Page 21

CHAPTER 20

DAX

T he sheets are still warm when Ember rolls over and groans. “Tell me we have time for coffee.”

I grin. “You want caffeine or the satisfaction of torching Malek’s smug face off?”

She squints up at me from the nest of blankets. “Both. In that order.”

“No time for the first. But the second?”

Her eyes light up, wild and wicked. “That’ll work.”

Outside, the air crackles with heat and tension, thick with the scent of smoke and scorched pine. Distant flames snap and roar, a living wall of fire that eats its way through the far canyons. The sky above is a muted red, sun choked out by ash. The wildfire Malek summoned isn't just burning—it's hunting.

Ember and I step out of the cabin, skin still tingling, breath still uneven from what just passed between us. The heat outside is brutal, but it’s nothing compared to the hum still coursing through my veins—her touch, her fire, still branded on me. We don’t speak. We don’t have to.

Rafe waits near the perimeter, back straight, eyes locked on the canyon rim like he’s daring it to blink. His jaw is set tight, the kind of tension that comes from watching too many people you care about walk into hell with nothing but grit and firepower.

He sees us coming and gives a sharp nod—no words wasted. We’re out of time.

“We’ll handle the line,” he says. “Get moving. He was spotted near the obsidian ridge.”

I nod once and reach for Ember’s hand. “Stay close. This ends today.”

She squeezes back. “Wasn’t planning on letting you have all the fun.”

We shift mid-run, our bodies stretching and reshaping, bones cracking, skin hardening, wings tearing free as fire pours through us. The ground falls away as I surge upward, the wind roaring past my ears, and my wings unfurl with the familiar rush of power that never stops being intoxicating. The beast in me howls with purpose.

Beside me, Ember explodes into the sky, her dragon form radiant—a blaze of molten gold and wildfire fury. Her eyes catch the light like sun on blade-edge, her scales flickering between heat shimmer and raw flame. She doesn’t fly—she commands the air around her.

We launch into the smoke-streaked wind, slicing through ash and updraft like twin missiles. The air is thick with soot and heat, updrafts buffeting us from below, making every wingbeat a battle and a dance. My muscles burn with the effort, but it feels good—right.

Below us, the Blackstrike Unit fans out in tight formation, a coordinated arc of movement as they brace to confront the encroaching blaze. They look tiny from up here, but they move like giants—like the last line holding back the end of the world.

Ember banks left, brushing her wingtip against mine. “You smell like sex and war.”

A low growl rumbles in my chest. “You’re the one who blew fire into my skin.”

“I regret nothing.”

The canyon splits wide beneath us, jagged and blackened like a scar torn through the world. Rivers of ash wind through its depths, glowing faintly with ember veins that pulse like dying hearts. The heat rising from below is brutal—oppressive even at this height—warped air distorting the edges of stone and sky alike.

Then I see him.

A shape, at first—wrong, heavy, dragging shadow where there should be light. Then wings. Then the rest. Malek rises from the smoke like a nightmare born from fire—massive, twisted, haloed in flame and malice. His eyes gleam with that same unbearable hunger, and that grin—too wide, too sharp—cuts across his face like a fresh wound that never healed. He looks worse than before, darker somehow, like every second in the shadows twisted him deeper into something unnatural.

I don’t wait. I dive, fire spilling from my jaws in a blistering arc. Ember follows, our flames dancing together in perfect rhythm. Malek meets us midair, his fury rolling off him like stormfronts. The stench hits me first—acrid, rotted, thick with the reek of corrupted magic.

Claws clash. Wings thunder. Fire tears across the sky.

“He’s drawing it!” Ember’s voice shouts in my head. “Feeding the fire with his rage.”

“Then we starve him.”

We strike in tandem, relentless and synchronized—two storms crashing into one. Our claws rake across his hide in coordinated sweeps. Our fire blends midair, forging a wall of heat and light that presses Malek back again and again. He’s brutal, unpredictable, his movements wild and jagged, like he’s barely containing something inside him that wants out.

He spins midair and lashes out, catching Ember’s flank with a blast of corrupted flame. I roar and dive, biting into his exposed wing. He howls and twists, trying to wrench free, but we don’t give him room. Ember recovers in a heartbeat and flanks him, her body a streak of gold fury, her flame answering mine with a roar of vengeance.

Then, without warning, he folds his wings and drops. Not retreating—luring. He slams into the canyon floor hard enough to send a shockwave rolling up through the stone. Flame explodes outward from the impact point, not natural, but summoned—twisting, dark, fed by something foul. It punches into the air, sparking a new firestorm that surges up and tries to swallow us whole. The blaze roars with Malek’s rage, and the canyon becomes a furnace of chaos.

For a heartbeat, I think Ember might falter. The fire lashes around her, wild and furious, the wind trying to rip her from the sky. Her wings shudder under the pressure, and the heat is so intense it warps even her golden glow.

But then I see it—the difference in her stance, the way her wings flare wider, defiant. Her jaw locks. Her eyes burn—not with fear, but with focus, with fury, with absolute control. Power ripples outward from her in a golden shockwave, parting the inferno like it answers to her alone.

She doesn’t just withstand the fire.

She bends it.

Commands it.

Becomes one with it.

She is the fire now?—

—and it knows who it belongs to.

“I’ve got the fire,” she says through the bond, her form flaring gold. “Take him.”

I hesitate only a second, just long enough to feel the bond between us pulse steady—solid—in the chaos. Her wings beat with iron determination, cutting clean arcs through smoke and ash. Her flames don’t just redirect the inferno—they sculpt it, curve it back on itself, a burning serpent snapping at its own tail. The fire obeys her. She’s got it. She owns it. And I know—deep in my bones—I can trust her with this storm.

With a final glance, I turn toward Malek and let everything else fall away—Ember, the firestorm, the noise of the world. All of it drops into silence. My focus narrows until it’s just him and me, two forces spiraling toward collision. My wings snap tighter, my heartbeat syncing with the beat of flame in my chest.

Rage surges forward, sharp and hungry, but it’s clean now—refined. No hesitation. No fear. Just the righteous fury of knowing exactly who I am, exactly what I fight for. I lock onto him like a falling star with a single purpose: destroy the dark and end this.

I circle high, wings aching from the climb, the wind shrieking past my scales like a warning. I hold it for one perfect moment—the stillness before the storm—and then I dive.

The roar that tears from my chest isn’t just fury. It’s history. It’s vengeance. It’s every scar, every betrayal, every memory of what Malek destroyed. My descent is a missile of flame and fury.

I slam into him with bone-breaking force, my talons driving into his throat, tearing through scale and sinew. His blood is dark, wrong, reeking of ruin. He shrieks, not just in pain, but in panic. For the first time, I hear it—fear in his voice.

And I’m not done.

My fire pours into him, not just heat but judgment, ripping into the twisted void that pretends to be his heart. It fights back—shadows curling against the blaze—but I don’t let up. I give it everything. Every drop of power, every shred of will. I burn through him, burn into him, until the shadows scream and rupture, until the darkness finally breaks.

And still, I don’t stop. Not until he’s nothing but ash scattered on the wind.

Below, Ember redirects the blaze, her wings cutting deliberate paths through the choking heat. The fire doesn’t just move—it alters its course, answering her will like a living thing. She pushes it away from the green valleys with precise, brutal authority, forcing it into dead rock where it can burn itself out harmlessly. Every gust of wind she rides, every pulse of flame she bends—it’s all instinct and mastery.

Her wings tremble, but not from weakness. From the sheer magnitude of what she’s channeling—wild, molten power drawn from the heart of the blaze itself. The strain is written in every line of her body, in the pulsing glow that bleeds from the tips of her wings, in the way the very air distorts around her from the heat.

Flame coils beneath her like a throne rising from ruin. She hovers there, sovereign and relentless, and every fiber of her being says: this fire is mine. She doesn’t just resist the storm—she owns it. Commands it like it’s an extension of her breath, her will, her rage wrapped in beauty.

I hover for a beat, stunned—not by the fire, but by her. By the way she floats there in the blaze like it’s her birthright, every wingbeat a statement, every flick of flame a vow. She isn’t just surviving. She’s owning this moment like it was carved into fate for her alone. Holding back disaster with nothing but will, instinct, and power that pulses from her like a second heartbeat.

There’s grace in her control, yes, but there’s also ferocity—regal and raw and utterly hers. She’s not just radiant. She’s sovereign. And the fire knows it.

When she lands, I follow, pressing my snout to hers.

“You good?” I ask.

“Ask me after I can feel my legs again.”

We shift back to human form, sweat slick and breath heavy. Ember groans as she tugs on her pants.

“Next time, can we fight evil someplace that has air conditioning?”

Rafe’s voice crackles over the comm. “We turned the front. Firefighters are moving in. We’ve got it.”

Relief hits me like a wave, sudden and staggering, crashing through the high of adrenaline and the ache of battle. My limbs feel heavier, my breath finally reaching the bottom of my lungs. I look at Ember—smudged with soot, eyes still blazing—and something deeper roots itself in my chest. Gratitude, sharp and clear. Pride, fierce and blinding. And beneath it, a quiet, undeniable awe. Not just for what we survived. For what we became in the fire.

“Copy. We’re heading back.”

Together, we climb to the canyon’s rim, our bodies aching, clothes torn, skin singed, but every step forward feels earned. Below, the fire still smolders, licking at scorched earth, trying to pretend it still has power—but the worst of it is broken, its fury drained. I wrap my arm around Ember’s waist as we reach the top, drawing her close not just because I need to, but because I can. Because we’re still standing.

Just ahead, a spiral symbol is burned into the obsidian, etched deep into the volcanic glass like it’s always been there, just waiting for this moment to reveal itself. Not jagged, not chaotic, not corrupted like Malek’s scorched runes. This mark is clean. Intentional. Balanced. It radiates calm in the middle of ruin, like the canyon itself witnessed what happened and chose to remember it this way—not with fear, but with meaning.

The canyon itself has marked the moment—not with violence, but with memory. It doesn’t scream or burn. It simply remembers, carving the spiral into black glass like a signature on the end of war. Not an ending. Not even a victory. A declaration. A vow. A beginning. The kind that’s written in fire and sealed in ash, where nothing stays the same and everything worth keeping has been forged anew.

I turn her toward me. Her face is streaked with soot, her hair wild and wind-whipped, tangled with ash and battle. Her eyes—those fierce, firelit eyes—lock onto mine, and everything else falls away. The wreckage, the smoke, the blood on our hands—it all fades beneath the weight of what she is to me. She’s chaos and calm, destruction and salvation. And still, she’s everything. Not despite the fire. Because of it.

“You’re everything, Ember,” I say, cupping her face.

Then I kiss her. Hard. Desperate. Claiming. It’s not gentle—it’s everything I’ve held back, everything I almost lost. My hands are in her hair, pulling her closer like I could fuse us back into the fire we came from. And in that heat, I feel it—the pulse of our bond thrumming between us, ancient and electric. Magic hums at the base of my spine, that tether we forged in blood and fire sparking alive again with every breath we share. This isn’t just a kiss. It’s a promise. A reclamation. A memory and a future crashing together in a single heartbeat. I taste soot, salt, the echo of fear and the fire still fading around us—but beneath it all, her.

When we pull apart, her eyes search mine, something fierce and steady burning there. Then she smiles—not wide, not giddy, but full. A slow, unshakable thing that settles deep. It isn’t just happiness—it’s peace. The kind you only find on the other side of chaos. The kind we bled to earn.

“Guess I’m firebound now.”

I pull her in tighter. “Damn right you are.”

And behind us, the fire finally begins to die, curling into lazy smoke trails as it surrenders to the blackened earth. But I don’t just see the end—I feel what still burns beneath it. Not the wildfire, but something deeper. Something eternal.

The fire in us—what we’ve forged together in heat and danger and trust—won’t fade. It simmers under our skin, steady and relentless, not consuming, but anchoring. A bond no wind can scatter, no ash can bury.

The wildfire might be contained.

But our fire?

That’s forever.