Chapter Seven

Emma

W ith the pain came the screams.

My throat was torn ragged in seconds. Each gentle rocking motion of the boat tore at my shoulder more, widening the wound. My legs banged helplessly against the side, but the pain of that was nothing compared to the white-hot agony lancing from my destroyed right shoulder.

Blood poured down my chest and arm, soaking my clothes and dripping off my leg into the water so furiously it turned it red underneath me.

"I'm going to die," I whispered, tasting the acrid metal tang of iron. Not even the salty sea air could remove that. There was too much blood.

The life I thought I knew flashed me by. Waiting the half-dozen tables at The Hunt Station, the restaurant in my tiny hometown of Caledon just off the north coast of Maine. The house I'd inherited from my father when he'd passed away half a decade earlier. The work I'd been doing renovating the house, fixing it up, trying to honor his life and legacy.

It was a simple life. But it had been a good one.

And now, it was gone. I was going to die like a fish, gutted and hung over the side of a boat.

I tasted more metal. A corner of my brain wondered if I was going to rust in the ocean air once I died.

The thought made no sense. But most of my body was focused on still screaming. The part doing the thinking was a distant corner. Detached from the pain somehow. Compartmentalized with the realization that this was it. This was the end of the road for one Emma Whitson.

Then I began to move.

Sweet fresh pain ripped through my entire body, and I was yanked back into reality. I screamed and screamed. My throat was bleeding. My voice gone. Nothing worked, my body was limp as my lifeblood soaked the decking below me as I was lowered to a seating position.

"Emma," Rhyse said with shocking calmness. "I need you to listen to my voice. I need you to indicate you can hear me. Nod your head."

The world spun up and down. I must have been nodding. All I could think of was pain.

"This will hurt," he said softly, sincere regret coloring his words.

I wanted to laugh at that but couldn't. Hurt? Hurt ? Was he serious? What more pain could he possibly inflict on me?

In one move, Rhyse snapped the harpoon in half, leaving only the handle sticking out of the back of my shoulder and a few inches protruding from the front. The pain was great but nothing compared to everything else.

"I'm sorry," he whispered in my ear. "Emma, I'm sorry, but we're not done. I … I have to do the other side as well. I have to pull it out of the wound. Okay? Do you understand?"

I must have made some sort of motion or noise that indicated agreement because Rhyse's face grew hard and cold, and then he yanked the harpoon out of me.

That time, I did faint.

" Emma! Wake up Emma!"

"I'm dying," I whispered, the sounds the only noise I could produce. "Aren't I? I'm going to die here."

The blood was soaking the deck, I felt like I was lying in a pool of warm liquid. All of it my blood. There was no surviving that.

Rhyse's face, hovering over me as I stared up at him, didn't contain anything like hope.

"Well, that sucks," I said with a bitter, wet laugh. "Dying without even remembering where I am or why I'm here to do the dying. That's a cruel joke."

Rhyse's face creased in unexpected discomfort. "I can save you," he said suddenly, features scrunching up like he couldn't believe he'd said it.

"So, do it?" I said, shoving aside whatever it was I saw on his face. When it came to living or dying, I didn't care at the moment. I wasn't ready to go. I started crying.

"There's a catch," he said uncomfortably then glanced at my shoulder. "But we don't have much time."

"Please," I was begging through the sobs now. "Oh, god, please. Rhyse, I don't want to die. I'm not ready. I want to do the things. So much I haven't done."

So much. I wanted to live . To experience all that life had to offer. I wanted to fall wildly in love. Get married. Become a mother.

A hand slid unconsciously to my belly, but all it encountered was hot, sticky, blood-soaked fabric.

"If I do—" Rhyse began, but I cut him off, sharply shaking my head.

"Do it. Please . Save me. Whatever it takes."

My limbs were growing heavy. Everything was slowing. I had no idea what Rhyse was going to have to do, but I didn't care. Crushing debt. Amputation of my arm, whatever it meant, I would handle it. Somehow.

"Okay," he said. "But this is … really going to hurt. Are you su—"

The world was rapidly disappearing into darkness as the edges of my vision grayed out.

"Fuck it," a voice—Rhyse? I couldn't tell—snarled. "There's no time. I'm sorry."

Then he was gone, his features disappearing behind a mask of scales the color of my eyes.

My jaw fell open. He did something, and the back of my shoulder erupted in a brand-new fire.

I arched upward—and then pressure on the front of my mangled shoulder brought the flame searing across that skin, too.

The heat grew. And grew. It burned. I was burning from the inside out. I screamed, trying to exhale the fire, but it only intensified. I was feeding it with oxygen.

I passed from consciousness into somewhere else. A land of incoherence and dreams. A mixture of moments of my past and things I had only ever dreamed about. All the wasted time. Time I should have been doing more.

"Emma."

I pushed the voice away. The voice of criticism. Of self-hatred. It called to me, showing me all I could have been. All I chose not to do as I remained comfortably ensconced in my life in my little town, afraid to spread my wings. To take a chance.

"Emma."

The voice was more insistent now. I shook my head, trying to keep it out.

Emma.

I went still with shock. Like a sleeping person being awoken with a bucketful of ice water, I was suddenly alert and focused.

I'd heard that voice. But not with my ears. I'd heard it in my mind. A presence, reaching out, calling to me. Beckoning me.

Blinking my eyes, I found Rhyse's face. He was human again, looking down at me, brown hair dangling to either side of his face.

"There you are," he said.

I felt his relief.

My eyes shot wide, heart rate spiking once more. "Rhyse? I … can feel you. Your emotions. You're in my head. Why are you in my head?"

He grimaced, and fresh emotions washed over me. "I told you there was a catch to saving your life," he said uncomfortably. His eyes slipped away from mine toward the ruin of my shoulder.

Terrified, I slowly turned my head to see what he was staring at.

"What the fuck?" I whispered, too stunned to mind my language.

Where there should have been bloodied and torn skin was now nothing but dragon scale. Adhered to my flesh.

A part of me.