl from the depths of his soul.
The creatures on top of her skin lit up first, like a thousand tiny torches, then the strings of webbing surrounding herblackened and caved in, surrounding her in melting webs and ash, as the bond between them snapped.
“Tarian!” shouted a familiar voice from a distance, but he didn’t stop breathing. He wouldn’t until he ran out of breath, because after Kenna died because he’d killed her, he’d need to melt a hole into the ground for his own grave.
Then a black dragon appeared from nowhere and shoved him to the side. He turned and snarled at it—right before it changed into a man.
“What the fuck are you doing?” his brother shouted at him.
