Page 21

KADE

T he desert night lies still, a black-velvet shroud of moon-washed sand and whispering scrub—broken only by the creak of wind-tossed metal and the distant yip of a coyote.

From the high ridge above Fort Verde, every bunker roof gleams dull silver where the floodlights glance off them, but the dead air prickles across my skin.

Too quiet. Too contained. Perfect for predators who think they own the dark. Let them stalk.

I pause at the ridgeline, scanning the stretch of desert below. The shadows clinging to the bunkers curl like fangs—sharp, patient. The kind that wait until you bleed.

I catch faint glints of thermite tucked beneath sandbags.

There’s a reek of scorched alloys riding the air, bitter and artificial, sliding down the back of my throat.

Far below, a low hum vibrates through the dust—Ignis’ jammers, cloaked beneath the wind’s sigh over spent shell casings.

I close my eyes for a beat, filtering heat signatures—there.

A shimmer slinking along the west perimeter.

Everything in me tightens. This place doesn’t feel abandoned. It feels wound tight, every inch steeped in tension, stretched to the edge of breaking.

I drop to one knee, press two fingers into the dirt. That low, searing throb tells me everything I need to know—thermite charge. Hot. Wired. Timed.

The silence here isn’t just silence. It’s pressure. A weapon in waiting.

But this place has seen fire before.

It’ll see mine tonight.

I roll my shoulders back and breathe deep, letting the dragon rise.

Tonight, I stalk back.

"What’s your status?" Dax’s voice murmurs in my comm unit.

"Eyes on the target," I whisper. "Ignis laced the old ordnance bays—minimum eight packets of thermite, maybe more. They want a fireworks show big enough to write itself into congressional records."

A pause. Then, dry: "Disable without leveling Arizona."

"Copy that," I mutter, toeing deeper into the shadow of a half-collapsed blast berm.

The sand still retains daytime heat, but under my boots, another warmth builds—steady and unnatural, a slow surge that doesn't belong. Thermite charge, wired for remote detonation. It feels like Greer: flashy, cruel, and timed for maximum damage.

Beyond the fence, the convoy idles—eight matte-green trucks lined nose-to-tail, tarps snapping in the desert breeze.

A flash from earlier flickers behind my eyes—Dax, standing over a desert map in Ops, voice low and clipped.

“Those trucks are carrying enough munitions to level two towns,” he’d said, tapping a calloused finger to Fort Verde’s coordinates.

“And at least three crates of thermite-tipped anti-scale rounds. If Greer’s here, he’s not just covering tracks—he’s preparing for war. ”

I smell diesel, hot metal… and the faint electrical bite of Ignis’ jammers. Counting down.

Time to give them something they can’t revise away.

I shrug off my pack, strip the Nomex shirt. The air skims my chest like chilled water. A single breath. Another. Fire claws up my spine, greedy for release.

Flame erupts around me, spiraling in a cyclone of gold as I call forth my dragon.

Heat slams into me, a brutal force that scorches the breath from my lungs and leaves my skin stinging.

The scent of molten quartz floods my sinuses—sharp, mineral, otherworldly.

My spine arches as vertebrae shift and realign with brutal precision, forging into something ancient and elemental.

Muscle stretches and reshapes around the expanding frame beneath me—no cracking, no tearing, just the seamless emergence of what I truly am.

Flame ignites from within, licking upward with sacred intent.

Cobalt scales ripple forth, layering in fluid, symmetrical bands.

Each one gleams like blue glass bathed in starlight.

Wings unfurl in a single breath, smooth and vast, membranes catching moonlight as they stretch to their full span.

Talons extend with predatory grace, carving arcs into the sand below.

This isn’t agony. It’s arrival.

I exhale, and the sky welcomes me. With a single launch, I rise—wings hammering air into submission. Each wingbeat is a promise. Each breath, a warning. I see it all—the buried thermite glows white-hot in my sight, bright as betrayal. I bank hard, prepared to end what Greer started.

The updraft slams beneath my wings and I pivot, slicing low over the eastern bunkers. A camera catches a ripple—nothing more than warped heat haze—while I loose a thread of surgical blue fire. The first charge melts, sputtering into harmless slag.

A tickle of danger. Movement atop a watchtower.

Greer—because it’s always Greer—levels a long-barreled rifle,

Maybe he thinks: Breathe. Line the shot. The round will pierce the scale if the alloy holds. If it doesn’t? There’s always the next clip. He probably thinks I'm too high, too bold. That he can drop me and watch me fall.

The whites of his eyes are stark against night lenses. He can’t see scales, but he’s betting on silhouette and luck. I dart sideways, flame lancing to gut a fourth charge.

CRACK.

The round finds me anyway.

White heat detonates across my ribs. For one suspended heartbeat, the world vanishes—no wind, no sound, just a deafening ring that drills into my skull as the sky blurs in smears of copper and flame. My limbs flail through a void of nothingness, weightless and burning.

Then gravity slams back in, savage and final.

I snap my wings wide—one dragging, the other flaring hard—and bleed off just enough lift to crash behind a maintenance shack.

The landing is brutal: grit erupts beneath me, my knee gives out, and the stench of scorched metal floods my lungs.

Scales vanish in a rush of steam, pain sparking sharp and sudden.

I hit hard, one hand braced against jagged debris that bites deep into my palm.

I can feel my scales lying under my skin—dulled, no longer blades, but brittle glass under pressure. I count each step to the convoy in steady rhythm, syncing breath with movement, willing the toxin surging through me to pause—just long enough.

The world tilts.

Blood burns against my fingers—tainted, sluggish. Poison. Clever bastard.

I thumb the comm. "Dragon’s clipped. Target has anti-scale ammo laced with something nasty."

"Pull out," Dax orders.

"Negative. Charges neutralized. Proceeding to Phase Two."

I crawl to the truck queue, body already shaking.

The poison chews through me in slow, acidic waves, each one leaving a deeper burn than the last. My vision warps at the edges, shapes smearing into heat trails, each shadow stretching and collapsing in the shimmer of unreality.

A coppery tang coats my tongue—metal and toxin fused together.

I blink hard, once, twice, but the afterimages linger, seared into my sight like overexposed flame.

My balance tilts, off by half a degree, just enough to make every step a gamble.

Focus. Plant trackers, then get clear.

I wedge a Blackstrike tag against the axle of the first trailer. A second tag slips into a wheel well. Two more to go.

Greer’s silhouette prowls the area, scanning. He fired like he was hunting something larger than a bat—ammo like that isn’t meant for guesswork. He doesn’t know dragons heal fast… normally. The bullet fragment still sears deep, black ooze welling as the flesh struggles to close around it.

A footstep behind me.

I twist—too slow.

A merc swings a baton. It cracks across my cheek. Pain flares white, but I slam an elbow into his throat. He gurgles, drops. I shove the final tracker into the brake housing, trying to sprint for the fence.

Sirens wake. Spotlights blink on, slicing desert shadows.

I fling myself over razor wire, ribs tearing, vision tunneling.

I try to shift midair, instinct screaming for wings—but nothing answers.

The poison clamps down, a merciless vice locking my dragon deep beneath flesh and pain.

My body convulses once, twice, then drops me hard on the far side.

Behind me, engines roar—the convoy rolling early to cover their mess.

Good. Blackstrike will follow every mile.

At the ridge crest Liv appears—hair a tangle of ember-lit curls, eyes blazing like I hung the damn moon crooked. She grips my forearm as I stagger.

"Kade...”

"Charges neutralized," I rasp, sweat cold on my spine. "Convoy tagged. But Greer—he’s escalating."

Blood seeps through my fingers; the wound smolders an angry greenish black.

Her gaze drops, horror flaring. "You’re bleeding."

"Just a scratch," I lie.

"That’s poison."

A cold dread knots low in my gut—if this fragment holds what I think it does, it's more than a weapon; it's a declaration. They're not hunting dragons by accident anymore.

"Can’t prove it till we catch him." I cup her cheek with my clean hand. "And we will."

Liv murmurs, eyes never leaving the black-slick wound. "Could the bond help?”

“Perhaps. If you push the heat just right… it could jumpstart cellular repair. Like cauterizing from the inside."

She presses her palm over mine, heat sliding into my marrow—her brand answering mine, fire knitting over the wound.

Parsing instinct and memory into strategy, I feel the warmth deepen, precise and deliberate, as if she’s tuning the frequency of her flame.

The sigil flares, answering her command.

I grit my teeth as heat threads through muscle and marrow, it singes every poisoned molecule like it’s got a death warrant.

The pain is white-hot. Not agony—purpose. Her purpose. Mine.

And for the first time since the bullet hit, I believe I might survive. It burns like penance, but the bleeding slows.

"Don’t you dare die before I yell at you," she whispers, voice cracking.

My laugh shreds out, half-pain, half-desire. "You love the drama."

"I love the dragon." Her eyes soften, then harden to tempered steel. "And now, he's gone and gotten himself wounded. Get on your feet, dragon-man, we've got bad guys to hunt."

Down below, the convoy engines howl, headlights spearing north toward the canyon’s black throat. Liv squints against the glare, then turns to me, voice sharp with purpose. "We can’t chase them like this. We’ll never catch up if they scatter in the ridges."

I nod once, every breath a furnace blast under my ribs. "Leap-frog pursuit. You take the ground route with the rookies, funnel them through the S-turn in Sector Bravo. I’ll hit them from above, track convoy splits, and signal intercepts."

She bites her lip, calculating fast. "Ramirez and Jo are already deployed south ridge. I’ll pull them to flank through Dry River Gulch—cut off their water support and pinch the rear."

I clench my jaw, steadying as she grabs the med pack off her belt and shoves it into my hand.

Her eyes lock onto mine. "Shift if you can. Stay airborne as long as possible. Keep the pressure on. I can use the rookies to bring them into the net."

The final headlights vanish into canyon shadow. I bare my teeth. "Then let’s bring them down."

Together, we move—Liv sprinting for the rookies, barking orders; me shifting—Liv's instincts about cauterizing the wound must have been right—and vaulting into the night. My vision narrows to the glow on the horizon, to the movement of taillights against canyon walls. Liv’s fire still lingers inside me, its rhythm echoing my own—steady, fused, undeniable.

I launch into the pre-dawn dark with a growl that flattens the brush below. Wings snap wide—cobalt stretched and gleaming—as I surge skyward with brutal force. The air claps in my wake, thunder without a storm, the desert falling away beneath me.

Pain flares beneath my ribs—the poison threading through my system.

I grit my teeth, shove the burn behind a wall of ice, and scan the hooded cameras mounted on the bunker corners.

They pan, pause, then pan again. Infrared only.

Good. That tech can’t read a dragon—just a heat bloom too massive to make sense of.

Each gust slices across the wound, the heat sharper now. Flying like this is madness. I don’t care. I am vengeance—sleek, relentless—riding fire and fury through charged skies. The wind howls past.

One goal. One target.

Greer won’t see the flame until it’s already too late. He won’t know what hit him. My wings flare wider as I climb into the sky with a roar. Diesel fumes sting the back of my throat, mingling with dust kicked up in their wake—thick, choking, and laced with urgency. Greer thinks he’s ahead.

He has no idea what’s coming for him. Ignis believes they’ve slipped away. They haven’t.

My breath rasps, a tremor hitching in my chest as the burn flares again—deeper this time, dragging a jagged edge across my ribs.