Page 11 of Rook (Dragon Brides #11)

Rook tracked the energy signature through a tangle of blackened trees. His boots snapped twigs and kicked up ash that stuck to his sweaty face. When he emerged at the edge of the forest, he found a world unraveling in fire.

Night had barely fallen, but the sky rippled with unnatural red light. Sparks leaped ten feet from burning tents, and flames writhed in angry rings through the campsites. People's screams mixed with the undercurrent of slaver voices barking in a clipped, sharp-edged tongue.

Explosions erupted between the vehicles, rocking the rows of battered campers and sending shrapnel into the weeds. The air reeked of burning fuel and something sweeter that made his stomach turn. Burned flesh had a smell you didn't forget.

He caught their shapes through the flickering light. A cluster of terrified humans huddled with their hands raised, herded by two slavers in armor. Their eyes glowed like lanterns in the smoky dark.

A fifteen-foot wall of living fire flickered between the hostages and the forest, penning them in a circle of pure terror.

Every time one of them tried to cross that boundary, the flames licked higher with a warning hiss.

The cries of the trapped pushed against his skull.

Someone shouted a name. Someone else sobbed, their lungs scorched raw.

The slavers didn't care. Their attention was fixed outward, scanning for new victims.

He should have known this was coming.

The silence of the last two days had been too thick. He'd crashed through ravines, snagging his pants on thorns and nearly twisting his ankle three times while chasing erratic bursts of energy on his battered tracker. Every trail ended at a blank telepad or a deliberately set fire.

Now, with grim clarity, he saw the truth. The slavers had been running him in circles like an idiot, laying a false trail while they plotted to gather their prey.

He wanted to burn this whole rotten place down to the roots.

Rook dropped to a half-crouch, letting the scent of burning pine fill his nose and the heat soak into his skin.

He spotted the telltale black of a slaver's uniform up the main road, striding toward two cowering children pressed against the bumper of a rusted-out trailer.

There was no time to think.

He lunged. Fire rolled from his hand, a ribbon of molten orange that tore through the sagging underbrush.

The slaver didn't even see him coming, didn't see him for what he was: a dragon lord, not some Earth stray.

The fire hit center mass and folded the slaver's armor like cheap fabric, toppling him into the dirt.

The force of it shook the ground, a tremor that sent one of the human children sliding backward.

Too close. The boy screamed, his hair singed where the flame had shot past. Shit. Fury slammed through Rook. If his focus slipped, if his fire was a degree off, these people would die just as surely as by slaver hands.

He closed his fist, squeezing the fire back into his veins until it snarled and bucked inside him.

Gods, he hated this planet.

He hated that his fire was the only thing he had, and sometimes it was too much.

He couldn't arm himself with the weapons the humans used, primitive, reckless things that were loud and unpredictable.

A blaster might have been practical, but he was a dragon.

This was a matter of pride, of blood. The ancient Vemion code settled heavy in his bones.

His fire was his honor, his birthright, and, right now, his curse.

He surged forward, pushing past the fallen slaver. The child and his sister broke free, running flat-out down a gap between two vans.

He pressed deeper into the heart of the camp.

The slavers were everywhere, but for all their strength, they were distracted.

The humans had finally begun to fight back.

In a clearing, a trio of men crouched behind an overturned picnic table, wielding hunting rifles and garden tools.

Someone swung a cast-iron skillet at a slaver, the clang cutting through the air.

The slavers had their attention split, and it was costing them.

He nearly tripped on a cooler as he looped around a grove of pines, heat beating at his face from a tent that was completely engulfed in flames. That was when he saw her.

Tucked behind a battered brown van, a model so familiar it made his stomach drop, a woman fought like the world wouldn't wait for her to figure things out: Sasha.

She was surrounded by a half-dozen humans: an older woman clutching a bloody rag to her leg, a whip-thin boy wielding a hedge trimmer with shaking hands, a man in a plaid shirt bleeding from a scalp wound that had matted half his hair.

They'd dragged recycling bins and broken chairs into a rough barricade that wouldn't have stopped a determined raccoon, let alone alien slavers.

Sasha held a huge red canister in her hands.

She hefted it like a weapon, her shoulders straining under the weight.

As a slaver raised his palm, Sasha pointed the black tube coming out of the top of the canister and squeezed.

White, choking foam blasted out, smothering the flames as they leaped from the slaver's hand.

The jet soaked his boots and knocked him off-balance.

Pride rushed through him. Sasha's eyes blazed with determination. She shouted instructions to her little band, telling the boy when to duck and when to reload her pistol. Every time a slaver drew near, Sasha stood in front, brave and stupid all at once.

She was going to get herself killed.

He absorbed every detail in a single heartbeat. They barely knew each other. She should mean nothing to him. Yet he felt branded by the sight of her, shouting, sweating, reckless, stubborn, and so utterly alive.

She fought like someone who knew losing wasn't an option.

Sasha fell back as the humans with guns began firing. The volley was deafening. Rook recoiled from the sound of the human weapons. They were crude, all thunder and hot-iron stench that made his nose burn. It was a miracle anyone had survived long enough to use them.

And yet, the slaver closest to the fort jerked backward, clutching his side where bullets found the gap in his armor. He fell, blood spilling onto the dirt, and didn't rise again.

All right, Rook conceded. Earth weapons had their uses.

Their victory was short-lived. A pair of slavers flanked the barricade, slipping in behind a burning RV. Sasha, focused on foaming down another blade of fire, backed right into the open. She was unaware that new threats were closing in.

Everything in him went bright and sharp. He didn't think. He didn't strategize. He just roared an old war cry and let his fire fly. The jet caught the slavers square in their chests. They staggered, howling as flames crawled up their torsos. For a split second, it was glorious.

Then Sasha, hearing him, stepped toward the jet of fire.

His heart plummeted. He tried to pull the fire back, but it was too late. There was no calling it home. He was about to watch her burn—the woman who had stubbornly marched into his thoughts, who had kissed him, who had awakened things in him he'd sworn to keep buried.

His voice broke through the chaos, a single word ripped from his throat. "No!"

Sasha's head snapped around, her eyes locking onto his. Maybe she read everything in his face, because she lifted both hands as if to brace herself. The fire crashed over her, wild and searing.

And did nothing.

The flames split around her like water against stone, coiling harmlessly over her hair and skin. She blinked as the heat whipped her hair back, but she didn't flinch. She stood untouched, the impossible surrounding her.

He stared, everything going silent except for the high whine of disbelief in his skull. No ordinary human on any world survived the direct burn of a dragon lord's fire. Only one kind of person could do that.

His mate.

He'd heard the stories of other dragons who fell for human women, whose flames marked them out as special.

He hadn't truly believed it.

He wanted to sink to his knees in the middle of this burning chaos and take her face in his hands, but there was no time for fated revelations; the fight wasn't over.

He stormed across the campground, letting his fire rip. He didn't care anymore if the humans watched, didn't care if everyone in this town woke up wondering why a man wielded fire in his palms.

Sasha was there. He would raze the world before he let her die.

She spotted him at twenty paces and grinned as if she'd conjured him from the night itself.

"Nice of you to show up!" she shouted, her voice scratchy but defiant. Her hair was singed at the ends, and she had a nasty cut above her eye.

"I got tired of sitting in the woods," he shot back, his gaze locking on hers. Deep inside, something unspooled, tension draining from him as if her presence burned through his fear.

Sasha ducked a fireball and tossed him the empty canister. "Make yourself useful, Dragon Lord. I'm out of foam, and my deodorant gave up an hour ago."

He caught it, the foam residue cold and sticky on his palms. He tossed it aside. No need for tools now. He swept another wall of fire across the camp, cutting off three slavers trying to circle the fort. The humans huddled tighter, watching him in awe and terror and maybe a spark of hope.

"Is that your friend?" the older woman called out, pulling a kid behind cover.

Sasha nodded, her smile wild. "He's on our side!"

Together, they fought their way through the burning maze. Rook shielded Sasha, his fire driving slavers back while the small band of human fighters covered their escape. His shirt stuck to his back with sweat, and his throat burned from the smoke.

But no matter how hard they fought, it wasn't enough. The slavers fell back, regrouping at the northern edge with three fresh prisoners. He watched, helpless, as a grenade burst into white light. When the smoke cleared, the slavers and their captives were gone.

He caught Sasha's eye, saw the frustration and exhaustion on her face. Red and blue lights swept the tree line. A mechanical wailing started in the distance, growing louder, more insistent.

"What's that?" he asked, keeping one eye on the edge of the camp.

"That's the cavalry. The cops," she clarified, catching his confusion.

"Someone reported all the gunfire and actual fire.

They're going to want to know what's going on.

" She was already shoving the wounded forward, barking orders.

Then her eyes cut to his. "You should probably get out of here.

They'll have a lot of questions, and 'I'm a dragon from space' isn't going to go over well on the incident report. "

He hesitated. He'd never abandon a fight, but he recognized the hard line of her jaw. She was right. He couldn't explain himself or his fire, not to these people.

He closed the small distance between them and took her hand. It was small, battered, and alive. He'd let her out of his sight once. He couldn't do it again.

"Come with me," he said, the words low and rough in his chest.