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Her gaze snapped back to him. “The portal, though.”

“Carve me a path with fire, and I’ll get to it.”

She breathed a moment, open-mouthed, gaze tracking back and forth over his face as though she was trying to understand him. Then she jerked a nod, stepped back, and whistled.

Pain bloomed hot and fierce on the back of Leif’s leg, and he stumbled, and turned, bringing his sword up to find a wounded Sel stretched out across the dirt behind him. He’d left a smear of blood on the road as he crawled toward them, unheeded, and the end of his wicked, curved belt knife was wet with blood – Leif’s blood. The bastard had crawled up and stabbed him in the leg.

The knife was wicked, and the puncture was deep. It came with pain that was first bright, and then excoriating; Leif could feel the tear of muscle, and fat, and the snapping of severed tendon. The moment he’d registered the severity of the injury was the moment his body started working its wolf magic, reknitting itself. It turned out quick healing was every bit as painful as injury.

Leif shifted his weight to his good leg, and knocked the knife from the man’s hand with his sword. Then he brought the blade down hard and took his hand off for good measure.

While the soldier screamed, Leif reached down, unbuckled his helm, and drew it off. Beneath, he was pale and purple-painted like all the rest. Clean-shaven, and with his white hair braided into a tight cap. His face, though, when he tipped it back to peer up at his would-be killer, proved young. Very young. He was only a teenager, really, baby fat padding out the sharp edges of jaw and chin. His eyes, that pale, nearly colorless blue, were wet with tears, brimming with terror.

Leif slit his throat with one quick motion, and felt no satisfaction in it.

A loud, trumpeting cry from Alpha drew his attention next, and he lifted his head to see the drake fling a crumpled purple beast to the ground and rear upright in the air, wings starting up a furious, maelstrom rhythm that blew down men and stirred up a great cloud of dust. The small drakes pestering him were blown back. Alpha rose into the air, dispelling the dust with each powerful thrust of his wings – and that was when Leif saw Ragnar.

He saw the horse, first, riderless, galloping through the tangle of bodies with reins flapping, and stirrups swinging empty. Above, Leif saw a familiar tumble of dark-gold hair, bare arms glistening with sweat, gold bands winking. One of the small drakes had him, and Ragnar was thrashing and kicking, and trying to get free.

Time stopped.

He was dimly aware of Alpha flying overhead, the stir of air from his wings as he went to his mistress. Men were still shouting, and falling, and clashing, the collision of steel ringing out across the road like the chiming of hectic death bells.

But those were all human concerns, and when he caught sight of Ragnar, every human part of him receded; his sight sharpened, and his lungs filled with too many scents, and his heart throbbed, as the alpha wolf caught sight of his beta being carried away in the jaws of an unnatural beast.

Leif growled. And kept growling, as he took off at a lurching run, half-dragging his wounded leg, the pain sharp – but the pain nothing in the face of the theft of his packmate.

Pack. Mine. Mate. Mine, mine, mine, kill you, I’ll kill you…

Ragnar threw a hard punch, and the drake’s jaws opened, and Ragnar fell.

No, no, no! Mine. Mine. MINE. Mate.

He heard the snap of bone breaking when Ragnar hit the ground, and his heart leaped, and his growl tapered off with a high, panicked whine. He pushed onward, one clumsy stride after the next, forcing his ruined-but-healing leg to keep going, though he could feel the pain of it all the way up in his teeth.

Ragnar was moving, pushing himself up on his hands, his arm bleeding, his teeth bared in a grimace. He levered up so he was leaning on his hip, and he glanced around at his own legs; his trousers were torn on the right, blood and bone visible.

Leif needed to touch him. Needed skin-to-skin contact; needed to sniff and lick at the wounds. Base, purely animal urges he was helpless to suppress. Every part of him needed to get to his packmate’s side as quickly as possible. He lurched on, and on, drawing closer, pushing his bad leg until he felt something else snap inside of it, a fresh burst of fire deep within the muscle.

Ragnar’s head came back around, and his gaze lifted, and met Leif’s. Only a few meters separated them now. Close enough for Leif to see the pain etched in each fine line of his face. Close enough to watch his eyes go wide, and his mouth open. Close enough to read the clear warning in his gaze, in the way his lips formed the wordalpha.

But not close enough to reach him before something crashed into him, bowled him over, and his world exploded in pain.

~*~

Amelia had never been so glad to see Alpha. He landed with a sudden drop, crushing two Sel soldiers underfoot in the process, and immediately lowered his head and thrust it into her chest, sniffing her all over and making low, worried crooning sounds.

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” she said, and could have fainted with relief. He was here, and big, and warm, and a wall between her and everything else. She already felt her shakes receding, and her strength returning, his worry a welcome balm through their bond. She stroked his face, noting the fine-line scratches there from the other drakes’ claws. “What about you? You okay?”

He snorted, and sent a drake sense ofnever betterthrough the bond.

She scratched him behind the horns. “Right, then. Let’s get up in the air.”

When she hurried to his side, and put her foot in the fixed stirrup on his girth, he swung his head around to give her an extra boost up with his nose. Amelia found that she could smile, briefly, when her bum hit the saddle. She clipped on the harness straps that fixed her in place, took up the reins, and he was leaping aloft before she could touch him with her heels.

~*~

Reggie took a step back, tripped on the corpse of a fallen Sel, and would have fallen himself if not for Connor’s tight grip on the back of his tunic. Connor hauled him upright and slapped him between the shoulder blades, a grounding thump that seemed to say,You’re all right.