Page 36

The hair on the nape of her neck rose, her spine tingled, the blood in her body seemed to freeze and stop flowing, and her mouth went dry.

Run.

Stop.

Turn around. At the same time, her mind screamed at her to take action in one way or another.

She’d been running from some unknown thing or person for the last twenty-four hours.

Now, she wanted to know, wanted to see her enemy, the hunter her government sent to drag her back to the lab or kill her.

Whichever, this time, her adversary would have a face.

Shifting cautiously, she pivoted, her heart pounding in her chest, unsure of what she would find behind her.

OhmyGod. Oh. My. God! Her mind exploded with screams that didn’t stop as her brain tried to process what was coming in toward her from the sky.

Is this the beast they sent for me? The shadow of the wingspan blocked out the rising sun and swallowed her.

The darkness sent tremors into her stomach.

“They want to kill me.” The back of her eyes burned, and things began to blur as she stutter-stepped backward.

The giant beast dove toward the ground, aiming for her with its massive feet and long talons spread wide. She would have considered the mythical dragon majestic, with its blue scales shimmering under the sun's rays, if it wasn’t headed right for her.

Run! Moving on survival instinct, Avalore turned and ran blindly toward the trees. The blue truck was a blur in her peripheral as she ran past it.

Boom.

The ground rumbled under her feet, knocking Avalore off balance. She stumbled to the side but quickly regained her footing.

The beast made a sound, and she wasn’t sure if it was a roar, a growl, or some screeching warning of its imminent attack.

She told herself not to look back, but she needed to know how close the blue-scaled monster was to catching her.

Or eat me in one bite . She thought as it opened its gigantic mouth, showing the viciously sharp teeth inside with a burnt-orange glow lighting them from behind like an old-style jack-o-lantern.

It was right behind her. In one humungous step, it would be upon her.

“No, please...” she whimpered as tears ran down her cheek. She veered right toward a small glen of trees as the mammoth formed lumbered toward her.

A freakin’ dragon.

The beast roared again, and Avalore was engulfed and blinded by a wispy ring of gray smoke floating around her.

A strange coolness caressed her skin and tingled, but she didn’t give herself time to process what the thing was doing. Instead, she propelled her legs to move quickly. She broke through the smoke, but as she was free from one thing, she ran too fast to stop her forward movement.

She plowed directly into a large hive hanging low on a branch. Smack.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

“Ow!”

The bees swarmed and stung. Swarmed and pierced her body with multiple stingers.

Red-hot pokers jammed into her. Tiny needles like flames of fire stabbed her from everywhere as warm honey drenched her.

She knew better than to fight and agitate the yellow-and-black-striped flying insects, but it hurt so bad she couldn’t help but flail her arms about wildly like a deranged lunatic.

Her vision began to recede as her eyelids swelled, her throat grew tight, and it became hard to breathe.

Avalore’s legs trembled, and her body felt weak; then she smelled it through the single nostril not closed off: roasted cinnamon and sulfur—smoke.

When the breeze caressed her skin this time, she could barely feel the thick, dense, white cloud surrounding her.

As blackness enveloped her, Avalore’s final thoughts were that the dragon would still eat her, even inflamed and swollen.

I will die this day.

~YH~

Mine .

“Fuck,” Liekki growled in response to his dragon as he shifted on an exhale. He ate up the ground with hurried steps as he pounded through the dense smoke to close the distance and get to the stranger in two heartbeats before her body made contact with the saturated ground.

“How about going for brain over instinct? It would have been wiser to shift out and let me smoke the bees, don’t you think?” Liekki continued to chide his dragon as he crouched, holding the weight of the female's lush form in his arms.

His dragon retorted with a huff and attempted to push its way out to the female again.

Liekki resisted as he stared down at the territory interloper.

Plop, plop. Plop, plop.

Even through the dense white fog, which stunned the multitude of angry bees and caused them to fall like heavy raindrops in a lake as they landed into the thick pool of their honey where it spilled onto the ground, he could see her.

He winced at the sight of her glistening, golden, swollen features.

Every section of flesh from her forehead to her chin was grotesquely distorted.

Those same hills and valleys were prevalent across every swath of skin not covered, both the bee-sap-coated gown she wore and her neck, arms, and legs.

The stinging attack on her had been plentiful and merciless.

Fire rolled up and settled on the back of Liekki's throat, ready for him to burn all the stingerless, winged insects to a crisp, ending their lives instead of just placing them in a daze and paralysis for a bit.

Resisting, he swallowed and forced the flame back down when his acute hearing picked on a soft sound.

The female let out a soft wheeze through her thick, disfigured, parted lips.

The strangled breaths slammed a sense of urgency in his gut.

It was proof that she was experiencing an allergic reaction to the bees’ venom.

It didn’t matter to him if the woman’s reaction was due to a lifelong allergy to yellow-and-black buzzards or if it was due to the amount of punctures she’d experienced. He needed to help her. Soon.

He couldn’t tend to her out here and risk her being stung again. He needed to take her somewhere safe. The healing chamber , he thought.

Home, his dragon countered.

Liekki agreed. If he had taken her to the chamber, the entire Thunder would have discovered her there.

Right now, he didn’t want that. At least until she was better, Drahks could be a bit much, and for a human to recover and see a room full of curious faces staring at her through a glass like a fish in a bowl could be more than a bit daunting.

He pulled her limp form tighter to his chest, not caring about the sticky substance that drenched her from head to toe.

Before he rose, he exhaled a burst of smoke from the remainder of the broken hive and fastened to the side of the tree to the ground where many of the bees lay.

Not because he feared they would awaken before he could get her away, but because if he couldn’t fricassee them, then keeping their miniature asses stunned for a little longer before they could begin their propolis and wax reconstruction project of their hive would be best.

On his feet, he could feel the slight heft of the woman in his arms. By Drahks’ standards, it was nothing, but by human standards, he knew she had to have thick curves hidden beneath the shapeless gown. One side of his mouth lifted, and he didn’t try to squelch the joy that thought brought to him.

Liekki stared down into the still features of the female in his arms, and something tightened inside of him.

He knew it didn’t make sense to be upset at the insects for simply fighting to protect what was theirs, but he would go to whatever length he needed to guard her from any threat.

As he began moving deeper into the thicket of the overgrown forest and set out on the miles back to the central area of the territory, he knew it would be faster for him to get her care if he allowed his dragon to come forth and carry her back.

Inside of him, his beast lowered its shoulders, arched its hindquarters, and stretched, prepared to take the lead.

However, Liekki held tight on the reins that controlled their shared body.

Just like the chamber would attract attention, in dragon form, it would be harder for him to shield his thoughts, and others would become aware quickly that his beast carried someone.

Even with the early time of day, when few Drahks were about, he’d be detected.

Hell, even his brother’s mate, with her novice pregnancy skills, could pick up on his dragon’s thoughts, which were image after image on a repeat of the female when she initially turned around and saw the beast in all its flying glory before horror distorted her features.

Even though Liekki was powerful as a Drahk with concrete abilities to shield his damn thoughts, that act would cause suspicion.

Keeping an unnatural pace, he continued maneuvering through the dense forest on a path that would skirt the edges of central and lead directly to his place.

As he passed the back side of the Mckenna building, Liekki hoped Aodh was busy burying himself inside his mate one last time instead of heading off to work at the crack of dawn as the leader liked to do.

He sighed with relief when the entrance and wide landing of the Mckenna’s suite remained empty, and there were no signs of Aodh.

Even though Liekki kept deep enough in the trees not to obscure his journey, it would shock him if Aodh sensed him.

He loved his brother, their leader, but sometimes the male was too fucking perceptive.

Liekki hadn’t missed how often his brother had met his gaze in the last couple of days, his opal-blue gaze analyzing him, picking apart every movement in his features and posture, searching for signs.

Fuck, he did the same thing when he stood before a mirror, investigating himself and trying to decipher why he felt like a framed puzzle on a wall that recently was discovered to have had a single piece missing.

Not something that had fallen out, but a tile that had never been there in the first place, even though it was hung under the guise of being complete. He wasn’t complete. He wasn’t whole.