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“If what you say is true and she had no part in this, I do not plan to harm her.”

If it is true...Then Rurik would have no reason to be angry with her.

She released me. Removed my hexes so I could fight.These were not the actions of someone who had been plotting against him.

“What-” her father started.

“I do not have time for this! Do you wish your daughter to die or not?”

Rurik was beginning to spiral, and his emotions became more chaotic. With the more he learned, the more he thought, the more he tried to reach for the possibility that she hadn’t betrayed him.

It meant he was beginning to fear for her, fear for himself that he would not see her live past this day.

“No,” he whispered after a long pause.

“Good,” Rurik said, before he approached him. Then he pressed his paw against his face and pushed him away from her. “Now get the fuck out of the way.”

Once she was lying against the ground, Rurik crawled above her and pressed his scaled head to her chest. Her breaths were shallow and struggled while her heart beat softly, like it would cease at any moment.

She will not last much longer.Her skin was deathly pale, draining away from the tan he was accustomed to.

With careful claws, he lifted the tunic to check her wound to see it was barely bleeding.I cannot heal her wound like this. I will have to change it.

“Why do you care what happens to her? She is the reason you were brought here as a tool by Strolguil.”

“Because she has been living in my lair for the past month and a half.” He also had other reasons, emotions he didn’t wish to face. He backed away from Amalia to give himself space. “I am going to increase my size.”

He internally chanted the words he needed, and his body grew in height and width. Trees uprooted to move out of the way as he grew in a space that couldn’t accommodate his size.

“Place her in my paw.” He extended it out to him.

Her father scooped her into his arms and carefully placed her in it. Then Rurik snatched him with the other, earning him a yell as he lifted off into the sky.

Once he reached a height where he could see far over the land, he flapped his wings in a circle.Which way is my-He knew the scene. He had flown over it multiple times and could see his mountain close by.

The flight was short, barely a few minutes with the speed in which he had flown.

Strolguil was so close!He’d flown over that small castle many times and had never known.

“Do not try to escape, or I will kill you,” he warned when he hovered above his lairstep and tossed her father inside since his ward had been lowered.

He would just add his head to his collection and tell Amalia he didn’t know what happened to her father.

Landing with one front paw free so he could land carefully with her in his other one, he lifted her to his head, checking to make sure she was still alive.

“Take her, I cannot save her in my Dragon form.”

He was too large, too unwieldly with his claws.

Although the idea of being in a much more vulnerable body with a stranger nearby, a Dark Witch no less, wasn’t something he would usually do, he didn’t have any other choice with Amalia on the brink of death.

The man took her from his paw and then he blew a ring of fire above his head.

Not even a moment later, he’d stolen her from her father’s arms as he cradled her body. He walked with her down the tunnel.

He looked at the man from the corner of his eye before looking at the shackles on his wrists.

“Why were you a prisoner?”