Page 5

CHAPTER 4

DAX

T he morning sun slices through the haze, burning away the gray in harsh, unforgiving beams that cast jagged shadows across the scorched ridge. The air is sharp with the tang of smoke and ash, still thick despite the fire having moved on. From this height, the terrain spreads like a battlefield below me—blistered earth, blackened trunks, and veins of glowing amber that pulse like a dying heartbeat.

And yet, something deeper hums beneath it all. A dissonance that scrapes against every instinct I own. It vibrates in my bones, like a chord struck out of tune in a song I’ve known for centuries. The burn pattern is too clean. Too deliberate. Lines of devastation curve with unnatural grace, sweeping across ridgelines like brushstrokes with a purpose. The fire didn’t just move through here—it chose a path, or had one chosen for it. Everything in me says it wasn’t nature that made that choice. It was a message. One meant for me.

“Faster than it should’ve been,” Kade mutters beside me, eyes scanning the burn perimeter with cold calculation. "We were only in the air ten minutes. This line should’ve been crawling, not sprinting."

"There’s no way that kind of acceleration came from natural fuel," Rafe adds, flicking his gaze toward me. "Unless trees learned to self-detonate overnight."

Kade huffs, but there’s tension behind the humor. "I don’t like it. It feels off... like it was waiting for us."

Rafe snorts. "Everything feels off lately. And it doesn't help that she's showed up."

"She has nothing to do with this," I say evenly, voice like steel under strain. "The pattern was forming long before Ember stepped into the picture."

Kade shoots me a sidelong glance. "Still... she’s asking the right questions, and I think she sees more than even she knows."

"Too many questions," Rafe mutters.

I don’t bother correcting him. They’re both right—and both underestimating her. That’s the danger. Because her record indicates that Ember isn’t just sharp—she's relentless. She's the kind of person who doesn’t stop once the scent of truth hits her nostrils. If they keep brushing her off, if they treat her like a temporary complication, she’ll find her way straight into the fire we’ve spent lifetimes trying to contain. And I won’t always be fast enough to pull her back.

We circle our home base, wings slicing through the wind, then descend in a slow, spiraling arc. Our claws touch down with barely a sound, talons carving into the ash-soft earth. In a synchronized rhythm honed by centuries, we shift—three bursts of light and fire erupt around us, no fanfare, just truth made visible—dragons vanish and the dust swirls around the space where men return.

The flight was brief—just enough to bleed off the blaze still crackling beneath our skin, to smooth the wild edges of our instincts until thought could lead again. The wind tore past our wings, crisp and sharp, carrying the char-stained scent of burning pine and scorched earth. From the sky, the world below looked like a battlefield left to smolder—blackened scars etched into forest and rock.

For a short while, we weren’t leaders, soldiers, or ghosts bound by human rules. We were dragons—watchers from above. And in that stillness, above the chaos, we could finally see the shape of the war no one else realized had already begun.

We stand there for a moment in the aftermath, breathing hard, steam rising off our skin from the fading heat of the shift. Scales retreat into flesh. Wings furl and dissolve into nothing, leaving only silence and the scent of smoke. It’s never clean. Never simple. The shift leaves a rawness in the soul, a reminder that we walk in borrowed skins. Each transformation is a reminder that our human faces are masks—necessary to blend, to hide. It’s a lie we must live to protect the truth of what we are.

Bare feet on soot-covered stone. The wind carries ash to our doorstep now, swirling it into lazy spirals that cling to our skin. The heat from the shift hasn’t completely left us, a lingering warmth that seeps into muscle and bone. We move with the precision of ritual, unhurried but efficient, each of us grabbing our supply packs from the cache tucked behind a jagged basalt outcrop.

We dress in silence. Kade puts on his jacket with practiced ease, his expression unreadable but his movements clipped. I pull on my clothes and step into my boots, the thick soles grounding me back in the human world, even as my mind still buzzes with dragon-sense.

Jackets zip. Velcro hisses. Fabric rustles as we settle into the shape we’ve chosen for the day. Kade rolls his shoulders, the motion stiff from old wounds and older battles. Rafe adjusts his collar with the same quick, clean motion he always uses—habitual, efficient. I pull the zipper of my jacket all the way up, locking myself back into the armor of skin and silence.

But in the quiet that follows, the only sound is the wind, andthe heartbeat of the fire, pulsing low and steady beneath our feet.

Rafe leans over the holographic fire progression display projected on the table in our field command center. Flames dance in real-time across the grid, rendered in searing reds and volatile oranges. He points to the north flank—a stretch of terrain marked with low-fuel density.

“Look at this segment,” he says, his brow furrowed. “North flank. No fuel bed there. Even so, it torched like a blowtorch hit it. Like something fed it from underneath.”

Kade leans in beside him, eyes narrowing. “That’s limestone and scrub. Should’ve smoldered, not surged.”

“It burned clean and hot,” Rafe adds. “Too clean. Like it was lit with intent."

I study the image, jaw tight. The heat signature pulsing in the overlay is too symmetrical, too sharp. It glows like a brand on the grid—clean arcs, intersecting lines, too deliberate to be coincidence. My mind flashes back to the last time I saw a pattern like this: the ruins of a fire-scorched village deep in the Alps, Malek's twisted legacy still steaming in the frosty morning air.

And far too familiar.

Kade and Rafe exchange a glance but say nothing. We kill the projection in sync, the image vanishing with a hiss of static. No words needed. Just the crackling quiet that follows a realization no one wants to name. We step out into the rising heat, the world beyond the tent pressing in around us like smoke before the flame.

Kade zips his jacket. “Feels like the old days. Right before shit went sideways.”

Rafe grunts. “Only this time, the smoke isn’t the only thing trying to choke us.”

“We’ve seen this before,” I say. “Last year in Wyoming. Before that, in Lassen.”

Kade nods. “Same behavior. Triangulated burn paths. Precision flares. Containment curves ignored.”

Rafe runs a hand through his dark hair. “You think it’s him?”

I don’t answer right away. The name has been clawing at my thoughts since yesterday, gnawing at the edges of my control like an ember smoldering under wet ash. Saying it aloud would give it power—make it real. It’s not just history. It’s personal. It’s the monster that nearly took everything from me and left scorch marks on my soul. To even think his name now feels like inviting the past to burn through the present and set fire to everything I’ve rebuilt since.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But Malek’s pattern fits. And if he’s not dead like we thought... then we’ve got bigger problems than fire.”

Kade shifts on his feet, his silence saying more than words. Rafe finally breaks the tension.

“And the fed?” he asks. “She’s in deep. Smart. And stubborn.”

“She’s also mine,” I say simply, the words slipping out with more steel than I meant.

Kade glances at me. “You gonna tell her?”

“When the time’s right.”

“Is that before or after she figures it out on her own?”

I shoot him a look that ends that line of questioning. I can’t afford to slip. Not yet. Ember is already under my skin. Her scent lingers like smoke and citrus, bright and sharp and wild, threading through every breath like a warning and a promise. She’s more than a curiosity. More than a distraction. She grounds me in a way I forgot was possible—pulls the dragon back from the edge without even trying. She’s an anchor I never thought I’d find... and a temptation I can’t afford to lose control around.

“I need to think,” I say, stepping back from the table. “Keep tight. Report if anything changes.”

I leave before they can ask more questions and head for the clearing carved into the ridge—our designated drop and launch point. I shrug off my gear, boots thudding against the packed dirt like a warning to the earth itself. The wind tugs at my shirt, dry and restless, charged with something more than static. I breathe in deep, and the scent of scorched pine and ash floods my lungs. Beneath it, something older stirs.

The pulse of my dragon beats faster with every breath I take, echoing in my chest like a war drum. My skin tingles, the air around me tightening, vibrating with anticipation. Magic hums low and insistent, curling up from the ground, threading through my bones, waiting for permission.

I step to the center of the clearing with slow, practiced movements. The air thickens around me, sharpening with heat and magic as I place each item down in a neat, familiar pile. The wind brushes across my bare skin, already charged with energy, with the fire that lives just beneath the surface. I close my eyes and breathe, steady and deep, grounding myself in the coiled flame at the center of my being. It's there, always—fierce, patient, ancient. Waiting. I open myself to it, give it space to rise.

The ground vibrates beneath my feet, the first tremor of change rippling through me. And then the fire comes.

It begins as a spark in my core, then rushes outward—consuming, revealing. Flame coils around me, not burning but transforming. The fire sings in my blood, wild and ancient, as wings unfurl in a blaze of gold and ember.

I rise, massive and primal, the blaze still licking along my flanks, casting ripples of heat into the sky. My wings unfurl fully—vast, golden, edged in shadow—and beat down with the force of a thunderclap. The air buckles beneath me. Ash and dust whirl outward like a shockwave as my claws leave the earth. Another beat of my wings and I surge upward, slicing through the smoke-heavy sky like a blade through silk. Fire spirals from my nostrils as I climb, fierce and unrelenting, part of the storm I was born to command.

The wind parts around me, streaming past my wings with a sound like distant thunder. Smoke curls below like serpents slithering through the canyons, their movements too precise to be natural. Heat rises in shimmering waves from the charred landscape, distorting the ridgeline. From the air, the full path of the fire becomes undeniable—arcs too perfect, ignitions spaced like symbols. Too clean. Too efficient. Too targeted. It’s not just wildfire down there. It’s a message written in flame, and I’m the one meant to read it.

I veer toward the eastern ridge, sharp eyes scanning for signs. My shadow passes over the terrain far below—cliffs, canyons, deep burns too symmetrical to be random.

And then I see it. A secondary ignition source. New burn. Smaller, but recent.Fresh.Someone’s baiting us.

Memories slam into me: Malek’s last stand, the way his fire tore through a village like vengeance incarnate. The roar of a beast that wanted the world to burn just because he couldn’t have it. I’d watched him fall. Swore I’d ended it.But fire doesn’t lie.

And neither do these marks. The scorched earth here isn't random—it's deliberate. Circular burns etched in a spiral pattern, overlapping just enough to mimic natural spread to the untrained eye. But I see it for what it is. The ash still radiates residual heat, warmer than it should be. There's a sulfuric undertone in the air, acrid and unnatural. Not wildfire. Not even dragon. Someone seeded this fire—to lure, to challenge, and to send a message only our kind would understand.

I bank right, circling once to lock the coordinates into memory. And that’s when I feel it—Eyes.Not hostile. Not supernatural. Human.

My gaze tracks back down and there—just for a second—I see her. Ember. Standing at the edge of a rocky outcropping near camp, her hand shielding her eyes as she stares up.

She doesn’t see me for what I am. Not fully. But she senses it. The flicker of awareness in her posture, the way her gaze lingers in the sky a second too long—it’s all there. And it’s dangerous. Not just because of what she might uncover, but because of what it stirs in me. If she keeps looking, keeps pressing, the truth won’t stay buried. And if she gets too close—emotionally, physically—she won’t just expose me. She’ll unravel me. She feels the wrongness in the air. I’m getting to know that look—the crease in her brow, the stubborn set of her jaw.

She’s close... too close.

I climb higher, pushing against the thermals as the updrafts buffet my wings. The smoke rises in dense columns, curling around me like a veil, cloaking my form from sight. Each beat of my wings sends pulses of heat through the thick air, a soundless roar vibrating down my spine. The sky grows darker as I ascend into the low-hanging clouds, the world below disappearing in a haze of flame and shadow. One more surge of power, and I vanish into the storm-slick sky, nothing but a flicker of gold swallowed by gray.

But the fire below hasn’t finished with her... and neither have I.