by Amelia Jade
Beside her, Zeke slowed. When she didn’t, his hand shot out and took hers, keeping her close to him.
“What?” she asked in exasperation. “They’re here, and now you have a problem?”
But his attention was focused on the four people arrayed in front of them.
“Those aren’t Guardians,” he said in a low voice.
“We’ll take it from here, dragon,” one of them, the leader she supposed, said.
Amber couldn’t help but notice the way he managed to make the word dragon sound derogatory. As if to be one was an insult.
“Am I to believe all four of you somehow managed to become Guardians?” Zeke scoffed.
The tension between the two groups escalated rapidly, and Amber quickly found herself feeling like she was caught in the middle of a warzone.
“Just hand over the human, and everything will be fine.”
Though the leader didn’t say it, everyone heard the unspoken “and nobody will get hurt.”
“What do you want with her?” Zeke asked.
She looked at him. He was stalling. Why was he stalling?
“That’s none of your business. Just give her over.”
“No,” Zeke said calmly. “I don’t think I’ll be doing that. Not without a Guardian present.”
The speaker snarled. “You leave us no choice then.”
“You act like there was a choice from the beginning. You knew I wouldn’t hand her over to you. If I do that, she disappears forever. Though I must admit, I have no idea why. But lately you gryphons have been acting like a bunch of weird old birds. I wouldn’t trust my pet rock with you four, let alone her.”
His grip tightened on her arm, pulling Amber behind him as the four attackers spread out.
Amber was overwhelmed. Why was she being attacked? Who were these people? How did they know she was going to be here?
Her heart nearly stopped as without warning the fight began. The first attacker rushed Zeke. It became immediately clear that while Zeke had some rudimentary training, his attacker had none.
It also became clear that Zeke was far stronger than he looked. She gasped as he exploited an opening, driving a fist into his foe’s sternum. The man seemed to deflate slightly as the air whuffed from his stomach and he flew through the air, crashing hard into the bottom of the staircase. Stone chipped and she saw blood flowing down the attacker’s face as he rolled slightly in place.
Zeke grunted as he took a jab to the side as two more came in quick, but he replied with an elbow to one man’s head and a snap-kick that hit him squarely in the side, eliciting a cry of pain from his foe.
The fourth and final attacker came for her, but Zeke was ready for that, and he bodily tossed one of his attackers at the oncoming man. The pair went tumbling away and she moved to keep Zeke between her and them as best she could.
The move to save her opened Zeke up to a vicious blow to the back, however, and he grunted, going down to one knee. His attacker smiled victoriously. Then Zeke moved, and the look changed quickly to one of surprise as Zeke took the man’s legs out from under him. He reached up as the man was falling, gripped his shirt, and used his strength to assist in the force of the fall.
The man’s head hit the ground, bounced up, and was quickly snapped back by Zeke’s other fist. She thought the blow would have killed the man, but he grunted in pain and kicked out at Zeke, obviously more capable of absorbing pain than she thought, though the blow was definitely sluggish.
A flying tackle from the first attacker took Zeke in the waist and he went down, rolling over. She saw his hands wrap around the man’s arm. Zeke then planted his feet, leg muscles bunching as they stopped his motion, and then he reversed his motion.
The attacker’s arm snapped like a twig and Zeke let go, already spinning to meet the next attack, which came in the form of a fist to his jaw. Zeke wobbled slightly on his feet and she felt fear, but he too recovered quickly. A flurry of punches and his opponent went down. Zeke kicked him hard, and the body flew ten feet across the grass, landing in a heap.
“What do I do, Zeke?” she asked during the brief lull in fighting. “How can I help?”
“Just stay away from them,” he grunted. “Let me handle it.”
“Are you sure?”
Zeke had a grimace on his face, a cut above one eye, and looked to be limping. “Yes. I’m fine,” he said.
Three of them charged him at once.
“Shit.”
She cried out, worried for him.
The fourth attacker laughed maniacally in victory.
A bolt of lightning struck him in the chest, blasting him backward until he hit the low-lying stone wall that surrounded the entire building with enough force to leave an impact mark.
Zeke, taking advantage of their sudden confusion, grabbed one of his attackers and hurled him as far into the sky as he could.
The man pinwheeled up until he reached his apex, where he hung there for just a split second.
In that brief moment a blast of white Frostfire slammed into his torso and tossed him out past where she could see.
The other two attackers saw the fate of their friends and they bolted, disappearing into the night. Zeke made to pursue one of them, but she reached out and grabbed his arm.
“No, you’re not leaving me,” she said, holding him still.
Amber knew if he truly wanted, it would be child’s play for him to break her hold on him and pursue them, but she was banking on something else. On his willingness to protect her.
Zeke slammed to a halt and looked up at her. “That’s not fair.”
She arched an eyebrow immediately. “Really? It’s not fair? You want to go gallivanting off after those two yahoos. Maybe they’re just a distraction, and someone will circle back to get me.”
Zeke’s head fell in defeat. “Okay, okay.”
She could tell he wasn’t overly distraught by the fact. “Zeke,” she said gently anyway, “That’s twice in half a day that my life has been threatened. But it’s the first time someone has stuck up for me. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t leave me just now.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Something powerful. She felt a momentary connection with him, like all of a sudden they had been tied together. It was so faint, so quick, that she could have easily dreamt it. But something told her that it had been real.
The only question was, what was it? What had gone through his mind just then? Amber contemplated asking him, but before she could, the other two dragons landed next to them.
“Sorry we’re late, Zeke. Everything okay?”
He pulled her tight to his side, arm draped over her shoulder as he half-leaned on her. “Oh yeah. I handled the first dozen. I’m glad you showed up. I was getting bored of keeping those last four on a line so the pair of you could feel like you helped.”
Amber watched in awe as the Frost Dragon snorted, and then stepped to the middle of the stone circle. A white fog swirled up and around him, obscuring the giant creature from view. It grew thicker and she felt a wave of cold chill the air. Then a shower of hail burst out and the fog abruptly shrunk in size. Just like with Zeke, as the man—Asher, was his name—emerged, a wave of frost rolled across the circle, covering it in a layer several inches thick.
He moved off the circle and the Blue Dragon took its place, giant paws leaving tracks in the frost, which it snorted at with disdain. Amber wanted to watch it change as well, but Asher moved between her and the circle at the same time Zeke tugged her after him.
“Come on, time to get you inside.”
She resisted, but the other dragons ushered her ahead. Of course they didn’t care, she thought. They’d probably seen this a thousand times. For her though, it was like magic come true.
“Okay, but can you explain to me just what the hell is going on here? Why did those men come after me?”
“Those weren’t men,” Asher rumbled.
Zeke stood a little straighter, having recovered some of his stre
ngth. “No,” he said, joining the conversation. “They were gryphons.”
“What? Why would they attack then? I thought you all lived here peaceably with one another.”
Zeke laughed once, a bitter sound. “If only it were that easy.”
She shrugged. “You’re going to have to explain better than that.”
They ascended the stairs quietly as Zeke and Asher exchanged a glance.
“Generally, everything is peaceful,” Zeke said, holding the door open for her, and then following her in, cutting Asher off in the process.
“Jerk,” Asher muttered under his breath as Zeke laughed.
“But?” she prompted, interrupting them.
“But not always. And that goes more often when it comes to dragons and gryphons. They resent the fact that we’re lords of the sky, and they do whatever they can to remind us that we’re not invincible. Normally they aren’t quite so…forward,” he said, frowning. “But it’s far from the first time they’ve tried something.”
Two tall, thickly muscled men appeared in the lobby they were now standing in. Amber tensed, but Zeke waved at them.
“Hey Tobias, what the hell, man? Where were you guys? A bunch of gryphon punks jumped me as I arrived.”
The big man looked apologetic. “Really sorry, Zeke. There was a commotion outside which had our attention. Everyone okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. Where is Amber staying for the night, what’s left of it at least?”
“Amber?” Tobias looked over at her. “Oh, sorry. A name was never given to me. Just down this way. We’re going to keep you here overnight,” he said jovially as he escorted her down the hallway, the two dragons trailing behind—the Blue Dragon, she forgot his name, had stayed outside.
“Are you staying here too?” she asked Zeke, looking at him nervously.
The Fire Dragon shifter looked away. “No,” he said unhappily. “I’m sorry, but I must report back. Tobias here is one of Cadia’s best Guardians. With him and the others stationed here, you will be safe.”
He tugged on her arm so she looked over at him.
“I promise,” he said solemnly.
“Will I see you again?” she asked nervously.
Despite only knowing him for a few hours, Amber felt a shiver of fear at the likely answer to that question. That realization surprised her. Why should she feel so devastated at the prospect of never seeing Zeke again? Wasn’t her goal to just get back home, where she could put this whole ordeal behind her?
Perhaps. But back in Cloud Lake, and the other places she’d lived before moving there, she’d not met many men like Zeke. Someone who would throw themselves into harm’s way for someone they didn’t know. He had appeared from the sky, and in a matter of minutes, had somehow won her trust, all while appearing to her only as a talking dragon.
Who the hell does that?
No, there was something special about Zeke. She wasn’t blind. And it wasn’t just his lovely good looks either.
Amber found herself genuinely wishing to spend more time in his company.
“I’ll try,” he said. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”
It was an honest answer. Not the one she wanted to hear, but not worse than a flat-out no. She never doubted that when he said he would try, he meant it. Zeke was an honorable man, which is not something she would have expected from a shifter.
I need to seriously reevaluate what I know about shifters. So much of it is just plain old wrong, or worse, brainwashing by the media.
“This way please, miss,” the tall shifter said, showing her to the room she would live in for the night.
Amber looked around. It was nice, with an actual bed, chair, desk and a curtained-off washroom. But there were bars on the window, concrete walls, and a thick steel security door. It was a cell. A fancy one, but a cell nonetheless.
She sighed. This whole situation was screwed up six ways from Sunday. Some sleep and then a return to her life couldn’t come soon enough.
But what about Zeke?
The thought echoed in her head as the man in question took her hand and gave it a squeeze. His eyes met hers, and she found herself entranced by the slight flecks of ocher that seemed to dot his mostly brown orbs. It was mesmerizing the way the traces of color bounced around slightly as his gaze shifted to stay locked with hers.
Amber couldn’t help it. She smiled, feeling her face flush slightly with warmth, hoping that the others wouldn’t notice. Zeke, she was sure, spotted it right away. He flashed her that boyish grin, and she almost melted on the spot. The slight dimples visible through his short stubbly beard were too much to handle.
“I need to go,” he said, giving her hand one last squeeze.
She held on for as long as she could, but at last it was time for Zeke to go, and she watched him disappear as the door closed.
The moment he was out of sight, her energy levels came crashing down.
Amber barely made it to the bed before sleep took her, the adrenaline having faded from her system at last.
Chapter Four
Zeke
While Amber slept in what he hoped was peace and security, despite being alone, Zeke fell into a fitful sleep shortly after arriving back at the Academy. In it, Amber was running from something. A shadowy shape, unresolved in the mists of his dreamland. But it kept getting closer, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t do anything about it. It swooped down and snatched her up, taking her off and away from him.
Away.
Alone.
Gone.
Forever.
He awoke with a start as the last word crashed through his conscious.
“Come on Zeke, get out of bed, otherwise you’re eating alone! This is taking forever. Dom is already gone!” Asher was standing in his doorway, fist resting on the frame that he’d been hammering on.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he mumbled, pulling himself from bed, trying to shake off the last vestiges of sleep from his addled brain. The few hours they’d gotten since coming back just wasn’t enough.
He’d been having a nightmare. Zeke couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one of those. Probably not since he was a kid, a teenager really, coming to terms with the fact that another being had set up residence in his head. That was a tumultuous time for any child, but for a shifter, it was double unnerving. Nightmares had been a near-constant then.
Shaking it off, he got dressed and headed down to make some breakfast with the others. The trio of Top Scale cadets normally ate together in the mornings, unless one of them felt the need for some extra training and got up early. These days though, their days were rather full, so they didn’t do that too much.
“Any ideas what we’re doing today?” he asked with a yawn as he sat down to eat, his plate piled high with eggs and bacon, along with some slabs of toast coated in melted butter.
Flying took a lot of calories.
“Rumor has it,” Dom said, wiggling a stick of bacon at him, “is that we’re going to do some aerial combat today.”
“You’re shitting me!” Zeke exclaimed, slamming a hand down on the table, suddenly awake. “Really? That would be amazing!”
“How do you know that?” Asher asked, looking curiously at Dom. “Neither of us heard a thing.”
Dom shrugged. “I heard Rhynne talking to Zander about it, is all.”
“You heard Rhynne doing what?” asked a new, female voice.
The cadets all spun as Rhynne Nova, one of the instructors at Top Scale, stepped through the doorway.
“Um, nothing, Instructor,” Dom replied as she walked by.
“It had better have been nothing,” she said, her voice more bark than bite. She began to move about in the kitchen, leaving the rest of them be.
Asher and Zeke swiveled back to look at each other, eager to discuss what they hoped to work on most, but Dom was still looking over at Rhynne.
“Hey, earth to Dom, she’s not going to tear your head off,” he said, low enough that it wouldn’
t carry over both the distance and the noise of her whisking her eggs in a bowl.
“Right,” he said. “I know. Sorry guys. Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to get the hang of it.”
Zeke rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I hope we learn dive bombing!”
“Me too. Or ways to get out of a corkscrew,” Asher said.
Zeke shuddered at the idea of a corkscrew. It was the worst-case scenario, where two winged shifters became locked together and fell from the sky. Recovering from one was hard, and many times both parties fell to their deaths. He did not relish the pain that would likely come from learning how to deal with them.
Still, the moves were critical if he wished to graduate. To become a Guardian. There weren’t many others who would even dare to perform such a maneuver. Most of the winged species of shifter were awkward, bumbling fools who could barely get aloft in their animal forms.
If they could still even do that. A shifter, despite being granted with a dragon, or gryphon, or even a Pegasus inside them, was not born with the innate skill and talents of their more primitive cousins, the birds. They didn’t begin to learn how to fly until they were well into their teens. This meant developing not only the muscles, but the air sense necessary to become a lord of the sky.
For most of them, that opportunity never came. Zeke had been lucky that at some point, one of the Guardians had spotted him trying to become better, and that had somehow translated into him earning a place in the prestigious Top Scale Academy. Him and two other cadets. The only class currently ongoing, and the first one to be run in over half a decade. It was a great honor.
Otherwise, he would have been stuck working as a line worker for Cadia Power, or some other job, like most of the shifters. There was, in his mind, nothing wrong with such a life. But for Zeke, it had just never been enough. He’d always wanted more, to do something, to make a difference.
He could do that as a Guardian.
His mind strayed to the night before. To Amber. He couldn’t get that shy smile at the end of the night out of his head. He kept replaying that memory over and over again, until it was etched into his brain.
***
“Hawthorn!”
