Page 6 of Tamed By Air (The Nature Hunters Academy 4)

“I could ask you the same thing,” she finally said, her voice quivering.

Aston wanted to yell “hell yes” to each of the questions, but pride held his tongue. He didn’t want to be vulnerable in front of Rory when she clearly didn’t feel the same for him. So, like her, he said nothing.

“What now?” Rory asked, folding her arms across her chest. She wore an expression of uncertainty, as if she was lost in a dark forest.

His stomach rolled as nausea filled him. Everything inside of Aston screamed at him to keep his mouth closed. His very soul, his heart, even his magic, fought against the words forming in his mind. “Now we go our separate ways. This is your home. Or so you say. But it’s not mine. I’ll go back to my life, where I’m needed, and I’ll leave you to live yours.” He could see the cord that linked them—his soul to hers—straining to stay connected. But with every bitter word he spoke, the connection tore. Strand by strand, it fell away until there was only a single, fragile string left.

Rory’s shoulders shook, but she nodded. “If that’s what you want.” Without another word, she turned and walked out of the cave with her shoulders pulled back and her head held high. It felt like a final slap to his face, showing him how strong she was without him.

Aston stood and took two steps toward the mouth of the cave as his instincts screamed at him to chase after her. But then he stopped, remembering the questions he’d asked and her refusal to answer. She could have said yes, but she didn’t. Rory hadn’t confirmed that she was his soul bonded. And the fact that she could run from him so easily was proof enough that she couldn’t possibly be his.

“But what about our feelings?”Something inside of Aston—his soul—spoke.“Are they not proof that she is our soul bonded? You didn’t answer yes, either. That doesn’t mean she isn’t ours.”

“Even if she is, she doesn’t want me,” Aston said into the empty cave, disregarding his soul’s words. Saying the words out loud ripped a hole inside of him, and a darkness within—one he hadn’t even noticed before—began to spread. It slowly extinguished the light that had always been there. Aston dropped to his knees and gripped his chest. He only thought he’d been in pain over the past two weeks. Now, he was in agony, and his former discomfort seemed a mosquito bite compared to what was wracking his body.

He only had a second to focus on the anguish before a sudden peal of thunder shook the ground beneath him. Aston crawled to the cave entrance and saw flashes of lightning slashing across the sky. Huge black clouds gathered overhead. He grabbed the cave wall and lurched to his feet. Aston wasn’t familiar with the climate of the dragon realm, but he didn’t think such a massive storm could appear out of nowhere in the middle of winter. Something about this clearly wasn’t natural. As if in answer to that thought, Aston abruptly felt something cold and dark out in the storm. It reached toward him, coaxing him to step closer.

He was just about to heed the call when he heard a loud voice. “You need to come with me now, human.”

Aston yelped when a massive dragon flew up over the lip of the cave and hovered in front of him. Its massive wings beat steadily, combining with the wind of the storm to buffet Aston’s face. The dragon dipped and weaved in the wind’s current. It beat its wings harder to steady itself and narrowed its eyes at him. “Did you hear me, mate of Rory?”

“I am not her mate, Kimba,” Aston growled back at the dragon.

She snorted, and smoke flew from her nostrils. “Right. And this storm is simply Rory’s way of telling you she hopes you have a pleasant life, and she’s glad you two could stay friends.”

Aston’s eyes went wide. “She’scausing this?”

“Hello?” Kimba practically sang, which was a weird sound coming from the snout of a dragon. “She’s a witch. Raised with dark witches. Did you think she would produce a sky full of rainbow clouds that dropped sugary marshmallows?”

Two questions simultaneously entered Aston’s mind. The first was whether he could add his air magic to Rory’s storm and knock the smart-ass dragon from the sky. The second was how the heck did a dragon even know what a marshmallow was? A tremendous boom of thunder shook the mountain, and Aston decided he’d be wise to leave those types of philosophical questions for later.

“Get your butt in gear,” ordered Kimba, “before she decides to zap it with a bolt of lightning.”

Aston glanced behind him at the cave he’d called home for two weeks. He wanted to latch onto some positive memories of the place he’d shared with Rory, but there was only one—their first night together. He was pretty sure a healthy relationship could not be built upon only one good night. Aston turned back to the dragon, took a running leap, and used the air to carry him onto her back.

“Lean down,” she said over the sound of the storm. “Use your power to keep you from falling. If I know Rory, she may try to knock you off.”

“Why? What difference do I make to her? She doesn’t want me.” Aston’s insides twisted at the thought.

“And what about you?” Kimba asked. “Do you want her?”

Aston didn’t know how to answer.

Hailstones the size of apples began to fall. Kimba seemed to take no notice as the balls of ice bounced from her scales, but Aston certainly did. Each one that struck his back and arms felt like being hit with a baseball bat. He tried to bring up a shield of air, but the powerful winds kept knocking it away.

Kimba flew through the storm, dodging lightning bolts and dipping down around currents of air that seemed supernaturally directed toward them. “I’m going to take you directly to the entrance to the realm. All you need to do is take a nosedive through the swirling circle of light.”

He rolled his eyes.Oh, is that all I need to do?A gust of wind hit Aston like a battering ram. He reached out with his hands and pulled air from the opposite side to keep his balance on the back of the dragon. “Is she trying to kill me?”

“A woman scorned, air boy,” Kimba called back. “What did you expect her to do when her soul bonded said they should go their separate ways?”

“How do you know what I said?”

“I have a tendency to eavesdrop. Believe it or not, sometimes flying around all day gets boring.” If dragons could shrug, Aston was pretty sure Kimba just did.

Without so much as a “hold on,” Kimba went into a sharp dive. Aston screamed and gripped her neck tighter. He peered around her scaly head to see they were barreling straight toward the ground. The dragon pulled her wings to her sides, causing their speed to increase. “Do you want me to actually survive this nosedive-jumping thing? At this speed, I’ll be squashed like a bug hitting a windshield.”

Kimba grumbled. “Have you forgotten how to use your magic while you’ve been here?”

---