Page 7 of Flameborne: Chosen (Emberquell Academy #1)

~ DONAVYN ~

What. The actual. Fuck?!

Forgetting the precarious tension with the female, I whirled to meet my dragon’s eye. “Keg, that’s not possible—”

My dragon reared his head to stare down at me, the bond dripping with warning.

I must have said it out loud. The female hissed and several of the dragons rumbled their indignation.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… of course you know. It was just the shock,” I mumbled quickly, turning back to the girl under the dragon’s wing. “It’s only, she’s female. And a child. That seems—”

“I am n-not a child!” the girl snapped, grasping the dragon’s leg and pushing herself to her feet—where three things happened very quickly.

I saw her form and learned that she was, indeed, not a child.

Both dragons hissed and as I turned to soothe them, the woman got herself upright—and promptly toppled over with a small cry.

I stopped trying to rationalize what was happening. It didn’t matter if she was female, if the dragon was confused, or even if the bond was real. We had an injured woman, a young and distressed dragon, and the Primarch glaring amber-hued murder at me for embarrassing him.

Not my finest hour. Also, not the time to think about it. I let my training kick in.

‘You keep the female calm while I assess the Flameborne,’ I sent without preamble. Kgosi carried responsibility for the dragons and I carried their people, and neither of us was precious about the other assigning orders when it was needed for our charges.

But this was a first. And not just for us .

Kgosi crooned to the female as I crept forward, making myself appear as submissive as I could to clamber over the dragon’s leg, then under her wing that kept us blessedly hidden from the gathered crowd, but dimmed the sunlight as well.

When I made it into the impromptu nest under that wing, I went cold.

Shit.

Either she’d fainted, or her blood loss was a great deal more than I could see from here. Her face was deathly pale under brown hair that shone red even in the dim light, and her eyes were closed with no sign of movement.

“Was she injured before you landed? How did you find her?” I asked the dragon thoughtlessly. Thankfully, Kgosi relayed her answer without complaint.

‘She… fell from the cliffs. Akhane caught her. She held strong for a great while, but the landing was unstrapped.’

Shit. That meant there might be broken bones. Internal bleeding. Or a head injury. All of which meant I couldn’t move her.

“Do we have any healing pairs nearby?” I asked Kgosi, but his reply was swift.

‘No.’

‘Then please use the dragons to find the closest and most skilled. This could be only a faint after her first flight, but it’s possible she’s very gravely injured.’

‘You humans do injure so easily,’ Kgosi said grimly. ‘…Nila and her Tato are close and will be here in moments. She’ll call some of the others if—’

The woman’s eyes fluttered open. I was crouched at her side and watched her gaze travel up from my boots to my face.

Then her eyes widened and she jerked up to a sitting position.

I hurried slid one hand to her back and the other to her knee. “Whoa, whoa—not yet. We don’t know where you’re hurt. You just took a serious fall from a dragon. Lay down, Miss. Please. You need to lay down.”

“Thank you, but I’m fine,” she dismissed me, though her voice shook.

I felt the jolt of Kgosi’s offense on my behalf when she contradicted me so blithely, but I grinned. Two hundred plus years old and my dragon still faltered at the human line between authority and respect.

‘Don’t worry, she’ll learn,’ I sent to him with a laugh.

I must have chuckled in truth because the woman turned her head quickly, as if I’d shocked her. But then her gaze cleared and she locked on me.

“You’re Donavyn Arsen,” she breathed. “The… important one.”

Swallowing a chuckle, I nodded once. “That is my name, though my dragon might argue your second point,” I said dryly. “And you are?”

“I’m Bren. I…” Her chin trembled as she drew her knees up and looked around, then blinked again when she found two massive, dragon snouts and side-eyes staring .

“Akhane,” she breathed. “You saved me.” Her eyes welled. She reached forward to lay one trembling hand on the dragon’s scaley leg while she wiped her tears with the other, leaving trails of smeared dirt in its wake.

“She did a great deal more than save you,” I muttered, keeping my hand at her back and cursing that we had no support for her neck. “But that is a conversation for later.”

For a moment I froze. Bren and Akhane, the dragon— her dragon—stared at each other, while Kgosi watched me with curiosity.

My head spun.

‘How far away are the healers?’

‘Moments. But they’ll find nothing. She is scraped and bruised, but I scent none of the blackened blood,’ Kgosi said, his nostrils thinning.

I nodded and blew out a breath. I still had a hand at Bren’s back because I worried she might topple again. But decisions needed to be made. Acknowledgements. Orientations and… How the hell was I going to formally acknowledge, let alone orient a female Flameborne?

‘Kgosi—’

‘I do not know, and the Creator has not yet chosen to reveal it. But there is no mistake. Akhane has Chosen the woman, Bren. The bond is alive. The herd acknowledges her. The Pair will not be separated,’ he intoned, with all the authority of the Primarch who held exactly zero expectation of being contradicted.

And that meant it wasn’t just me who’d been party to it.

He’d spread his mind to the dragons. Each one present had heard and would relay the order precisely to any who were not.

To a dragon, there was no question. When the Primarch spoke , they listened.

Holy shit.

I took a deep breath when the healers arrived—Tato, a battle medic, and his bluescale, Nila.

But Kgosi was right. Bren wasn’t injured.

At least, not in dangerous ways. Tato was very thorough in having her bend and flex every joint and digit.

But soon it was clear: She was healthy, if a little banged up.

It was time for her to meet the others so word could spread.

Were she a man, this would have been a moment for great camaraderie and celebration. Every new Flameborne was a potential Squad brother to any of us.

‘She will need your authority at her back,’ Kgosi growled in my head, ‘Just as Akhane needed mine.’

I huffed. That was easy for him to say—he’d handled it already.

A young dragon made a mistake and Chose a woman when in all Furyknight history a woman had never been Chosen before. Kgosi, as Primarch, placed his seal of approval on it. The dragons submitted.

Problem solved.

‘Human minds are not so quick to disband tradition. Especially this tradition,’ I muttered back to him through the bond.

‘Human men are not so quick to accept women into a brotherhood, you mean,’ he shot back with a rush of amusement .

I glared at him, but he intentionally turned his head to scan the watchers around the launch hollow.

Next to me, Tato completed his examination. “She’s safe to try walking, Sir. Would you like me to help her to her feet and make certain she’s steady?”

“Yes, please,” I muttered, crawling out from under Akhane’s wing with a soft pat of gratitude on her shoulder.

While the healer helped Bren, our newest Flameborne, to her feet, I took a deep breath and sent up a prayer for wisdom and patience.

There was a smattering of applause when Akhane lifted her wings and Tato helped a wobbling Bren for the first few steps, while my mind spun.

She was tiny.

Tiny, terrified, and torn.

I frowned.

Her feet were bare, but the few scrapes on her feet—and presumably up her legs—made me suspect she’d lost them during the flight.

Dragon scale scrapes could be nasty, but Tato had checked them.

Her skirt—the full, multi-layered thick cotton of a peasant farmwife—told me all I needed to know about where she’d come from.

Her blouse was well fitted, but simple with buttons to her neck and a round collar—but it had been torn in the flight as well.

She stood, holding the two sides of the blouse together, but it gaped above and below her hand.

I growled and quickly unbuttoned my jacket, tugging each sleeve down so the leather wouldn’t catch and bunch, then threw it around her shoulders.

She blinked, but grabbed at the leather sides and pulled them closed in front, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders.

My manners kicked in instinctively, so I stepped aside and opened my arm for her to walk.

She did so, hovering close to my side, moving slowly, and with a small limp.

Her eyes darted left and right as we started across the bowl, Kgosi and Akhane following at a safe distance as I tried to figure out how to do this.

But before I could find the right words, she turned her head and looked up at me, tendrils of her fine, hair falling from the lumpy bun that now swung drunkenly halfway down her neck, with chunks pulled loose to curl around her shoulders.

“Thank you. For the jacket. I know it’s your uniform,” she whispered, and there was something so deeply earnest in her eyes and her tone. It spoke of a bone-deep humility that struck a gong in my chest.

“You’re welcome, of course,” I said gruffly. “But it will soon be yours.”

“Oh, I could never keep your jacket, uh, Sir. Just show me to the road. I’ll travel home and… I will get it back to you when I’ve changed.”

I blinked. Had she misunderstood? Or was she still na?ve to the situation in which she found herself ?

We were at the base of the incline, a cluster of soldiers, Furyknights, and a couple of their dragons at the summit, waiting for us to reach them. The shock and disbelief on the Furyknight’s faces told me their dragons had filled them in.

This news would tear through the Keep like Dragonfire.

I stifled a groan and caught Bren’s elbow through the leather, tugging her to a stop as I eyed the men above us warily.