24. Tarek

"What do you mean, she's gone?"

Aurora was crying as she sat on the cobblestones of the sidewalk. Ciro was trying to comfort her, but there was nothing to be done. The party was chaos. My father's dragon had lost his mind and torn through the airlock several miles from us. The alarm was still going off as they made quick work of the damage to protect the dome.

Me? I was fucking lost.

Without the mate bond, I was limited to scent and instinct. And right now, the air held a strange, lingering, putrid scent. It was out of place. Nothing on Pyroth held this scent. Nothing here would do as our mothers were saying. I didn't understand how one minute they were all walking calmly, and the next, two of them were gone.

"What do you mean Zara and my mother are gone? Where is my father? Who is he following?"

Ciro's father had been with them, and I watched as he fought the dragon within himself as he tried to contact my father.

"He will not answer. Your mother and Zara, they were ambushed by something no one within our colonies can identify. No one could have possessed the technology. His dragon is nothing but rage."

His dragon? I couldn't get mine to back down. My skin remained fully scaled as I paced the spot like an answer would appear.

"I don't understand what happened."

I searched for clues, sniffing the air for any idea where she could be, but this stuff scrambled my senses. No wonder my father had been powerless to get to my mother. There was a ring of strange liquid melting into the stones. None of us could stand to be near it. Something about the scent alone was driving my dragon into madness and not in an understandable your mate is missing way.

No, that came as I stepped away. A sickness filled me at the idea that I had failed again. How was this even possible? I had been gone trying to find answers for how to protect her, and somehow, I'd failed her.

I'd failed.

Fuck.

I was pacing, trying to piece together images Ciro gave me from what Aurora was describing. My mate and mother were too far ahead of the group. They had turned a corner and plumes of a strange smoke made it impossible for the rest of the group to get to the other side.

Humans falling in their tracks that were too close to the epicenter, and dragons forced into the open as a threat manifested, only for them to be powerless.

"Tarek?" I turned to Ciro's father when he called my name.

"Transport. You father isn't rational, but I can see random incoherent images. He is following the mate bond and is out in the Firelands like he knows something. Come. I will locate him with you."

I followed because this was my only option. To follow the bond of my father's hoard. To use my parents' mate bond. Heading for the air lock already broken, we flew in dragon form through the city. I would tear through this fucking dome if needed, and I had to keep us as logical as possible to save our mate. The chaos in the markets below and screams of surprise and fear would cost us a nightmare of already strained relations with the humans.

Years of peace, and one tyrant might have caused us years of repair.

We pushed through the damage, causing even more. This time though the dragons that were guarding the gates seemed to be clued into what had happened. Ciro's father guided me toward my father. We needed to reach him quickly because my father would lead me to my mother and, I prayed to the goddess, my mate as well.

My heart screamed. My dragon was losing the battle of sanity. If she were outside the dome, there was only a limited amount of time she could survive without my dragon's protection through the bond. Nothing could survive on Pyroth other than Pyrothians. Who would dare challenge me or our kind? The humans were at the mercy of our kindness, and they did not have the technology needed for this.

Someone seemed to be aware of the bargaining chip that a live mate would make.

I used the up drafts to soar higher and higher, finding the jet streams to push me along even faster. I pushed myself to the Firelands, keeping Ciro's father in my peripheral as he pushed himself to keep up.

My brothers would protect the mates left. We would protect the mates that needed to be found. Both hoards were at risk.

My father's dragon hovered and circled back and forth. What was he waiting for? My dragon turned his head this way and that, trying to understand, until I heard it.

Something was under us where nothing should have been.

My dragon dove to where it could hear air movement below the surface. Our massive claws dug through the hardened surface of the desert lands. My dragon removed clawfull after clawfull, watching the hole get deeper until it fell inward. My father"s dragon scratched at the surface as Ciro's father took to the sky above. One to scout while my father and I watched, listened, and found a tunnel that spread into an underground crevice.

It was rudimentary at best, but it existed. Where did it go? I sniffed the air under the ground and picked up hints of humans and the familiar scents of markets. It came from Emberhaven. My dragon roared at the sky in anger until we processed that there was another scent below. One of fuel, and it was not yet old and decaying. It was heading toward us.

I was far too big in this form to fit inside the tunnel that I now realized was for transports to go undetected. No wonder Emberfield had disappeared and how humans that were undetectable were in our dome. Despite all the technology shared, the humans, with their devious natures, presumed they could find a way to survive without us.

My dragon leaned into the cavern, our head barely fitting as we sniffed again. How much longer until it was here? Mere seconds. My father's dragon was still wreaking havoc next to me. Caving in more and more of the tunnel. Fine by me.

The sound of the machinery grew closer and closer. The tunnels were still filled with Pyrothian atmosphere, but it gave my dragon one small hope that our mate was protected for now.

I watched and waited for a heartbeat, until there, in the distance, the lights of a transport shone brightly. They would not have room to turn down here. This was a one-way tunnel, and they were sitting prey.

That wasn't to say I would give them a chance to escape. The transport was slowing and I would not be able to reach it from here. Instead, my dragon dashed out of the hole, moving faster than any transport could, and slammed his claws into the ground, right where the scent was the strongest. They would be nearly under where we were, and they would not get away.

We dug with our massive claws for several seconds until they broke through to where the dirt began to spill into the tunnel. My claws reached in and grabbed the transport and ripped it out of the tunnel as carefully as a dragon could.

The wheels of the thing were spinning as it tried to get away, but my dragon dug our claws in deeper, knowing we might breach the outer shell if we were not careful. The transports were solidly made to keep the atmosphere out. They were meant to protect in case of a wind or lightning storm. They, however, were not designed for dragon attacks, and that would never have been tested until now.

I flapped my wings, getting my dragon and I out of the hole with the capsule intact. The issue wasn't my claws though. The issue was the door that opened and squat little creatures spilled out. These were not Federation creatures. They jumped from the capsule. The first survived his fall and was attempting to limp away. The second fell from a much higher height and he appeared to be unable to get up. I dropped the capsule down harder than intended as I saw the next creature had a female in his arms.

She was making it impossible for him to jump, and I thanked the goddess. However, my father in all his insanity slammed into me, jostling the tube and ripping into its shell. I watched in horror as a female, my female, tumbled out into the terrain. I watched as her skin reddened from the sands of the Firelands and watched the mask I hadn't noticed be ripped from her face.

There was no time for logic. I swooped in and grabbed her in my claws.