by Jadyn Chase
Ezra urged me forward, and I stepped onto a weathered wooden porch. A slanted roof shaded it from the sky. I cast one glance around and saw four men seated on wicker chairs. Two older men broke off their conversation when I made my appearance.
A grey-haired, wrinkled old guy cocked his head to study me. “Well, hello there, young lady. Out and about, I see.”
“This is my father, Isaac Kelly,” Ezra told me, “and this is my uncle, his brother, Luka Kelly. They were with me at the compound that night.”
I nodded to them. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for taking me in.”
“The pleasure was all ours, young lady,” Isaac replied. “It’s good to see you on your feet at last.” He stole a sidelong peek at Ezra. “Are you taking her around the grounds?”
“That’s what I had in mind.”
“You two have a pleasant walk, then.” He turned back to Luka and resumed his conversation.
The other two men on the porch said nothing. They were young, maybe younger than Ezra, but just as big and imposing in their size and rugged appearance. They made no move to speak to me, and Ezra didn’t acknowledge them.
He guided me toward the steps and I braced myself to walk down them. My legs still hurt, but the woods around the house tempted me so much I just had to get out there and explore. After so many days stuck in bed, I couldn’t quit with freedom in sight.
A few derelict cars and trucks slumped around the yard. A handful of young men worked under the hood of a rusty old pickup. They looked up when I showed myself on the porch. Then they went back to what they were doing. I dropped onto the first step.
Ezra lowered himself backwards down the steps still holding my hand. He paused on the ground to wait for me. I drew in a breath and put out my foot.
The voices coming from under the hood fired back and forth louder. I didn’t pay attention to what they were saying, but the tone changed to one of challenge and animosity. I took the next step. Just one more to go and I would be on the ground. Then I could cross the flat yard with no trouble.
All at once, a voice assailed my ear. “Give that back!”
My heel touched the grass. Ezra turned around and we started walking toward the trees. At that moment, one of the young men pitched out from under the truck’s hood and stumbled into our path. Another guy rushed after him. “I said give that back! You runt, don’t make me take it back.”
The other mechanics all rotated around to watch. The first man scrambled to get away. I couldn’t even see what they were fighting over. I bent my head to go around them. Ezra didn’t give them a passing glance, either.
Just then, the second guy took a flying leap and tackled the first one right in front of me. The pair hit the ground rolling and punching and scratching. The others leaned against the truck and yelled encouragement.
Ezra moved in front of me to shield me from them. At the same time, he steered me farther to my right to keep clear of the tussle. The boys laid into each other with their fists. One of them—I couldn’t even tell them apart—mounted the other and sat on him. He flailed both fists in the air to pummel his opponent to a bloody pulp.
I looked away and Ezra turned his back on the combatants. The forest beckoned. It held much more attraction for me than a squabble between these two kids. I made it three more paces when, out of nowhere, the boys tumbled into my way one more time. One of them grabbed the other by the shoulders and sent him flying across the yard.
The kid rolled into the wheel of another truck. In a heartbeat, he rotated off the ground. In front of my eyes, he broke his skin and erupted into a fire-red dragon. The thing rounded on his enemy screeching to the skies.
I screamed in horror and staggered back to get away from it. In a flat second, I was back at the compound facing those awful creatures. I couldn’t think. I had to act to save my own life. I scrambled back and lost my balance. I slammed down onto the ground. Searing pain shot up my back and down my legs, but it didn’t stop me. I couldn’t stop gaping at that enormous lizard.
It thrashed against the clear blue sky. It towered over me in all its raging monstrosity. I had to kill it or be killed. Without thinking, I darted to the porch and snatched up a shovel leaning against the rail.
I barely had time to turn around before the dragon reared. Its long neck whipped skyward and it let loose a spray of fire. Ezra ducked. The inferno came within a hair’s breadth of torching me until I hauled back the shovel and smashed the creature alongside its head.
The creatures head snapped back from the blow, screeching. I planted my feet and took a firm grip on my weapon to fight it to the death. The thing recovered from the blow and turned its glinting eyes on me.
I bared my teeth and bellowed my challenge at it. I didn’t care if it killed me so long as I faced it on my feet. It growled low in its chest and its pointed head slithered closer.
At that moment, an even bigger dragon, a brilliant green one, descended between us. It turned its back to me and faced my foe with outspread wings. It roared at the smaller dragon and, like lightning, its long tail thrashed around. It delivered a devastating blow to the creature and sent it spinning back toward the trees. I kept my shovel at the ready, but the green dragon protected me.
The red dragon hit the ground some twenty feet away and instantly transformed into a young man again. The moment he took that form, the green dragon changed, too. It shrank, and I found myself staring up at Ezra’s broad back.
“Jesus Christ, Liam!” he thundered. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The other guy blankly studied him. His eyes skated toward me. I brandished my shovel at him, ready to give him another dose if he came near me.
When Liam didn’t move, Ezra turned around. He sidled up to me and took hold of the shovel. “Here. Give it to me. It’s all over. He won’t bother you again.”
I jerked the shovel around and waved it at him, too. My mind wouldn’t register that the danger was over. He was a dragon. They were all dragons, the same as those monsters at the compound.
All this time, I thought I was safe. I thought I was far enough away from them that I would never have to see them. I thought I was surrounded by good people, only to find out they were dragons, too.
I didn’t recognize the man standing in front of me. All the times he helped me and supported me and comforted me vanished in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t see anything when I looked at him but that big green monster capable of burning me alive. What if he turned out to be just like the Lynches? What if they all did?
He told me point blank the very first day I woke up here that the Kellys and the Lynches had been at war for generations. How could I be so stupid as to not put the pieces together? Of course the Kellys were dragons, too. They would have to be to stand up to the Lynches. The Lynches would have destroyed them centuries ago if they hadn’t been.
Ezra tried to pry my fingers off the shovel, but I couldn’t release my grip. I rounded on him and tried to hit him with it.
“Nora!” he boomed.
He grabbed the handle. He was a lot stronger than me. His eyes narrowed and he gave it one more mighty yank and tore it out of my hands.
I stood there, shocked and miserable and broken. I couldn’t fight these people. If they wanted to kill me, I couldn’t stop them. I was already injured. I was helpless. I looked around the yard. Everyone present stared at me in silence. What did they see when they looked at me? Did they see prey?
I couldn’t bear it a second longer. I broke away and ran for the trees.
6
Ezra
I wandered into the kitchen where Ma and Lucy were making dinner. “Where’s Nora? She’s not up in her room.”
Ma nodded toward the front door. “She’s still out there. She hasn’t come in since it happened. I think you better go talk to her.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked at the ground. “I don’t think she wants to talk to me. You should go.”
She laid down
her ladle and smiled up at me. “You’re the only one she really trusts, son. It has to be you.”
“She doesn’t trust me anymore. She’s afraid of me.” I could never get that horrified look of her eyes out of my mind—not if I lived a thousand years.
“You surprised her. That’s all,” Ma told me. “You go talk to her. She’s probably waiting for you to come and get her. She needs you right now. You’re the only one she’s got. Now go get her. She can’t spend the night out there in her condition.”
I heaved a heavy sigh. How could things between me and Nora go so wrong so fast? I kept telling myself over and over not to get attached to her, but somehow it happened anyway.
Now she knew the truth about me—about all of us. She would never look at me the same way again. She would never let me touch her. She would never smile up at me or blush when I made one of my ridiculous attempts at humor. Well, I knew this day would come and now here it was.
I shuffled out to the front porch. None of the men who saw the confrontation between her and Liam remained. I had the place to myself to think over how I was going to do this.
I didn’t want to be the one person around here she trusted most. That wasn’t saying much—if anything. She hated all dragons. She considered us murderous enemies. She would never stop fighting us. Her reaction to Liam proved that.
Man, she laid that kid upside the head like the best of them. The blow sent him a message, all right, that nobody better mess with her. It sent a message to everyone else watching, too, including me.
She would never let down her guard around us. She would never trust any of us again. We could be as nice to her as we could be. She would always paint us with the same brush as the Lynches.
I cursed those rotten scum for this. They poisoned her against all of us. Now she would never see us as any different from them. Pretty soon, she would go back to her own world and she would take that impression with her. She would carry it with her for life.
My stomach turned when I thought of her considering me that way. Every time she thought of me from now until her dying day, she would think of me as her enemy. She would forget everything that ever passed between us, and she would shudder and screw her eyes shut so she wouldn’t remember me—the real me, the me that cared about her and tried to help her.
Thinking this way wasn’t getting me any closer to bringing her in for the night. Where was she? I had to find her, I couldn’t shift into my dragon form to use my sense of smell. That was out of the question. If she saw me or even heard me, she would run for the hills.
I started up the path where she ran away earlier. I knew every rock and molehill on this Ridge. She could only be so many places. She couldn’t hide forever.
I would like to think she wouldn’t stay out all night, that she might come in on her own, but I knew her better than that. She would never come in. She would never return to our house on her own—never. She wasn’t made that way. When she did something, she did it all out. She put all her massive strength into everything she did, even running away.
I made it fifty yards into the woods before the trail disappeared, so I picked up her tracks. They showed up in the soft moss and led me along the ridgetop. She was no fool, that girl. She knew to keep to the tops rather than go down into the ravines where she might get lost.
I slowed my pace getting close to the lookout. Of course she would go there. I spotted a flash of white and paused behind a tree to observe her.
She perched on the very cliff edge. She sat utterly still with her legs drawn up to her chest. The wind ruffled her hair, and my heart spasmed. Poor girl. She’d been through the wringer already and now this.
I strolled out but she didn’t turn around. Did she expect me to come and find her? She didn’t look at me when I sat down next to her. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? She already knew the worst.
I stared straight in front of me at the expanse of mountains stretching far and away. The whole range lay black and intractable below the Ridge. The wilderness hid all kinds of secrets people didn’t want anybody to find out about. This was only one.
No one in the human world knew anything about us. No doubt a woman as smart as Nora must have puzzled that out for herself by now. She would go back to her medical career in Chattanooga, but she could never tell anyone what really happened to her out here. No one would believe her.
She could never tell anyone how her friends really died, and she could never, never tell anyone how she got those burns. She would have to carry that secret to the grave. I would give anything to alleviate that burden, too, but I couldn’t. She could talk to me about it. I might be the only person alive to whom she could reveal herself.
She startled me out of my reverie by speaking. “Why didn’t you tell me? You must have realized I would want to know.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I should have told you. I could say it never came up, but that’s not the real truth. Maybe I knew you’d be afraid if you found out. Maybe I wanted you to like me without that complicating things.”
She still didn’t turn. We both spoke to the all-seeing wilderness that swallowed all words. Why did I say that? Why did I admit to her what I dared not admit to myself?
She was the only person alive to whom I could reveal myself, too. All my life, I lived around people who already knew. My family, the other Clans, the girls and women I’d known—to them, the fact of my dragon nature was old hat. We didn’t need to talk about it because they were all dragons, too.
“How could you hide it from me?” she asked. “How could you let it happen like that? How could you let him take me by surprise and scare me like that? You should have told me. You should have warned me before you took me out of that room. Then at least I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Now I can never face them after what I did. I could never run the risk of going through something so….so awful.”
My shoulders slumped in defeat. “Listen, girl. I know you can never like a guy like me after what you’ve seen. I’m not asking you to, and there could never be anything between us anyway. We just got the call a little while ago. The Tennessee State Troopers are sending a car down here to pick you up tomorrow morning and take you back to Chattanooga. The authorities want to question you about the Lynches kidnapping you and your friends, and then they’ll take you back to medical school or to your parents or wherever it is you want to go. You’ll never see me or any of these people again. You can put it behind you, and maybe it’s for the best.”
She spun around and her burning eyes landed on my face. “I do like you, Ezra. When are you going to realize that?”
Before I could react, she jumped to her feet and tore off up the Ridge. The words took a second to sink in. She liked me? Really, really liked me?
I tripped over my own feet trying to get up to follow her. By the time I untangled myself, she was already out of sight. I bolted up the Ridge and had to stop inside the trees to check where she went.
I saw her white shirt retreating into the woods and I charged after it. “Nora! Nora, wait.”
She didn’t stop. She kept barging through the undergrowth, headed I don’t know where. She couldn’t know where she was going in this thicket.
I rushed around in front of her and held out my hand to stop her. “Wait, Nora! You can’t drop a bomb like that and just walk away.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “You just said I’m going back to Chattanooga. What’s the point in talking about it?”
“How was I supposed to know you liked me? I didn’t know.”
“Oh, come off it, Ezra,” she chided. “You knew perfectly well after all this time. Do you think I let you touch me like that and hold my hand and everything for no good reason? Do you think I’m the kind of girl that lets just anybody do that? You knew, and you never told me you were a dragon just like the Lynches. How could you hide it from me when you knew I would react the way I did?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I exclaimed. “It was a stup
id mistake. I realize that now. Can’t we just let it go?”
“How can I let it go?” she fired back. “I can never show my face around your house again. Your parents and your relatives will all be waiting for me to fly off the handle the minute I see one of them shift.”
“No one blames you for what happened,” I told her. “Are you nuts? It was my fault if it was anybodys for not warning you. Liam—he’s a handful. You know what young guys are like. Everybody understands why you did what you did. They don’t blame you. Believe me. They understand. They’re more ticked off at him than they are at you.”
She frowned and pulled her head back. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. You should have heard the chewing-out my Pop gave him after you left. My Ma was the one who told me to come out here and find you. Believe me. They respect you. You’re a hero to them. Everybody understands why you attacked Liam the way you did.”
She settled in on herself. “Oh.”
I drew in a shaky breath. “Look, Nora. I like you. I like you a lot. If things were different, I could see something serious happening between us, but they aren’t different. I was born and raised on this Ridge, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re from another world and you’ll be going back there tomorrow morning. Let’s just call it good and leave it at that. Okay?”
She stole a peek up at me. “I see that now. I’m glad I met you, though, and not just because you brought me in out of the forest and nursed me back to health. I’m really glad I had you to get me through this. I won’t forget it—not ever.”
I couldn’t stop myself from taking her hand. Our fingers just sort of belonged together that way. “You showed me what’s possible, Nora. I never would have believed I could feel the way I do about anybody. It’s going take me a long time to find someone I feel this way about.”
She squeezed my hand back. “I feel the same way. I almost wish I wasn’t going back.”
