Page 19

LIV

T he cave still reeks of scorched stone and raw aftermath, smoke hanging in the air—an unwelcome sentinel refusing to leave.

The silence feels haunted, not just by the collapse—but by everything I nearly lost in the fire.

Somewhere in the distance, rocks scrape and settle, the final breaths of a dying avalanche exhaling into stillness.

But that silence is a liar.

I remember the moment everything gave way—how the cavern seemed to scream before it collapsed, a gut-deep groan like the earth itself was breaking open.

The crack of stone on stone reverberates through my bones, a cannon blast of sound that shudders down my spine, followed by a roar—not a scream, but a detonation—of fire and collapsing debris.

I’d been running toward the breach, shouting for the rookies to pull back, when the ceiling split.

A wall of searing pressure hit me in the chest, and I flew—thrown or dragged, I don’t even know.

Then—his arms. Kade’s arms. Wrapping around me like steel.

The blur of his face haloed in flame. I didn’t see him change, but I felt it—an ancient energy surging past the human boundary, something immense and furious tearing through smoke.

Claws slicing through falling rock, wings brushing sparks into whirlwinds.

The memory is fractured, but the heat? I remember that.

I remember the fire answering him. I remember knowing—without question—that he wasn’t just protecting me.

He was claiming me, even then, in the middle of collapse.

I lie curled against the wall of the cave, skin pressed to cooling basalt still radiating yesterday's fury.

No sunlight yet—only fractured gray bleeding through hairline cracks in the rock above—dawn teasing the horizon.

My muscles ache from where I collapsed post-claim, and my throat’s raw from fire-scorched moans I barely remember.

Kade must’ve covered me, draping a salvaged fire blanket over my shoulders.

It smells of singed canvas, smoke and him.

Beneath it all—hot, relentless, alive—the mark he branded into me hammers, a forge bellows rhythm pounding in time with something deeper, something primal.

It isn’t just warmth—it’s pressure, intensity, a searing rhythm that lodges in my spine and refuses to let go.

A second heartbeat, forged in dragon fire.

Mine. And his. Intertwined. Inescapable. Holy.

The world doesn’t feel settled—it feels like a claiming, it vibrates.

I wake twisted in the bedroll Kade threw down before everything changed, sweat-slick and half-feral, heart galloping like it’s outrunning the sun.

The air tastes wrong—too bright, too sharp.

I can hear wind sifting through pine needles three ridgelines away.

I can feel heat ghosting under the stone floor like something alive, like the fire still remembers me.

My skin burns. Not painfully—not anymore. It’s a deep heat, banked low, curling beneath muscle and marrow. Like a hearth that’s always lit. Every breath I take is laced with something ancient. Elemental. Mine.

I sit up too fast. The world tilts. My hands tremble as I press my palms to the cave floor, grounding in grit and stone.

But the cave pulses with energy now. I’m not imagining it.

The rock hums. The air flickers. And deep in my chest, something answers—a low throb that isn’t a heartbeat but feels like one.

A dragon’s heart.

My stomach lurches. I can feel Kade. Not in the vague, metaphorical way people talk about soulmates or bonds.

I can feel his warmth on my skin like sunlight before the sun breaks the ridge.

I can hear his voice even when he isn’t speaking.

It’s not language. It’s presence. A tether pulled taut between us.

And the fire?—

God. Fire smells different now. It doesn’t reek of danger. It smells like memory. Like promise. Like home.

I wrap my arms around myself and sit up, sweat-slick and trembling, every muscle raw and straining, as if I’ve been hauled from the edge of an inferno.

The fire blanket slips from my shoulders, its rough weave catching on fresh sensitivity—nerve endings flaring, reprogrammed by flame.

Air slams into my lungs, sharp and glass-edged, heavy with smoke, and the world doesn’t so much return as crash over me—loud, cold, merciless.

The scent of scorched rock and sweat clings to my skin, but beneath it, the brand flares again, tuning itself to the storm around me, resonant, unrelenting.

The sharp staccato of torches igniting cracks through the air—far off, where rookie responders scramble to reestablish the perimeter.

One of them—Tomas, maybe twenty, soot smearing his face—fumbles just beyond my sight.

I register his presence before I see him, the heat of his body flaring at the edge of my senses, flickering and uncertain.

Fear rolls off him in waves, his core temperature rising and dropping in rapid swings, unstable and panicked.

I don’t need to meet his eyes to know they’re wide with panic; the tremor ripples through the ground, an aftershock I feel in my bones.

He mutters something under his breath—a prayer, maybe, or his own name, trying to anchor himself.

I grip the edge of the rock beside me, forcing my breath to slow, centering.

Not just on me anymore. Not just on the mark.

My awareness stretches outward, tethering to every flicker of flame and every human heartbeat it touches.

Tomas steadies. The rhythm evens. He doesn’t know I helped—but the fire does.

The air tastes of scorched copper and smoke, sharp and metallic on my tongue.

Heat signatures dance along the fuel line, flashing Morse code in fire.

Each signal jolts through me, translating directly into instinct, into urgency.

I’m no longer just reading the scene—I’m inside it, flame-attuned, heartbeat-bound.

I brush trembling fingertips over the fresh brand, remembering how that skin once felt untouched—normal, even numb—before fire carved its truth into me.

Heat sears beneath the surface, a hidden ember stirred to life.

The sigil glows—faint gold laced with veins of silver—then settles into a low, rhythmic shimmer, molten metal cooling in a sacred forge.

My breath catches, chest tight with the weight of what I’ve become.

There’s a tingling behind my eyes, the flicker of something ancient, alive.

“Okay, firebrand,” I whisper, voice hoarse with grit and defiance. “Let’s see what’s really changing.”

I step out of the cave, muscles aching, the fire blanket slung around me like a tattered cloak.

The land before me is scorched and brittle, a mosaic of ash, stone, and glowing remnants.

I make my way toward camp, boots moving softly across charred earth.

Just beyond the ridge, I spot a sapling stump still smoldering beside the pump rig, skeletal branches curled inward like blackened claws.

I crouch low, knees pressing into the powdery ash, and draw a shallow breath.

Smoke scratches down my throat. I exhale slowly—just air.

Just me. But it feels… hotter than it should be.

Warmer than breath ought to be, even after a sprint or a panic run.

It slips through the chill like a ribbon of summer, disturbing the smoke in the air with an odd shimmer.

The ember nestled in the stump flares faintly, then flickers out.

I blink, uncertain. It must be coincidence.

A change in the wind. Or maybe a breath of lingering heat, but the air still feels wrong.

Or maybe too right. Like the heat inside me isn’t leaving—it’s waiting.

Gathering. Not magic. Not control. Just an echo of something sleeping within.

I press my hand against the warm stump. No flame. No spark. Just a hint of warmth where there shouldn’t be any left. And a truth I don’t want to admit curling in the back of my mind like smoke around a matchhead: something inside me remembers fire.

Footsteps scrape through the loose gravel behind me—sharp, stuttering, like the rasp of bone dragged across raw stone.

My spine stiffens before I turn. The air around me seems to tense in warning, heat prickling against the mark beneath my collar.

I straighten slowly, outwardly calm, though something pounds deeper—buried where instinct resides, alert and waiting.

Ruiz storms up the slope, each furious step kicking up plumes of ash that cling to the legs of her fire-retardant pants.

Her heat registers differently—angry, yes, but cold in its precision.

Bureaucratic fire, not the wild, sacred kind I’ve come to recognize.

She radiates control, the embodiment of a steel blade pulled from ice—rigid, sharp, and dangerous.

I can feel her, not with my eyes but in the way the air tightens around her presence, a vacuum of empathy replaced with command.

There’s no flame dancing in her wake, no ripple of elemental response.

Just the flat, sterile chill of hierarchy enforced by clipped syllables and paperwork.

In contrast, dragon fire lingers in me like thunder waiting to be called. Even as her boots grind over gravel, the sigil beneath my collar warms—not in challenge, but in defiance. She’s not fireproof, but I am.