by Mina Carter
Stupid bloody female. Of all the dumb, harebrained things to go and do… Roc beat his wings, taking off from the spire as carefully as possible. Falling backward, he folded his wings close to his body to go into free fall, only snapping them open when he reached her, using the updraft to hang in the air next to her.
Knuckles white as she clung to the rocks with one hand, she waved him off with the other, her curvy form battered and buffeted by the air kicked up by his wings.
“Go away!” she yelled over the wind. “Are you trying to get me bloody well killed?”
Her footing slipped. She grabbed for the rocks again with a small scream, but he’d had enough. Ignoring her order, he beat his wings furiously, using the force of the air currents to knock her from her perch. She fell with a scream but he didn’t let her get far, swooping and twisting in the air to catch her on his broad back.
What the hell are you trying to do, female? Get yourself killed? he all but yelled through their mental link, feeling her hands tighten on his ridges as he climbed higher. A breath of relief washed through him. She hadn’t been trying to kill herself then. If she wanted to do that, she’d only have to let go and slide from his back. In these mountains, with their high peaks and narrow crevasses, he wouldn’t be able to maneuver and catch her before she was dashed to pieces on the rocks below… as a dragon, she would know that.
What do you think? Trying to get away from you, you insufferable oaf! Her voice filled his head, for the first time using the telepathic link all dragon-kind, whatever their flavor, were capable of. He suppressed his groan as he wheeled to bring them out of a narrow corridor of rock, cliff faces on either side, and beat his wings to climb above them. Like the woman herself, Zahra’s mental touch was light and delicate, with a hint of melody and sensuality that speared him to the core.
Really? Is that why you chose a path right below where I was sitting? he threw back, but she didn’t answer as she changed position on his back. Rather than curl up tightly between the rows of ridges on his spine, he could feel her kneeling. Making sure to keep his flight path level, he lifted his head and turned slightly to look over his shoulder.
He’d been right. Hands hooked around two ridge scales for balance, she was kneeling upright with her eyes closed. The wind buffeted her, hair streaming back from her face… a face with the most beautiful, heartbreaking smile on her lips.
Scared of heights? he asked softly, not wanting to disturb the moment but needing to know. Perhaps her accident had left more than physical scars, something he would need to deal with if they were going to have any sort of life together.
But she shook her head, her eyes still closed.
Like this, I can almost pretend I’m flying again, she whispered softly, breaking his heart in the process. The torment she and her dragon must be going through. He hadn’t felt her inner creature at all yet, not pressing beneath her skin nor peering out of her eyes to look at him with the normal curiosity of mates, not even when he was shifted like this. Hell, he hadn’t even realized Zahra was shift-capable at first, her dragon was buried that deeply. But if he couldn’t fly, his wyvern would probably do the same.
Keeping his mouth, mental and physical, shut, he looked to the front again and flew in silence. He rose and fell, using updrafts to climb, and then glided downward in loops and spirals. They left the mountains, traveling over the foothills and plains below them.
With each wing-beat, he tried to tempt the elusive creature that was part of his mate’s soul to come out and, if not play with him, at least take a look. But even when he landed gently in the wide cave mouth of his eyrie hours later, he hadn’t felt an ounce of shift energy from her.
Without changing form, he allowed her to slide down his side to the floor. She paused for a moment, leaning into him, her forehead resting against the scales of his shoulder.
“Thank you.” It was the barest whisper, but he heard it, his heart doing strange flip-flops in his broad chest. “Thank you for making me feel what it’s like again.”
“You haven’t fucked her yet, have you?”
Roc blinked at the hard accusation as Arnor appeared at his side. The plateau was beginning to fill up for the evening, fires already lit and meat roasting over them. Although they were all capable of catching their own food on the wing, eating together of an evening was becoming a thing as they settled into life as an official “clan.”
“No, I haven’t. Why?” he asked, his hard expression giving away his irritation at the personal line of questioning. Had Arnor been any other wyvern, he’d have felt Roc’s claws in his throat for the impertinence.
He flicked a quick glance at where Zahra sat, warm and comfortable on furs, where he usually did. Some joker had dragged a huge boulder into place, claw marks stark against the stone where they’d carved it into a rough “throne.” He didn’t care, leaving it where it was. The high sides and back protected his little mate from the vicious winds that often swept through, letting her bask in the warmth of the fire.
“Do it, and quickly, brother.” Arnor put a hand on this arm, shooting a look around the rapidly filling plateau. Already Nesren and his cronies had claimed the boulders over the other side, laughing and joking with each other as they drank. “Some people are casting envious eyes toward your position and see the woman as part of it. They see her as ‘queen’ and think that by claiming her, they claim your throne. If you want to keep both, I’d advise you to make her yours. And soon.”
Roc didn’t get time to reply as rumblings on the other side of the fire made everyone look around.
“Roc is a coward.”
He’d expected the challenge to come from Nesren, but the wyvern who rose from the darkness to step into the light wasn’t the loose-lipped troublemaker. At Roc’s side, Arnor went still and silent, as did Roc himself.
Johan wasn’t a large man, or wyvern, but what he lacked in size, he made up for in mean-ness and sheer insanity. Of all their number he was the one, other than Arnor, Roc would have wanted on his side. It didn’t look like that was going to happen, though, not with the crazed little look in Johan’s eyes.
Roc didn’t move, apart from narrowing his eyes.
“Be very careful what you say next, my friend,” he advised in a low, dangerous voice.
“Well, what else would you call him other than coward?”
Johan wasn’t looking at Roc, though. Instead he addressed the crowds gathered around the fire. Each night, there had been more and more. Normally reclusive wyverns who eschewed even the company of their own kind had been drawn out by the changes to socialize with each other… the first steps to becoming a real clan… to belonging.
Now they all watched the scene unfolding across the fire with avid interest. Not one of them would intervene, not with what was shaping up to be a leadership battle… the first in living memory.
“He says he is our king… yet he does nothing about the villages that encroach on our territory, rounding up the wild cattle we hunt for food. Instead he attends ‘meetings’ on our behalf, yet we never hear anything from them.” With each sentence, the rumblings around the fire got louder and more ominous. Johan strutted around on his side, arms spread as his voice rose. His body language was confident, the knowledge that he had the crowd in the palm of his hand written into the arrogant swagger as he turned and pointed at Roc.
“He says he speaks for us, defends our interests… yet we are never asked our opinions on anything. What kind of king is that?”
Silence fell as everyone turned to look at Roc. He didn’t reply for a moment, didn’t do anything other than look steadily at Johan, his gaze as hard and unblinking as a snake’s.
“No kind of king, that’s what!” Johan proclaimed triumphantly, obviously taking Roc’s silence for weakness. “I say I claim his throne…”
Half the assembled wyverns roared their approval, the loudest cheers coming from the boulders where Nesren and his cronies lounged. Apparently Arnor’s warning hadn’t been severe enough
, but then again, Nesren was more than manipulative enough to have put Johan up to this.
The rest watched from the shadows around the fires with unreadable eyes. In the darkest reaches Roc sensed more than saw several draw back, not wanting to get involved in any fight. He didn’t blame them. Fights between their kind were always bloody and brutal…
But Johan wasn’t finished, adding with a roar. “I’ll claim his throne and his woman, and I’ll be your king!”
Roc. Was. Done.
At the threat to his woman he lost it. A rage welled so complete that it boiled up from his soul, almost whiting out his vision as his beast slammed into him from the inside. Scales tore through his skin, shattering his human form as his wyvern ripped its way free. In a heartbeat, he snapped his wings out, using them not for flight but to launch himself across the rock floor of the plateau at Johan.
He stomped through the fire, scattering embers and flame everywhere, to slam into the other wyvern. Johan had shifted too, nearly as quickly as Roc had, so they met in a solid hit of muscle and scales for a second before breaking away. Johan’s clawed wing tip went for Roc’s open wing, looking to rend and tear the membrane.
Roc wasn’t having any of it, half-folding his wing so the claw skittered off the armor-scales that protected the wing bones. He lunged forward and lashed out, trying for one of the ridges over Johan’s back. His teeth skittered and then gripped. In his other form, Johan was much smaller than Roc, something the wyvern king used to his advantage, shaking his opponent like a dog would a bone. Trying to break his neck.
Johan responded by raking along Roc’s side with a gout of flame. Roc threw him at the nearest rock face with a furious roar. His tail lashed out as he rounded on Johan again, the spike on the end smashing into a large boulder. The rock shattered, tumbling the wyverns sitting on it off their perches.
Several hit the deck while the others shifted, escaping the carnage happening in the middle of the plateau on the wing to seek perches higher up. Not one of them tried to interfere.
Johan had barely hit the rocky ground before he rolled and launched himself at Roc again. Whatever else anyone said about the guy, he had guts. He wasn’t a coward like Nesren and he was an excellent fighter. He would make a damn good king but Roc wasn’t willing to give up either the “crown” or Zahra… especially not Zahra.
Each time Johan launched himself at Roc, he was smacked down again. Into rock faces, into the floor, once even into the crude throne by the fire, shattering it into pieces. For a moment Roc’s heart was in his throat, but a quick scan of the rock faces around them revealed Zahra safely wrapped up in Arnor’s arms. For a moment jealousy wanted to raise its ugly head but he beat it down.
Arnor was as good as his brother. He wouldn’t in a million years make a move on Zahra, but he would protect her. Even if Roc lost this fight, he would protect her and wouldn’t allow her to be used as a pawn for another to gain power.
But that wasn’t happening. As Johan attacked again, blood streaming down his sides from several wounds and a large section of his ridge scales gone over his shoulders, Roc decided enough was enough.
With a roar, he launched himself at Johan, meeting his opponent halfway. Beating his wings, he took them up into the air. He struck repeatedly, massive jaws clamping down on Johan’s smaller body, breaking bones under the armored scales. No quarter had been asked for, expected or would be given, and Roc made sure all who watched from below saw it.
Johan screamed in pain and fear as Roc’s jaws clamped around his wing, and, with a hideous crack, snapped his wing bones. It was a finishing move. He couldn’t fly with a broken wing, but he also couldn’t shift to heal the damage, not without plummeting to his death. Which meant he was completely at Roc’s mercy and everyone who watched knew it.
Roc wrapped himself around the smaller wyvern and shut his own wings, taking them plummeting downward toward the lethal rocks in the valleys below the plateau. The wind rushed around them, the night-darkened cliff faces speeding by as they raced toward the ground. Above them, Roc knew the crowds had rushed to the edge of the plateau to see the end of the fight.
To watch him kill Johan.
And before he’d been king, he would have. But he didn’t want to rule by fear… and he didn’t want to see it in Zahra’s eyes when she looked at him. The very presence of her in his life had changed him, hopefully for the better.
He held on a little longer, and the very moment he would have snapped his wings open and dropped his injured victim to be impaled on the razor-sharp rocks, he instead held on, beating his wings to take them both back up to the plateau above.
Hundreds of pairs of eyes, human and wyvern, watched in silence as he hovered for a moment, the injured male in his claws, before he threw Johan onto the ground in front of them.
Touching down, he folded his scaled form into his human one within a heartbeat, the speed of his change startling a gasp out of many in the crowd. In front of him, Johan changed back to human form with an agonized whimper echoed by painful sounding cracks and crunches. Then he lay at Roc’s feet, semi-conscious.
Roc nudged him with a foot, eliciting an agonized groan.
“This,” he lifted his voice so everyone could hear him, “is what awaits anyone who thinks he can take either my woman or my crown. Understand? I will not kill you… I will not even be as kind as I have been to Johan here. He is the first. He is your only warning. The next wyvern to challenge me will not get off as lightly. I will tear your fucking wings off at the spine and burn them… and I will not give you the mercy of a quick death.”
He turned as he spoke, making sure each male felt he was speaking to him and him alone. “I will force you to live out your days as a flightless fucking worm forever remembering the glory of flight but unable to achieve it. You will dream of the skies but will only be able to look up to see them. You will never be among the clouds again.
“Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear?” he roared in demand, lighting up the darkness with a gout of flame from his human throat, something only a true alpha was capable of. A warning, if any was needed, that he could do everything he threatened and more.
There was no reply. None was needed, not with the object lesson lying groaning at his feet.
Stepping over Johan’s prone form, Roc held a hand out for Zahra’s. As soon as she took it, he scooped her up in his arms and took a running leap off the plateau’s edge, shifting as they fell, and flew his mate away to safety.
Chapter 6
Roc was scary. And lethal. And a whole host of other things, but one thing Zahra couldn’t deny was that he stirred her like no other man ever had. Try as she might to ignore the pull between them, there was something visceral and alluring about him that pulled her in. A sense of power and danger that thrilled her even though it should have warned her off, repulsed her even… especially when he’d dealt with his challenger so brutally.
It hadn’t. Instead, all she’d felt was excitement. Not at the damage he’d inflicted on his opponent, she wasn’t quite that bloodthirsty, but at the thought of all that power and brutality bent to another purpose… pleasure. At the thought of that big, powerful form above her, pressing her into the furs over his bed as he kissed every inch of her skin.
A shiver hit her, working across her body all the way from her toes upward. It heated her blood and made parts of her she’d thought had shut down completely tingle at being near him. Thoughts of touching him, that lean, hard body hers to explore made her bite her lip and she locked the thoughts away so she couldn’t act on them. He wasn’t hers. Wasn’t her mate. If he was, surely her dragon would have woken?
Her eyes closed, she lay in the furrow between his ridge scales as he climbed through the darkness up to his eyrie. She hadn’t missed the changes he’d made since she arrived. More furs had appeared on the bed and a fire raged constantly in the crude fireplace, banishing both the dark and the damp. There had even been rose petals on the bed the other day… the purple petals those of the
northern rock rose, her favorite flower. They were a shy and elusive plant, only flowering at certain times of year and day. How the hell he’d managed to find them in the first place, never mind get them all the way up here, she had no idea, but the little gesture had been sweet.
They reached the cave entrance to his lair and he touched down, shifting in the same breath. Again, he somehow managed to come out of the shift holding her in his arms as he walked deeper into the cave system that made up his home. She hadn’t been able to work out how he did it, but it was one of the little things, in combination with others, that made her realize that her long-held belief that wyverns were antiquated relics was wrong. So far wrong, it was laughable.
Sure, they were big and brutal, their shifted forms like scaled and armored flying tanks, but the more she saw of them, the more she got to know Roc… the more she realized there was a feral beauty in the ferocity and a noble heart hidden under the brutal exterior. He hadn’t killed that male earlier, not even when all the others expected him to. Not even when she expected him to.
Instead, he’d used it as a lesson for the others.
As a king would.
And he’d done it to protect her.
As a king would protect his queen.
Another shiver hit her as he carried her through to the bedroom.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he murmured in his soft gravel as he laid her down on the bed like she was made of the most precious and delicate china. The care he took with her, in either of his forms, really did it for her. But how would he feel when he knew she was broken?
Wyverns were big and brutal… it was survival of the fittest up here, as Roc had just proved… a female who couldn’t shift, who couldn’t even access her dragon and was one step away from dying… Misery filled her. He was better off without her. But that didn’t stop her curling her hands around his arms when he made to get up and leave her on the bed.
“Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered, her eyes shut, knowing she sounded small and unsure. “Just stay with me, at least until I’m asleep.”
