by Jadyn Chase
I turned to walk away. I made it halfway across the street when he launched off the ground. I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. The next instant, he rocketed over my head and shifted in mid-air. He descended in front of me transformed into a huge red dragon.
I stumbled back, startled out of my wits. His neck extended to an impossible length. His tail lashed around to crack like a whip, and two leathery wings spread from the shoulders of his massive body. His head shot forward to hiss in my face.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I never would have believed he could commit such a flagrant violation of the neutrality agreement. The terms laid out by both our Clans clearly stipulated no one was to show their dragon form in Norton or anywhere else the humans might see.
I didn’t hesitate a second longer. I couldn’t fight him—not here in the middle of town. I launched into the air and shifted on the wing. I let my dragon soul crack my skin open, and my wings caught the night air to carry me far away.
I made it five hundred yards over the town before Everett and his brothers came screaming towards me. I thrust out my neck and raced over the countryside, but I dared not lead them back to the Ridge. I turned tail and headed for Johns Mountain.
Everett could fly a lot faster than I could, though. He was bound to overtake me, but I didn’t care. I had to lead him away from town. If he was determined to start a Clan war by killing me, I had to get him as far away from Norton as possible. At least my Pop would bury me knowing I did my duty to Clan Kelly.
Everett plummeted out of the sky and struck my left wing. It crumpled, and a searing bolt of pain ripped through me. I screamed against my will, but I was already far enough away from town that I didn’t have to worry about anybody hearing me.
Malachi Lynch zoomed up on my right and snapped his jaws at my other wing. I yanked it in to protect myself, and between the two of them hemming me in, I fumbled and stalled thousands of feet above the forest.
In that instant, the others closed in. I was a sitting duck, exposed on all sides. They slashed me with their fangs and battered me with their wings. My left wing hung broken and useless. The air rushed past me. I hurtled toward the ground, but they never gave me a chance to correct.
The woods rushed at me in a dark tide of destruction. I made one last desperate effort to get my wings working when Everett rocketed in a dangerous arc. He hit me going a mile a minute and sent me tumbling head over heel. My one good wing slapped over my head. Pain and terror sizzled my insides, and the first branches tore across my chest.
The next thing I knew, I smashed through the canopy and slammed full speed into the ground. Twigs, needles, and foliage drifted around my head, and my guts contracted against the pain. My brain went into a tailspin, and I rolled over on my hands and knees struggling to stay conscious.
When I blinked the confusion out of my mind, I looked around through human eyes. I wasn’t a dragon anymore, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to shift. My ribs hurt, and I tasted blood on my lips.
I tried to stand up, but my right leg wouldn’t obey me. A shape fluttered to the ground, and an enormous green dragon flapped its wings at me. It hooked its head around, and shining red eyes studied me out of the shadows.
I hugged my arm against my middle and made another futile effort to get on my feet. I couldn’t go down like this. A dragon couldn’t let his enemies mow him down without a fight. I couldn’t face the indignity if my Pop and my brothers found out.
Another dragon landed next to the first one. One after another, the Lynches came to rest in a ring around me. They growled low in their chests, and sulfury smoke billowed from their nostrils. They strutted back and forth, and their arrow heads bobbed on their serpentine necks.
I staggered onto my good leg, but I wasn’t going anywhere. If they wanted to torch me, at least I would face it like a man. I hurt too much to care anymore. The red dragon broke through the circle and halted in front of me. I stared Everett down. He might not give two craps about the agreement, but then again, the Lynches never kept their word about anything. They made an agreement, broke it, and made another one that meant nothing to them.
A cold sweat broke out under my shirt. The leg on which I rested my weight trembled. I couldn’t hold myself up much longer. I squared my shoulders at Everett and drew in as deep a breath as I could manage with my broken rib tormenting me. “Go on! Do it!” I screeched. “What are you waiting for?”
At that moment, a devastating plume of fire lit up the night. In the gold-orange light, I beheld ten enormous dragons in a towering ring around the Lynches.
The flame hit Everett between the shoulder blades. He whipped around, but the massive black creature that attacked him kept up the barrage. It spouted a torrential inferno into his face until he stumbled back. He lost his balance and would have landed right on top of me, but a bright green monster darted forward and plucked me out of harm’s way at the last second.
All the Lynches wheeled around at once, and their enemies unleashed hellfire at the same instant. They unloaded all their flame on the Lynches until the weasels fled shrieking into the air.
The green dragon set me on the ground, but I couldn’t support myself any longer. I collapsed, groaning. I writhed in agony onto my back, and my hair plastered to the sweat on my face. I went into a pain-induced trance staring up at the Milky Way.
The big green monster appeared in my line of sight. His spiky head cut off my view of the stars. While I watched, he shrank to his normal shape. His hair waved forward to shade his face. “You were right, man.”
“I…. I tried,” I stammered. “I tried to get away from them.”
“You did good, kid,” Ezra murmured. “Just sit tight, and we’ll get you home. You’re one hell of a mess.”
My Pop appeared on my other side. He laid his hand on my shoulder, but that only made my chest hurt worse. “Good job, son. You saved the agreement.”
“There is no agreement,” Ezra snarled. “They attacked him on the streets of Norton in plain view.”
Pop nodded. “That’s for another day, son. Just keep it together, Kylen. We’re going to take you home.”
I swallowed hard. “Pop?”
“Yeah, son?”
“I…. I can’t keep my eyes open.” I tried one more time to drag my eyelids up, but I felt myself sinking beneath an inextricable sea of sticky black tar. “I…. I can’t….”
“That’s all right, son,” Pop told me. “You go on and go to sleep. That’s the best thing for you right now.”
I made one more valiant effort to stay awake. I heard Ezra say to Pop, “We can’t let them get away with this. They’ll be on our front doorstep next.”
“I know that son,” Pop murmured. “Do you really think I want to let them get away with breaking my son’s wing?”
“I’m ready to break somebody,” Ezra snarled.
“Easy, son,” Pop replied. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. Don’t you worry. We’ll pay them back for this.”
Liam’s voice broke in on my thoughts. “They headed north, Pop. I followed them as far as the state line. I didn’t think you wanted me going farther than that, but it looked like they were headed for the Razorbacks.”
“Get the boys rounded up,” Pop told him. “Get everyone back to the Ridge, and get Kylen loaded into the Jeep. We’re getting out of here.”
5
Hannah
I woke up bright and early Monday morning, even though I didn’t go to bed until nearly four the night before. I wanted to be ready when Kylen came to pick me up for our hike date.
I took a shower, washed my hair, and took extra care getting dressed, but I didn’t want to look too put together. After all, we were going on a hike. He struck me as the outdoorsy type, too. He didn’t come right out and say so, but if we hoped to have a chance together, he better enjoy the outdoors.
What was I doing, thinking about a chance together with him? I barely knew the guy. Then again
, this was a date. He said so himself. In the end, I settled for clean jeans, one of my nicer shirts, and a knitted sweater to cover it all. My old hiking boots couldn’t be more appropriate.
I laced them up and had nothing else to do for an hour before eleven o’clock. I paced around the room and cracked my knuckles. Whether I just met him or not, I really hoped something did work out between us. I couldn’t wait to see him again.
He sat in the bar for a whole shift to make me feel safe around the Lynches. Then, when they came up to me on the street for the second time, he protected me until I got inside. I didn’t see or hear anything after that, but he must have done something to make them back off.
He told me not to look through the curtains, but the suspense proved to be too much for me. I looked, but I didn’t see anything. The streets were empty by that point. I looked three more times after that, but Norton remained quiet for the rest of the night. What did Kylen do? How could one guy make such an impression on the Lynches? I couldn’t figure it out.
Neither the Lynches nor the Kelly’s came back to the bar after that fateful confrontation. I kept watch for Kylen. My heart jumped every time someone walked into the bar, but he never came back. I sure hoped he wasn’t mad at me about something or that he’d lost interest.
I thought about going to look for him, but in the end, I always discarded that notion. For one thing, I couldn’t afford gas yet. For another, stalking him and tracking him down would be too pathetic and childish even for me. He knew where I was. He would come around when he wanted to see me again.
He just kept on not coming, though. By Monday, I wondered if he’d forgotten all about our date. What if he didn’t show up? What if I sat here in my stupid hiking boots waiting for a guy who had a thousand other girls all dangling from his puppet strings?
Just then, I heard a strange thumping noise on the stairs. I peeked through the curtains to see Kylen’s head bobbing up the steps, but he didn’t just walk up them like a normal person. He planted his hands on the railings and hitched himself up one laborious inch at a time.
I jerked the door open long before he got to the top. I gaped at him hauling himself up on crutches. A cast enclosed his right leg up to the knee. Cuts and bruises disfigured his face, and he winced in pain every time he hopped onto the next step. “Kylen!” I cried. “What happened?”
He shrugged and positioned his crutches under his armpits. He shook the hair out of his eyes. “I had an accident. Are you ready to go on our hike?”
I scanned him up and down. He wore jeans and a nice shirt, but only one boot. His toes showed from the end of the cast. “It doesn’t look like you’re going hiking anytime soon.”
“What? This? I wouldn’t let this stand in the way of our date. I can see you’re ready, so come on.”
I didn’t move. “I’m not going on a hike with you.”
He spun around, and a hurt expression darkened his features. “Why not?”
My jaw dropped. “Kylen! You’re on crutches. You’re not going on any hike.”
He frowned. “We have a date, don’t we? You said you wanted to go on a hike. I wouldn’t miss our date over a little mishap like this. Come on…. unless you changed your mind.”
“I didn’t change my mind.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
Before I could protest, he started the painful process of hitching his battered body back down the stairs. He laid his crutches on the next step down, braced his arms on the railings, and vaulted down one foot at a time.
He got almost to the bottom before I snapped out of my shock. He really wanted to do this. He wanted to go on our date, no matter what. He didn’t care if he was mangled half to death, so why should I?
I hustled down the stairs and met him at the bottom. He had to keep shaking his hair out of his eyes. Other than that, he acted like nothing could be more natural than crutching his way down the street. He smiled at me like he went on crutch dates all the time.
He swung himself down the street toward the grocery store where the highway cut out of town. He veered behind the building and found a small trail curving into the trees. Before I could stop him, he crutched his way onto it and set off into the woods. He would have left me behind if I didn’t follow him.
What followed will go down in history as the strangest hike I ever went on in my life. Kylen crutched his way down the path. He crutched his way over streams. When he came to an obstacle he couldn’t crutch around, he hopped over it. When fallen tree trunks blocked his way, he sat on them, put his crutches over first, and then heaved his cast over.
I had to stop and wait for him more than once. The hike—if you could call it that—took a lot longer than it should have, but I couldn’t help admiring his determination. He never let a broken leg stop him. He smiled and kept a good attitude through the whole trip, even when he puffed and panted and his injuries caused him obvious pain.
Once, when he crossed a fallen trunk, he dropped one of his crutches. He bent over to pick it up, and I saw tape surrounding his ribs up to his armpits. He flinched more than once when he took a deep breath. He must have broken a few ribs in that accident of his.
After several hours, he emerged onto a high ridgetop overlooking hundreds of miles of Appalachian wilderness. The sun blazed overhead. The whole landscape sparkled and vibrated life and possibility.
Kylen crutched his way to a pinnacle of rock that ended in a sheer drop to a bottomless valley. He flung himself down and laid aside his crutches. “Phew! That was an ordeal. Oh, look! Here’s our lunch.”
He pulled a picnic basket out from under the ledge. He opened it and handed me a sandwich. I blinked down at it. “Did you do this…for me?”
“Well, it was my Ma that did it. When I told her about my date and how I planned to carry the picnic in a backpack, she agreed to put this here for us. I hope you like it. It’s home-cured ham.”
I took a bite and munched it, but I couldn’t enjoy the view, not even knowing how hard he worked to make this happen for me. “Tell me something.”
“Sure. Anything.”
“How did you break your leg—I mean, really?” I asked. “What happened?”
He made a face and turned away. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want anything to spoil our date.”
“Not knowing is spoiling it. Please tell me. I won’t think any less of you.”
“I’m not worried about you thinking less of me,” he replied. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Me!” My head shot up. “Why would you worry about me?”
“I don’t want to scare you.”
I straightened up. “You better tell me. You better tell me right now.”
“Fine. If that’s the way you want it, I’ll tell you.” He put the basket aside. “The Lynches attacked me. They beat me up. They would have killed me, but my brothers stepped in and stopped it.”
I stared down into his eyes. “Your brothers…against the Lynches? Come on.”
“Okay. It was my brothers, and my cousins, and my Pop, and a few of my uncles.”
“Did this happen the other night, the night you walked me home?” I asked. “Is that when it happened?”
He looked away out over the countryside. “Yeah.”
I took another bite of my sandwich. Now I saw the whole scene in startling detail. After I went inside, after I locked myself in my nice safe room, the Lynches beat him within an inch of his life. His relatives saved him, and I never knew about it.
I wished like anything I had been there. I wished I had taken a baseball bat to Everett Lynch’s head to stop him beating up Kylen, but I wasn’t there. I was safe in my room. Why? Because Kylen insisted I go there before the violence started.
From start to finish, he protected me. He sat here broken and battered and scarred because of me. He made absolutely certain I was safe before the Lynches laid a finger on him.
“I didn’t want you to know,” he breathed. “I wanted you to enjoy our date with
out that hanging over your head.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, I know now. I appreciate you telling me.”
He spun around to stare at me. “You do?”
“Yes, and thank you for doing what you did. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to protect me since I first got here.”
He arched his eyebrow like he wanted to say more, but he only looked away. “It was nothing. You deserve better than to have those morons hounding you.”
“Why do they hate you so much?” I asked. “Why do the Lynches hate the Kelly’s so much that they would do this?”
“The two Clans have been at war for generations. It doesn’t have anything to do with you or me. The Lynches and the Kelly’s will always be enemies. We hammered out an agreement with them, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s only a matter of time before they break it. We can do our damnedest to uphold it. They’ll throw it out, and the Clans will go to war. They always do.”
I took another bite of my sandwich thinking that over. “You didn’t have to do this, you know. You didn’t have to drag your sorry carcass all the way up here just to impress me.”
He whipped around and a crooked grin split across his face. “I would do a lot more than that to impress you. Besides, I asked you out on a date. I wasn’t going to flake out on that. No way!”
I had to smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re going to meet some interesting characters in this neck of the woods, girl,” he went on. “If you spend any amount of time in this part of the world, you’re going to come to find out no Kelly ever went back on his word. When the Kelly’s say they’re going to do something, they do it. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
I leaned against his shoulder. Part of me told me not to. After all, he was injured and everything. Besides, he was a strange guy and we were dozens of miles from civilization. On the other hand, I never felt this close to anyone before. No one ever went to such lengths for my sake. It boggled my mind. “Thanks.”
He chuckled. “You bet. How’s the sandwich?”
