by Amelia Jade
They were at his place.
“What about the dragon?” he asked as Cassi fumbled with the lock.
His strength and senses were returning to him as his dragon powers took over. Blaine reached inside of himself and tapped into the wellspring of power that was there, letting a bit of his dragon infuse his body.
The world snapped into focus as energy coursed through his veins, blasting pain and exhaustion from him in a hurry. Muscles twitched with barely constrained fury as he stood on his feet, pulling her into a quick embrace, his lips covering hers.
One of the side effects of channeling his dragon this way was that other parts of it came with him. Blaine had to fight the urge to take Cassi right then and there. It was a close battle.
“I think the dragon flew off,” she said through a little smile as he finally pulled away from her.
“It did that last time too, didn’t—”
Blaine never finished his sentence.
A brilliant blue-white fireball slammed into the house from almost directly above. The resulting explosion blasted the pair of them across the street.
With his muscles enhanced by his dragon beyond the norm, Blaine reached out mid-air and pulled Cassi to him. He rebounded off the building on the other side of the street, air rushing from his lungs as Cassi impacted on top of him, instead of hitting elsewhere.
Blaine fell to his knees as the dragon swooped down and tried to hit them with another cone of fire, but it was moving too fast, and was forced to pull up instead. A wave of heat rushed over him, igniting nothing but his fury.
He was done with this.
Nobody attacked him, his home, and the woman he loved. Not if they expected to get away with it.
Rising to his feet, Blaine strode out into the middle of the street. His hand came up from his side, pulling with it a cloud of fumes that simply appeared. By the time his hand circled his head he was fully enveloped in the fumes, a growing orb of green that darkened as it grew.
Moments later it burst apart, scattered by his wings as a giant jade dragon rose into the sky in pursuit of his attacker.
Blood was in his eyes just then, all the pain and hurt forgotten. Sharp yellow eyes pierced the gloom of the storm, easily picking out the attacker as the Fire Dragon went for high ground. His green dragon raced after it, closing ground quickly.
There was a reason Blaine was one of the most feared dragons on the continent, and it was past time that he showed his attacker just why that was.
He roared a challenge as lightning flashed and thunder cracked overhead, the shockwave reaching out to buffet him slightly. Blaine ignored it, the huge membranes of his wings simply flexing harder to power him through the driving rain and swirling winds.
He was the predator, and his sights were locked on the prey.
The distance was shrinking rapidly, and Blaine began to go on the offensive.
A condensed bolt of fumes shot from his mouth, exploding into a six-foot sphere of toxic gas that caressed the Fire Dragon’s side, making scales wither even as it sunk into the nerve endings under them. The red dragon screamed in agony and tried to retaliate, but now that Blaine was in his element, the ball of fire came slowly to his mind. He easily dodged it and fired off another bolt that exploded just in front of the red dragon, but this time his foe evaded.
Growling angrily, Blaine launched a trio of bolts in rapid succession. The red dragon evaded one, then a second, but the third one caught his front leg. More scales fell off, dead, and his front right leg hung uselessly. Another hit, but not enough to force his opponent from the sky.
Despite the flashes of lightning and the constant crack and rumble of thunder, the battle was fought in silence, punctuated only by grunts and shouts of pain as the pair swirled around each other, trying to get in the killing blow.
Scorched and singed, Blaine had to give whoever his foe was newfound respect. They were tough, and bringing them down wasn’t going to be easy.
Shit!
The red dragon did something unexpected as Blaine closed in to launch yet another blast of his breath weapon.
It folded its wings in and let itself fall headfirst from the sky. The maneuver took him out of Blaine’s sights and allowed the red dragon to blast him full across the underbelly with his Dragonfire.
The green dragon roared in pain as scales melted, cracking as they popped free and fell to the ground below in a shower of red as blood erupted from the wound.
Blaine gave chase, but the blow had been significant. He pulled his wings in tight and fell from the sky like a stone in pursuit. Although red dragons were the largest on average, Blaine was bigger than most, and that included his opponent. He fell faster, closing the gap until he could unleash his own breath weapon.
But again the dragon defied him, and even as a spiraled helix of green fumes shot out, the red dragon flicked out a wing, dragging itself to the left, while simultaneously rolling.
Blaine was dead. The move put his torso squarely in the Fire Dragon’s sights, and he saw the inferno bellow out from its mouth, directed at him. He steeled himself for the pain that was to come, knowing it would be the last thing he ever felt, but—
It never reached him.
A stream of ice so cold it was gray instead of white slammed into the Fire Dragon from the side. The thick stream reached out and battered the red dragon, sending its attack wide of Blaine, who was already stretching his wings out, arresting his own fall.
He sent a blast of fumes straight down the now-exposed throat of his enemy, even as more ice shot forth as Cassi swooped by overhead, her attack freezing the other dragon’s wings. A quick flex broke the ice sheath, but the damage was done as the huge beast swirled from the sky uncontrollably.
It impacted squarely in the flaming wreckage of Blaine’s house, sending debris flying. Observers who had come out when his house exploded ducked for cover as the area nearby suddenly became hazardous without warning.
Blaine circled around and came in for a much gentler landing, though he winced and hissed at the pain in his chest. That had been a good blow. Whoever his foe was, he was experienced. That last maneuver was a bold play to end the fight. If his enemy had waited a split second later before executing it, Blaine would have been close enough to take him, and it would have been game over much earlier.
“Show yourself,” he rumbled, his dragon form moving close to the fallen Red.
A beam of wood was driven up through the side of the dragon, who lay there in pain, looking up at him, defeated.
“Show yourself!” he said again, more forcefully this time as Cassi moved up on the other side, her large white Frost Dragon adding even more of a threat to his command.
The red dragon spoke at last.
“Remove this pole for me, and I shall.”
Blaine looked over at Cassi. “If he tries anything funny, blast him out of existence,” he said, using the proper pronoun now that they knew their foe was a male.
“With pleasure,” she said, but there was something off about her voice.
“What is it?” Blaine asked.
“I think I know who it is,” she replied, sounding stunned. “But let’s get him changed first, so he won’t be a harm to anyone.”
Blaine looked at her, but did his best imitation of a shrug and reached forward with his mouth and ripped the beam free, not caring about any further pain it inflicted.
The Fire Dragon grunted in pain, but almost instantly flames swept up and around the fallen form, obscuring it from them as he changed. A moment later they dissipated in a wave of fire, which was quickly snuffed out by Cassi’s carefully directed Frost Fire.
At the middle of it lay the culprit behind the attacks.
“Taurin,” Cassi said vehemently. “I should have known.”
“This wouldn’t have been necessary if you had simply done as you were asked.”
“Can I blast him?” she asked, turning over to look at Blaine.
He pretended to look thoughtful, b
ut shook his head. “No. He needs to explain why he was attacking you in the first place.”
Cassi shook her large head. “No, I think I understand now.”
Blaine looked at her curiously, inviting her to explain.
“I wondered all along why he came with us. Someone of his station wasn’t necessary to come along to oversee the trial, yet he fought for the right to do so. A little too strongly if you ask me. But it wasn’t until he started attacking me that I understood the why.”
Blaine looked at her blankly. He wasn’t following.
“War,” she said simply.
“War?” he echoed.
“Taurin here wanted to start a war between Cadia and Fenris. Or at least, have both places at each other’s throats. By killing me and making it look like someone from Cadia did it, he had the perfect setup. All he had to do then was wait for things to get heated, then swoop in and act as the peacemaker.”
Blaine nodded thoughtfully.
“That would give him the power necessary to take over back home. He would use the fact that they were willing to go to war as a reason to oust the current government and replace it with himself and his cronies,” Cassi continued in a rush, as if the facts were all lining up as she spoke. “It’s actually not a half bad plan, except he couldn’t succeed in killing me, which was kind of a major flaw in it.”
“A flaw which I’m rather glad exists.”
“You and me both,” Cassi said with a laugh. “So what do we do with him?”
“Turn him over to the Guardians,” Blaine said as two shapes swooped in from above.
Nearby a pair of big grizzly bears appeared and shifted, striding forward, both of them wearing the badges indicating they were Guardians.
“He’s their problem now, not ours.”
Cassi looked around the remnants of his house in the city as Taurin was carted away, too weak to fight his captors.
“So, um. Where do we go?” she asked.
“I have a place outside the city. I think you might like it there,” he said with a smile. “I think I’ve got enough left to make it there.”
Cassi came closer to him, her long neck bending so she could look at the huge wound on his lower chest and torso. “Are you sure? This looks pretty bad.”
He lowered his head to nuzzle it against hers. “I’m positive.”
Cassi hesitated at the contact.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “We need to talk, yes. But I don’t hate you.”
Her snout split apart in an approximation of a smile, long teeth bared and gleaming in the night. “Good.”
“Now let’s get going,” he said, launching himself into the air once more. “I’ll deal with this wreck tomorrow.”
Together, wingtip to wingtip, they soared out of the city, Cassi keeping a watchful eye over him, just in case.
Chapter Sixteen
Cassian
She reached up and slid her fingers over the hard yet supple jade-green object now attached to her chest.
Across from her she felt Blaine’s joy match her own.
The scale, slightly smaller than her fist, had come from the very tip of his tail. He’d ripped it off and pressed it to her skin, allowing it to bond there, just as she’d done with one of her own white. The once-rigid pieces of their dragon skin now flexed and moved with her human skin, yet remained as hard and impermeable at the same time. It was weird, and Cassi wasn’t sure just how long it would take her to get used to it being there.
One thing she was already getting used to, however, was the sensation of Blaine’s emotions being conveyed to her through it. She couldn’t read his thoughts, but she knew instantly if he was happy, like he was now, or mad, like he’d been when several politicians had chewed him out earlier.
“You know I don’t care about that,” he said aloud, her scale transmitting her emotions as well.
“How the hell did you know that’s what I was thinking?” she asked.
“A surge of protectiveness in regard to me. I felt the same thing when I first told you what they said,” he told her, getting close to kiss her. Once. Twice. Three times. Four.
“Okay,” she said, pulling back slightly with a smile. “But they still had no right to get mad at you for something that wasn’t your decision to make.”
Blaine shrugged. “They know we’re together. They assume that I came up with the idea.”
“Well, I’d be interested to know what they said to the jury members then,” she snorted. “After all, they were the ones that voted on and approved his reduced sentence in exchange for Garviel’s guilty plea.”
He nodded. “Or Rhynne, when she argued on his side after talking to him. That must have come as a shock.” A frown creased his face. “I wonder if she’ll face any repercussions for that.”
She felt his anger stir, and decided she would silence it the best way she knew how.
“Hey, what are you—? Oh.”
His voice died out as she slipped to her knees in front of the couch they were lounging on in his quarters at the Academy, hands already undoing his belt.
“Better?” she told him as his pants fell away, exposing his rapidly hardening cock to her hungry eyes.
Well, perhaps it wasn’t just her eyes that were hungry she thought, looking up at Blaine with a wicked grin.
“What are you…?”
“Blaine,” she said, stroking him gently.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Shut up.” She licked her lips and opened them, her tongue flicking out.
He didn’t say a word.
THE END
This concludes Book 5 of the Top Scale Academy Series. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Keep turning the page for Aurum Dragon – Book #6!
Aurum Dragon
Prologue
It always started the same.
First there came the fire. Red-orange flames appeared out of nowhere, surrounding them. They raced across the wooden floor, the dry wood going up like tinder as the tongues of fire lapped at the walls, window curtains adding further fuel to the rampaging monster that suddenly engulfed their home.
“I’m scared, Dax,” Kyra said, her fingers firmly entwined through his own as they climbed from bed, staring in shock at their picturesque little world falling apart around them.
“It’ll be okay,” he lied.
It was never okay. It always happened the same way each time. The quaint little house he’d built for the two of them, thatched roof and all, was burning to cinders around them. Smoke filled the rooms, making it hard to breathe for Kyra.
Dax never had any troubles breathing. He was a dragon shifter. Fire was part of his element. But it would kill her just as fast as the flames if he didn’t do anything.
What could he do though? There was never any time. Because as soon as he decided to make a move…
“Through the window, let’s go,” he heard himself say for the ten-thousandth time.
Kyra, eager to be away from the fire, darted forward.
“Kyra, NO!” he shouted, a split second before the window exploded inward under the impact of a blue-white ball of flame so intense he had to fling an arm up to shield his face.
The force of the blast hurled him backward, through the wall, and down into the river that ran next to their property. He sank like a stone, stunned by the force of the fireball.
Daxxton’s eyes snapped open as he sat up straight, ripping at the suddenly confining covers, gasping for breath. His throat was constricted. He couldn’t breathe. Images of Kyra flashed through his mind, that last look they’d shared before the fireball had disintegrated her.
He gritted his teeth in anguish, biceps bulging as his muscles flexed in painful memory of something that had happened nearly five centuries earlier.
Eventually he regained control of his lungs and slowed his frantic breathing to a more reasonable pace, going through all of the breathing exercises he knew of to try and compose himself.
As oxygen flooded his brain
, sleep began to call him once more. He glanced over at the clock—such a wonderful invention of the modern world—and decided that he was done sleeping for the day. He didn’t need to remember the next part of his dream.
What came next was just as bad. The blood was horrible enough.
But the screams as he exacted his revenge…
It was the screams that haunted him.
Chapter One
Daxxton
He looked around the training yard as his sparring partner withdrew for a brief moment.
It was full. Or at least, as full as the Top Scale training grounds ever got. The most recent crop of graduates were all there, as were his chosen instructors.
To his right, Zander Pierce worked on the elements of certain kicks with Ezequiel “Zeke” Hawthorn. Instructor teaching student.
On his left, Senior Instructor Blaine Wingstar was engaged in a furious battle with Dominick Carunno, another former student of Top Scale Academy.
And directly across from him stood the leader of the three newly minted Guardians of Cadia, Asher Owens.
“You’re getting better,” Daxxton said, wiping sweat from his brow.
Asher was, to put it mildly, a prodigal student. A little over a year and a half earlier, he’d been invited to Top Scale Academy with his two friends, to train and learn how to unlock the full potential of the dragons within them.
For twelve long months they had trained hard—furiously—to learn to master their animal halves. In a world where they spent the first decade and a half as humans, learning to become one with the sky in a different form was a task many were not up to. Only the select few were invited to train at Top Scale, where they might learn how to become lords of the sky, and unleash the true potential of the magic imbued within them as dragon shifters.
All three of the now-former cadets had passed. But Asher had shown qualities and strengths within him that surpassed his friends. He was wise beyond his years, driven, and mastered new skills with a speed that would have surprised anyone but Daxxton. But the cagey old Wing Commander of Top Scale saw a lot of himself in the young Frost Dragon, and thus he encouraged him to push himself.
