The Rookie

by Abigail Owen

  “You protected my child.” The voice that feathered through his mind both was and wasn’t hers. Deeper, rougher, he knew the dragon side of her was still in charge.

  “I’m your mate. Your child is my child, and I would give my life for him.” In fact, he might have done that. The scalding inside him increasing every second, but he couldn’t show her weakness. Not while the dragon was in control.

  “Why?” the dragon before him demanded. “Why would you give your life?”

  “Because my love for both of you makes you more important than my life. As essential to me as water and air and fire.”

  The creature stared at him, blinked once, and suddenly Sera’s eyes gazed back at him. “Aidan?”

  She sounded shaky, her voice trembling, but that was definitely her voice.

  Pure relief slammed through him. “That’s it. I’m here.”

  She took a step forward. A sudden blazing pain lanced across the back of Aidan’s neck. At the same time, Sera shuddered and a sound close to a whimper escaped her.

  “Owie!” Blake’s yelp pulled Aidan’s gaze to where the boy still stood beside Titus’s prone form. Blake gripped the back of his neck with his hand, clawed at it. “My neck. Something’s eating my neck.”

  Realization of exactly what was happening hit Aidan hard in the chest. Aidan whipped his gaze back to Sera who was trying to reach her own neck, her wings preventing her from angling her front talons that direction.

  Their bond was solidifying.

  But with Blake, too? Was a child so much a part of a mother that her bonding would bond him, too?

  A screech emerged from the boy and his body started to shimmer.

  Fuck. He’s shifting. How the hell was this even possible?

  Aidan had only just brought Sera back from the brink. Dragons didn’t shift at such a young age. He had no idea what it might do to Blake.

  But he couldn’t stop it, either.

  Aidan lumbered over to his son, limping now, dragging the right side of his body, which didn’t want to move. He got right in his face. “Watch me. Right here. I’m here with you.”

  Blake shook his head, his shaggy hair falling in his eyes, the freckles across the bridge of his nose stark in contrast to skin growing paler by the second.

  “What’s happening, Aidan?” Blake whimpered.

  Thank the gods, he could hear him. “You’re turning into a dragon, buddy. But I need you to stay here with me. Can you be strong? Focus?”

  Blake nodded his head.

  “Feel your human body—your skin, your legs and arms, your back with no wings. Picture it.”

  Except the shimmering didn’t stop.

  A crack overhead stole Aidan’s attention. He knew that sound. The trees around them were starting to topple under the stress of the flames.

  “You’re human, buddy. Hold on to that.”

  “It’s too hot,” Blake said, shaking his head, obviously losing any focus he had.

  Another crack sounded, closer, followed by a series of more.

  “Aidan,” Sera yelled.

  For the second time, he threw himself over Blake as several flaming trees collapsed on top of them, impacting across his back. Aidan struggled to keep from dropping to his belly, crushing the child beneath him.

  He felt more than saw Blake scramble out from beneath him before he finally collapsed under the weight of the pile pinning him to the ground. All strength sapped by his wounds, he tried to move, but couldn’t. Blackness closed in on his vision, and he knew he was dying. “Sera. Get him out of here.”

  “We won’t leave you.”

  He vaguely recognized her face coming closer. Still in dragon form. Gorgeous. Aidan’s vision was fading fast, but he still caught another face, smaller and darker, like midnight sky, which appeared beside hers. Blake.

  He appeared to be in control. Maybe the brand on his neck, his bond to Sera, was keeping him from going wild.

  Aidan summoned a smile, not sure it made it to his face. “You look awesome, kid.”

  “Save it,” Sera snapped. “We love you. We’re bound together by the fates.”

  He could feel her plucking at the massive tree crushing his body. He wanted to help, but the darkness was claiming him. He closed his eyes.

  “No!” Sera cried, fear like shards of ice in her voice.

  Suddenly the weight lifted, the pressure and heat disappearing. Had Sera thrown the trees off him? No way could she do that by herself, though. She wasn’t big enough. What the hell?

  Aidan managed to force his eyes open…to find Titus leaning over him.

  “No.” Darkness claimed him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sera stared at Titus with no clue what to do. Her dragon pushed at her to attack, but Titus had helped Aidan. Hadn’t he?

  Black scales glittering, reflecting the flames all around them like an obsidian mirror, Titus moved to Aidan’s side. He stared at her mate’s unconscious form. Even as a dragon she could see his expression morph from terrible intent to realization to a devastation that reached inside her chest and shredded her heart. His big head dropped, and he gave it a hard shake.

  “What have I done?”

  She didn’t think he’d meant to direct the words at her but heard him just the same.

  He gave one more shake of his head, then lifted it, looking around as if taking in their situation. With a low grunt he stepped away and faced the flaming forested mountainside and the strangest thing started to happen. The flames appeared to reach for him before disappearing inside him, like he was pulling them into himself through his scales and skin.

  He was…helping them? Protecting them from the fire?

  “Sera, check Aidan’s wounds.”

  His wounds? Sera turned toward her mate, still prone. Out cold. She nudged him with her nose, the scent of fire and burning flesh putrid and strong in her nostrils. Sera growled when she found the open gash on his belly. The edges were turning black at the tips as the center glowed red, as though something was eating it away.

  “What’s happening to him?”

  “Your fire.”

  Oh my God. Oh my… A deep trembling started within her.

  “Help is coming,” Titus said.

  “What?”

  Before he could answer, the fire whipped around them, like a small tornado had stirred it into a frenzy. A massive black dragon loomed large through the blaze, landing beside Titus.

  Rune.

  He didn’t speak. Instead, he took in the scene with one glance, and turned to stand side by side with Titus, drawing the fire into himself, putting a wall of dragon flesh between the flames and her son and mate.

  Titus stepped away, moving over to Aidan’s side. “He needs your blood.”

  My blood? What does that even mean? “How?”

  Another swirl of fire and another dragon landed. Indigo blue with scales that faded to a steel blue at the centers, and pissed if the way he hissed was any indication.

  Finn.

  Like Rune, he absorbed the situation in a glance. He moved beside the black dragon, doubling the efforts against the flames. Immediately, the incessant heat backed off a little.

  Titus glanced up, pinning her with eyes gone deadly serious. “His wounds aren’t fatal. Yet.”

  Yet?

  “I’m not a Healer like Fallon. His blood is universal, but mine is not. I can’t help him. But, as his mate, your blood might.”

  “Might?”

  “We don’t know for sure how long it takes for a mate’s body to change. The fact that your brand is already in place and you’ve shifted so soon is a good sign.”

  Titus lowered his head, opening his mouth, and she jerked forward to stop him, then paused when he put his mouth to the hole in Aidan’s stomach and inhaled. Turquoise-tinted flames leaped from the wound into his mouth, as if he were drawing her fire from Aidan’s body by sheer will, obviously trained to not inhale the wrong way.

  It seemed to take forever. In the mean
time, Drake and Hall arrived—brilliant red and green against the sky—taking up positions to deal with the fire, which diminished rapidly with every passing moment. Less smoke and heat surrounding them, though the crackle of the flames still sounded overly loud in her sensitive ears.

  Titus finally moved to the smaller wound on Aidan’s back.

  Sera managed to hold herself still, but, while she could still feel her mate’s life force, his usually striking sky-blue scales had gone a dull color that had nausea welling inside her. She couldn’t move her gaze from the steady, though shallow, movement of his rib cage as he breathed.

  Blake, tiny in his dragon form beside the larger men, slithered back and forth, wending between her legs. She tried to talk to him but got no answer. Yet another concern, but one that would have to be dealt with later. Not while Aidan was struggling to survive. If he died, so would she, and maybe Blake, too.

  Because of her. Because she’d lost control and almost killed all of them.

  Titus lifted his head from his work. “Your blood, Sera. Now.”

  “How?”

  “Hold out one wing. Elbow joint over the wound on his stomach.”

  She did, and Titus lifted his clawed hand, extending one impossibly sharp talon. “This is going to hurt.”

  Before she could tense up, he slashed through the scales covering her arm at the joint, going deep into the soft tissue below. The sting of the pain drew a whimper from her, but she didn’t care. This was for Aidan.

  Blood trickled out, dropping onto Aidan, seeping down into the gash. Sera gasped as, immediately, the black edges started to fade, turning first gray, then red, then into healthier pink tissue.

  Titus held her there until the flow of her blood slowed to barely a drip, her newly enhanced healing already kicking in to close her own wound. Aidan took a deep shuddering breath, his eyelids fluttering like he was trying to drag himself back to consciousness.

  With a grim nod of satisfaction, Titus pulled her around to center her over Aidan’s back, and slashed at her again, restarting the bleeding. This smaller gash from the loss of a single scale took less blood. Before they finished, Aidan stirred. With no warning, he suddenly shoved to his feet, throwing Sera to the side.

  Blake gave an exuberant little trumpet and ran up to his new father, rubbing against him almost like a cat.

  Aidan blinked as he took in the scene with all the dragons around them and Titus above him. A snarl ripped from his throat. Though he swayed, still unsteady from his wounds, he prowled toward the black dragon. Except he suddenly pulled up, staring hard at Titus.

  What was Titus saying to him?

  “Aidan,” Sera tried directing her thoughts at both men.

  Titus canted his head. Aidan didn’t look away from the shifter, but somehow, she could feel him listening, too. “He saved your life.”

  Aidan said nothing.

  “It’s not enough,” Titus said, a wealth of sorrow spilling over his words like a waterfall. Then he lowered his head, no longer making eye contact with Aidan, and backed slowly away.

  Only then did Aidan look around, his gaze landing on Sera. They shared a long, unspoken moment where they both acknowledged the other. The strength of their bond held in a single glance. Finally, he focused on Blake who was head butting him. “Hey, little man. I’m all right.”

  If Blake responded, Sera couldn’t hear it.

  “That’s okay,” Aidan said as he cuddled the boy. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Figure what out? Aidan swiveled his head to land that intense blue gaze on her. “Thank the gods you’re okay.”

  With a rush of pure happiness, tainted only by the fact that this wasn’t entirely over, Sera flung herself at him, careful not to knock into her son. Twining their necks, Aidan nuzzled her, pulling a purr of contentment from her body. A sound she had no idea a dragon could make.

  “Almost done, boss,” Drake’s voice sounded in her head.

  Sera glanced up to see. Sure enough, the blaze of the fire was almost entirely gone, leaving a large swath of land charred by the flames, only a few leaves still crisping at the edges. Once this was out, she knew there had to be a reckoning—her and Aidan’s mating and the consequences that would bring, Rune’s involvement given everything he’d done before, the situation with the Alliance, and Titus’s attack, even in the light of what he’d done for Aidan to save him.

  What would happen next?

  …

  By the gods, what have I done?

  Titus backed away from the men he’d called brothers for hundreds of years, and the woman he’d been so damn sure was destined to be his.

  When had he lost so much of his soul that he could do such a thing? Instead, in his obsession, his brokenness, he’d almost killed her. Were the gods punishing him for those other mates who’d suffered his fire?

  All he’d ever wanted was the joy he’d witnessed between his own parents. That connection so pure, so deep, that, toward the ends of their full lives, they’d only needed to communicate with a look, a touch.

  But I fixed it. He’d redeemed himself. He’d saved Aidan. For her. For Sera. He could never cause her pain. Or worse, death, if the mating was true and the rookie perished. The man Titus had watched grow from boyhood to take his place among the Huracáns. A brother. I almost killed my brother.

  Conviction clenched hard inside him, pain of emotions not felt in way too long lancing through his body, through his mind.

  Then Blake’s tiny body appeared between Sera’s feet, and Titus dropped his head to the ground, unable to look at the boy.

  I did this. Blake was a mere child, one he’d threatened, terrified.

  Realization flowed through him, stripping his insides bare. In his pursuit of a mate, he’d taken those lives, destroyed every time by each woman’s pain and fear, yet still determined to keep trying. But the loss of his soul had been more subtle, leaving a black hole within that dragged every shred of light, every part of the good man he once was, inside it.

  He had only one choice to make.

  An easier choice than he would ever have thought.

  …

  Where is Titus?

  Sera craned her neck and found him standing apart from everyone else, the charred remains of the trees at his back, those black eyes no longer feverish, more…full of sorrow, yet also resolute.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sera looked up at Aidan, who now watched the black dragon warily but gave no sign that he’d heard.

  “I want you to know, I truly believed you were mine. I was only fighting for my mate. But I was…wrong.” He choked out the last word, and his chest heaved as he took a deep breath.

  Before she could respond, Titus reared back, tipping his head to the sky. An immense stream of black flame shot from his maw, reaching above them by at least fifty feet.

  All the other dragons jumped back, assuming defensive positions—teeth bared, wings extended—ready to fight. Aidan put his body physically between Sera and Blake and Titus. Sera had to crane her long neck to see over him.

  But Titus didn’t turn the flames on them.

  Instead, he opened his mouth wider and sucked in; the flames tumbled in on themselves in a roiling mass, disappearing into his mouth. She’d seen the dragons draw flames in through their bodies and also through their mouths before. Titus had just done that to Aidan. But the way every other dragon around her tensed at the sight, told her this was different.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “You know how I told you not to breathe the flames in?” Aidan asked, voice grim.

  A vague memory of Aidan’s voice breaking through the dragon’s hold on her mind penetrated. The flames would eat Titus alive from the inside.

  Titus was taking his own life.

  Despite what he’d done today, her heart protested, cracking with the pressure.

  As soon as he’d consumed the flames, an act that took only seconds, Titus’s form shimmered and shifted. The massive proportions of his bod
y drew inward, dropping down until he assumed a human form. The glorious ebony scales receded, replaced by skin. Dark eyes changed from slitted irises to human eyes—focused only on her.

  “Save him,” she urged the shifters standing around in a semicircle, watching.

  “We can’t release the flames from him in this form,” Aidan told her softly. “This is his choice.”

  Why were they doing nothing? “He was your friend.”

  “He was our brother,” Finn said quietly. “And we are all saying goodbye…in our own way.”

  One by one, the dragons surrounding them lay down, wings rustling as they folded them back, glowing gazes fixed on their dying friend. All except Finn, who seemed to stand guard over all of them.

  It struck her then, that each man must be talking to Titus silently, delivering their own messages through that telepathic link. Private messages.

  He’s still so alone.

  “We can’t stay,” Finn rumbled, his voice tight. “The fire will draw the attention of the Alaz Enforcers. They’re already trailing us.”

  No way. They weren’t leaving Titus like this.

  “How do I shift?” She needed to go to him. Someone needed to be there for him. Hold his hand.

  Aidan turned his gaze on her and she could feel how he wanted to protest, to keep her away from the person who’d threatened them.

  “He saved us. In the end,” she reminded him.

  After a beat, Aidan nodded.

  “Aidan,” Finn’s warning was more a growl now.

  Aidan leveled a stare of pure determination on his Alpha. “My mate isn’t leaving, which means I’m not leaving.”

  “I’ll go scout,” Hall offered. At Finn’s nod, the bright green dragon lumbered over to Titus’s prone form and lowered his head over him. With a hand that visibly shook, Titus reached up and touched Hall’s snout. They stayed like that a moment before Hall visibly had to force himself to turn away and launch into the air.

  Aidan turned back to her. “You heard what I told Blake about shifting?”

  Sera nodded around the emotions clogging her throat, recalling his words, his description. It took a moment, but eventually the world around her changed, as if she was slowly being lowered from a great height. No sound accompanied the shift. No stretching or stinging, either. Not like last time when the dragon rampaged through and her skin appeared to turn to embers before her eyes.