Page 1 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ROGUE

F lames licked over every surface.

Any men unlucky enough to escape were torn to bits or swallowed whole. Whatever the wyverns decided.

The heat dried the blood covering my scale-covered skin, tight before it cracked with my movement. The two daggers in my hands had started to melt from the heat of my palms, drops of steel trailing my every step, but I didn’t release them.

A wolfish grin spread across my face as I flipped a table, glasses flying, shattering against the wall. “There you are.”

I threw one dagger to the side, its metal glowing, and fisted the man’s hair. He wailed as I jerked him up and held him by his strands, high enough for his feet to dangle. He clawed at my arm, yanked and kicked and fucking screamed when his hands burned and blistered.

“Where is she?” I seethed.

“W-who?” he sputtered, red coating his teeth.

I slammed his head into the wall, and a sob wracked his body. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten us so easily?”

“I-I don’t—” Another slam. Another cry. Blood poured from his split eyebrow. “I don’t know! I was dismissed when we crossed into Auryna.”

He paused, and I glared at him, my chest rising and falling in even waves. When I didn’t immediately slam him into the wall again, he spewed words, anything he mistakenly thought would save him.

“I-I didn’t hurt her. I only carried her. I?—”

“You touched her?”

He didn’t have a chance to answer. Flames devoured his form from the bottom up. Dropping the last dagger, I grabbed his jaw. One hard twist— snap— then his body twitched and fell to the ground with a thud.

Fuck.

The fire grew bigger, hotter. Bottles of alcohol exploded, and glass hit my bare back, but the shards merely tinged off my impenetrable armor of scales.

They hit close to my scars but not close enough.

My knuckles cracked as I clenched my fists. My red-black scales rippled and sank back into my skin when I reached over my shoulders to claw at the two vertical marks, rebreaking the skin until warmth flowed from them, too.

I couldn’t let them heal, not when Iaso begged, or Ewan tried to hold me down, then Lee and Ewan together.

Even Elora had asked once, her voice quiet and hollow, but only because I bled through my shirt near her.

Those were the only words she’d spoken in the last three months, and the only ones that made me consider it.

Still, I couldn’t stop.

They couldn’t heal, because if they did, that would mean time passed—too much time with Ara gone, and I still couldn’t feel her. I couldn’t feel where she was or her presence in my chest or if she even lived.

None of the wretched bastards I’d tracked down knew where she was. They were all useless wastes of fucking time.

Precious time.

Ara’s precious time.

I swiped a blade from a corpse’s sheath, turned to look at my back in a cracked mirror behind the burning bar, and sliced down the two marks.

Blood poured.

Why must you do that? Guardian asked. Time passes regardless.

My jaw clenched. I hurled the knife, and it spun end over end until it planted in a crawling man’s skull with a sickening crack. I stalked over to him, placed a boot on the nape of his neck, and yanked the blade out before collecting every weapon I saw and tossing them in a pile.

Then I stepped out while the entire tavern went up in white flames. All that would remain were blackened ashes and a sculpture of melted blades.

A human man waited outside, nervous sweat coating his skin despite the frigid temperature. As I neared him, he trembled but didn’t move until I tossed him the small bag of coins. He staggered forward to catch it before I handed him the letter sealed with wax.

We didn’t exchange words, but he knew his orders, so with a dip of his head and a faint bow, he turned on his heel and practically ran away.

Guardian’s amber eyes found me as I strode toward him, and he lowered a black wing. With a scowl and a vile knot in my gut, I climbed onto his back. He took one step, then another, before launching into the air over the snow-covered village outside Auryna’s precious Capitol.

If Adonis wanted war, that was exactly what he would get.

It didn’t take long before the phantom pain started.

It always did when we were in the air, and it had nothing to do with the cuts still oozing blood.

Starting at my wings’ tips—or where they should be—tingling began.

Tingling became an ache that spread across my nonexistent wings.

The longer we were among the clouds, the more the pain would consume, the deeper it dug.

By the time we touched down outside of Draig Hearth, my back throbbed. My damn wings felt crushed and heavy. My breathing turned labored, and my grip on Guardian’s spikes tightened until I feared my knuckles would crack and fingers would shatter.

Do they hurt? Guardian asked when I didn’t immediately dismount.

“Excruciatingly,” I ground out through clenched teeth.

He tipped his body to the side and threw me off, causing another wave of pain.

I grunted as I rolled to my feet before dropping to my hands and knees, taking several deep breaths.

The grass was plush and cool beneath my palms, and slowly, ever so fucking slowly, the throbbing dulled until I could breathe without wincing.

Movement hurt, but Guardian knew the only way to ease the pain was to touch the ground.

Ground bound.

The heat of my palms scorched the grass, and smoke filled my lungs with the only scent I’d known lately. My fingers curled, my nails digging into dirt, grass crumbling into ash.

I wanted to breathe in the soft smell of rain and wildflowers.

Logically, I knew what she smelled like, had made the comparison a hundred times, but my body, my lungs, my soul couldn’t remember the smell.

I couldn’t think about her and conjure faint wisps of it.

I’d even returned to the blooming wetland within the forest outside Nautia, the one I’d thought smelled like her once, but it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t exact.

Something was lacking, and it’d only torn that unhealed hole in my chest wide open all over again.

It didn’t have her smile, her warmth. It didn’t have her.

It wasn’t burned into my memory the way her voice was, her face, the feel of her body beneath my hands. Though one expression found the forefront of my mind more than any other, and it never got easier.

Each time filled me with so much rage and worry and guilt that I inevitably vomited. Every. Single. Time.

Now was no different.

My gut clenched, and I braced a hand on my abdomen.

“I love you,” she’d mouthed, but her expression had been so broken, her face blood-drained, and her eyes resigned like her soul—her hope had been ripped from her body.

Like she’d given up.

I heaved and expelled my stomach’s contents onto the ground between my hands.

She’d told me she loved me like it was her last breath, like she knew we were both about to die, and she couldn’t go without telling me one last time.

My stomach tightened again, but there was nothing left, save for exhaustion and hatred, so I dry-heaved again and again and again.

She couldn’t be dead.

She was not dead.

I couldn’t feel her presence any longer, but she was alive. If she wasn’t, I knew in my fucking soul the realm would reflect it somehow. It would be darker, broken, wrong.

If Ara Wrynwood were dead, the realm would be, too.

It didn’t make sense—I knew that—but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t let myself think any differently.

One last dry heave, and I sat back on my ass, wiping my mouth, reclining my head on Guardian’s hard abdomen.

Do not give up, King, Guardian said. We shall find her yet.

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly.

It had taken a full month of searching before I found the first man who’d been there that night. I knew they had to reside in or around the Capitol, as Adonis must have trusted them for a mission like that.

The first one had been a fucking coward, more than willing to give up his comrades in the hopes he would live—brainless too, if he thought he would ever take another step, another breath after me.

When he finally sobbed out every bit of information he knew, I revealed the rage-filled flames in my irises. His face, soaked with tears and mottled with bruises, lit with flickering orange, and his dark eyes reflected my image as my teeth extended and sharpened.

My tongue felt along the points before I ripped his throat out and tore his worthless head from his shoulders. If he was going to be brainless, he might as well do the realm a favor and be headless, too.

That was two months ago.

Three months gone, each one more excruciating than the last.

Out of the eight men who had been in the alley that night, only two remained alive, and with each death, my dragon grew stronger, angrier, hungrier. He wanted to punish, to maim and ravage and destroy everything in his path until he got his claimed back.

That was what made me so volatile. Ara wasn’t just my mate. She was my claimed, and Draigs did not share their claimed. Ever. With anyone or anything, for any reason.

To touch a claimed object was a death wish, but her? To hurt and steal Ara, my mate, my love, my fucking light?

That granted a fate worse than death.

My Fae form had become simply a cage containing a feral beast, but its bars grew weaker and more unstable with each kill—and I enjoyed each one.

I enjoyed being bathed in the blood of those who hurt Ara. I wanted to bathe the fucking realm in it.

Draigs were said to be merciless and impulsive, more animal than Fae, and while I didn’t feel that at first, I did now.

My dragon slowly slipped his razor-sharp claws around my mind, and I let him, because it was easier than drowning in fear and agony. Rage was easier.

Rage brought me inch by fucking inch closer to Ara.

Lee strode over and shouted, “Well?”

“Nothing.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Rys hasn’t seen anything either. Livvy has him check daily. Multiple times a day.”

Orrys, the local tavern owner who doubled as a below-average seer—and Livvy and Lee’s third partner.

“I’ve told you time and time again. They have drugs.” Scales reformed along my neck, sliding into their protective state. “She could very well be unconscious, held under by whatever drug they injected us with.”

“That could be,” he said cautiously, “but it’s been three months, Rogue. You have to consider…other possibilities.”

“Don’t say another fucking word,” I ground out through clenched teeth.

Burn. Smoke swirled between us as fire erupted and scorched my immediate vicinity. Burn him. Burn for her.

I clenched my fists and reigned in my fire before it reached for Lee.

Friend, Guardian gently whispered. Not foe.

I know, I growled back.

Lee’s chest rose and fell quickly. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stay here anymore. We’re wasting time.” He turned back for the rows and rows of tents. “We need to send out a few men to infiltrate the ranks, or hell, start burning down towns until they?—”

“Stop,” I snapped, flames roaring in my veins, pupils slitted.

He whirled around, mouth agape, eyes wide.

“I know you don’t want”—he gestured behind him—“ this to be common knowledge, but it may be enough to scare him into releasing her, if she’s even still…”

“Don’t,” I warned.

Bleed and burn. Kill the inconvenience.

Guardian chuffed. Do not kill the inconvenience.

The deep ache for my claimed hit my gut again, a different pain than missing my Ara. My dragon thrashed against my Fae form.

“Alive,” Lee whispered with a grimace. “It’s been three months , Rogue, with no indication of life. No letters burn to go to her. No vision from Rys, not even a split second. No word from Adonis.”

I jerked to my feet with claws and teeth and fire, but Guardian stepped between us. He released a low growl, deep enough to vibrate our bones as he crept closer to Lee.

Lee stood steadfast, glancing between the two of us, shaking his head, but he couldn’t hide his pity. He was losing faith, and I wanted to shove it back down his throat. I wanted to shove many things down his throat—like his own tongue, scorched and smoking.

No one was allowed to doubt Ara’s life.

She was alive.

She had to be.