Page 59 of Jace

As soon as she opened the bag, his stomach began to grumble. A dragon wasn’t meant to live on biscuits and protein goo.

He watched as she pulled out two sealed cells of cooked meat and a few biscuits. When she unsealed the first cell, the delicious aroma almost knocked him off his feet.

“It’s not warm,” she told him apologetically.

“I’ve never been so happy to see any food, ever,” he told her.

She laughed and he didn’t even care, so long as she handed him one of those cells.

She offered him the first one and he took it, managing to politely wait for her to get hers opened. Barely.

He took the first bite and closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“Good?” she asked when he swallowed and opened them again.

“The best,” he assured her as he took another big bite.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the chirping of the birds and the burbling of the stream they were following.

“This is nice,” Susannah said as she finished.

It was nice. It felt right, like the three of them were… a family.

He gathered up the empty cells and returned them to the bag, which he stuck in his pack.

He was just about to turn back to her when he heard something moving in the brush.

He whipped around, trying to catch sight of it.

“What’s wrong?” Susannah asked.

“Something is here,” he whispered to her.

He leapt from the rock without another word, determined to catch whoever this was before they could get away.

Now that he was allowing the dragon closer to the surface, he could scent that what he had heard was not a fox, or any animal, for that matter.

Someone else was in this forest with them.

24

Jace

Jace moved with all the stealth he had learned from years of Invicta training. Though he was large, he was able to mold his feet to the forest floor and travel in almost complete silence.

Hopefully, whoever it was wouldn’t sense him coming until it was too late.

He slid his laser blade from the holster on his belt, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it.

A few minutes later, he finally caught up to his target, and nearly let out a noisy sigh of confused relief.

The being in front of him wasn’t a Vystian, or a thief.

It was some kind of moose, but bigger than any he’d ever seen before.

He wasn’t sure how he could have confused the scent of this creature with that of a person. But he was grateful. Animals were almost always easier to deal with.

Roughly the size of a small hovercraft, the massive thing was nosing around in the underbrush for sweet, new-growth plants. A thick coat of lichen grew on its horns and in its dense coat, telling Jace it wasn’t accustomed to moving fast.

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