Page 95 of A Scar in the Bone
The desire to belong to both, to helpsaveboth worlds swelled inside me, even if that meant—especially if it meant—saving them from each other.
Only he could understand that because he was like me. BecauseIwas like him.
He was a speck now, heading directly for the clouds. “This is a bad plan,” Kerstin pronounced flatly.
“It’smyplan, though.” I continued shrugging out of my remaining clothes hurriedly, determinedly. “Take what you want of my things—”
“You’releavingme out here all alone?” Accusation layered the words.
I held her gaze. “You’ll be fine. You’ve proven yourself capable, but you need to go back to the pride now, Kerstin. The adventure ends here. It’s time to go home.”
“Without you,” she said almost bitterly.
“The pride was never my home.”
She snatched up one of my fur boots. “When you change back, you’ll be naked. Then what will you do?”
“Find clothes,” I responded with a shrug.
“Where? Growing in the ground?” she snapped.
“I will figure it out.”
Her lips f lattened into a mutinous line. “He’ll kill you.” Her voice shook a little, and she looked at me with such sorrow and regret—like I was already dead and gone from her.
Naked now, I straightened in the biting air, trying not to feel vulnerable as my breasts tightened against the fog’s icy hand. I looked anxiously to the sky, seeking Fell. He was barely visible now.
“I have to trust that he won’t.” I pulled her in for a quick hug. “Go home, Kerstin,” I said urgently into her hair.
Releasing her, I did not spare her another glance. Standing back, I tilted my face to the sky, willing it to happen, urging the change to come over me with a long, steamy exhale.
The familiar pull started in my chest, my flesh tingling. Now it barely even stung when I ripped open and apart, the dragon in me roaring to the surface, erupting, my body bursting in a blinding flash of light.
I was off. Up. Winging through the sky, my body winding and twisting on the rushing wind, working fast through the damp air after him, my wings slapping furiously to catch up.
He’d saved me on more than one occasion. When I was a whipping girl and didn’t even realize I needed saving. He’d taken my broken spirit and mended it simply by wanting me when he shouldn’t have—when I was the wrong bride forced on him; in the Borg, when Stig had betrayed me. Fell had turned his back on all he’d been taught to believe.For me.He chose me.
Now it was my turn to choose him. To save him—even if the enemy here was himself.
There!
Through a break in the clouds, I spotted him, his pearlescent wings glinting on the vaporous air.
He must have heard me—or sensed me behind him. He turned his head to look back, his dragon eyes locking on me, those vertical pupils shuddering dangerously for just a fraction of a second before facing forward again. With an extra hard push of his wings, he surged ahead, diving into the cloud cover.
He definitely saw me, but just like that, he was out of sight again.
The clouds suddenly thickened, billowing, intensifying around him, aroundme, in a way that wasnotthe product of nature.
Hewas doing it. Using his talent. Shading.
He might have been stuck in a hole, unable to train as I had been, unable to hone his skills, but he was doing this thing he’d been born to do—even if he’d spent a lifetime ignorant of that fact. He might have forgotten himself. He might have forgotten me, but apparently not hisdragonself. This was innate. Stronger than everything else. His dragon was fully cognizant, aware, alert, and in control.
He’d lost his connection to me, but not this. Not this instinct. Not this raw, animal power that thrummed through his veins like blood.
The fog was everywhere now. I slowed, swallowed up in it, blinded in the cold, heavy mist, unable to see beyond the stretch of my clawed talons. The sight of him was lost to me.
“Fell?” I stopped and held myself aloft in air thick and white as chilled milk.
