Page 34 of Claimed by the Savage Dragons
I slip through and find a huge box suspended with thick cable in the center of a huge hexagonal room.An elevator.
My eyes widen. I’ve only ever seen pictures.
There are stairs that follow the edge of the room, going downward and upward. I peer over the side of the railing. It goes down and down. Maybe to an exit.
I descend slowly, my fingers running along the metal banister, picking up speed as I realize they’re as well-maintained as everything else. Not a speck of rust on anything.
I don’t know how long it takes me to get to the bottom, but by the time I do, my legs feel like they’re going to give out at any moment. I give myself a second, listening for anything at all. I can hear the faint hum of the machines I found, but that’s all.
There’s a door. This one looks different than the others I’ve seen here. There’s not a handle, but a round, metal wheel.
I turn it and it spins easily until it stops. I push and the door moves a little but it’s really heavy. Putting my whole body into it, I grunt as it begins to move. My feet skid on the floor, but I get it open just enough to squeeze through. I lurch outside and I realize two things much too late.
One, it’s freezing cold and snowing heavily. Two, I’m not on the ground.
I gasp as I run into a railing that catches me at the waist. I’m on a tiny platform in the middle of a wall so high and wide that I can’t see the ends, my body teetering precariously as I stare down at a huge expanse of water at its base.
NoNoNoNoNo!
My center of gravity tips forward and I can’t do anything as my hands slip from the icy railings. I fall headfirst with a scream.
I’m going to die, I realize as the water rushes up to meet me.
I hear a whoosh above me and just before I hit the surface, my ankle is grabbed. My body jerks as it’s stopped in mid-air and I twist, my terrified eyes finding a massive dragon that isn’t Tor hovering above me, the force of his beating wings making troughs in the water.
And that’s when I see it. A dark shape and large eyes staring at me from beneath. It’s coming up fast from below.
I scream as the thing breaks the surface, its wide jaw full of jagged teeth snapping for me.
But we’re hovering just out of its reach.
It falls back into the water with a crash, drenching me in water so cold I can’t breathe.
The dragon holding me flaps his wings hard, and we rise higher and higher, and I see how massive the wall actually is. He takes us over the top to a round platform covered in snow.
The rest happens so quickly that I can’t take it in. One moment I’m hanging upside down, the next, my shivering body is enveloped in thick human arms and we’re back inside.
Brax carries me down into the depths of the building, his steps brisk.Angry.
He takes me to a room, and I belatedly realize there’s a large bed by one wall.
I don’t struggle, mostly because my body feels numb with cold. But he takes me into an adjacent bathroom and sets me down, keeping hold of me by my wet, half frozen hair.
‘What the hell were you thinking?’ he suddenly bursts out.
I can’t reply. My teeth are chattering hard and my body is wracked with shivers.
He curses under his breath and turns the shower on, feeling it with his hand until it gets to the temperature he wants it to be.
I’m thrust under the water, and I scream, trying to scramble out of it, but his grip is strong, and he doesn’t let me.
‘It burns!’
‘I know!’ he bellows then lets out a sigh. ‘But it’s only lukewarm, little rabbit. It isn’t hot enough to burn. It just feels that way. Give it a minute and you’ll see.’
His tone is gentler than I’ve heard it since I met him and I try to do as he says, whimpering as the water warms my fingers and toes quickly, making them hurt.
‘It’s too cold out there for humans,’ he murmurs. ‘Much too cold.’
