2. Lianna

What came next—fire and chaos.

Vidar unfurled like a golden flower hunting the midsummer sun, soaring tall and fierce. On four legs, he was absolutely giant, even bigger than I'd thought. He used his whole chest for the next roar. Deep. Rough. Masculine. Peak alpha. It shook the ground and loosened rock from the ceiling, and I clapped my hands over my ears like that would stop my eardrums from bursting.

Dust and pebbles whipped around as he fluttered his wings, and I swore those teeth were bigger than me when he bared them.

Then came the fire. He exhaled a blinding inferno all over the ceiling, shattering most of the lights. Glass and metal rained down on him. Heat clenched in my core, sharp and visceral, wounded and exhilarated. Once again, my instincts battled with each other: half begged me to run, to escape, to survive, while the other half was desperate to get closer. Touch him. Scent him. Get his scent on me.

What I managed in the meantime was a clumsy flail that took me from my knees to my butt, and I groped around behind me, searching for one of those Synn assholes to yank me up.

But I was alone. Frost licked my heart's cage when I twisted around and spotted my knights in shining fucking armor bolting up the gravel hill. Slipping, sliding, stumbling, they just left me, their dress shoes useless in a life-or-death sprint.

Fuckers. Dumb and cowardly. Of course.

Vidar's first step shook the earth. I faced forward, panicked, intrigued, misting so hard my perfume created a thick, potent bubble around me. Terrified, thrilled, I tipped my head all the way back just to keep an eye on this golden beast. He seemed to be watching the Synn dicks struggle their way up the hill, and his next roar lit a metaphorical fire under their asses. Another step closer made the ground fall out from under me.

Not literally, but the gravel skittered toward him, the slope suddenly an avalanche of dust and dirt and stone. Squealing, I scrambled as far out of Vidar's direct path as I could, and when I couldn't catch my footing anymore, I collapsed on my side and curled into a ball. My perfume went nuclear, every scent its own animal, fighting for dominance, struggling, unsure what we ought to do. Soothe the threat? Beckon him closer? Beguile him until he was purring up a different kind of storm?

The last two sounded the most tempting, but my logic-brain hadn't switched off yet. Peeking out from under my arm, I caught the dragon pivot and head toward me, only to stumble through a few steps and send everything sliding again. His head hung low for a moment as he groaned, eyes shut, teeth bared in a grimace.

Right. He was hurt. He?—

I yelped when he blasted the pit he'd been sleeping in with flame and fury. Seizing the distraction, I tried to creep up the slope on trembling limbs. Sweat beaded my forehead and dripped down my neck; I was hot on the outside, yes, but I was absolutely scorching on the inside. Another soul-crushing cramp stopped me dead in my tracks, and I cat-cowed my way through it with a strangled, broken whine.

After the shitshow that was my early twenties, I could do hurt. I could endure heat cramps like they were nothing until I finally—begrudgingly—holed up in my nest. But this was too much. Too intense. It rocked every system, every one of my five senses. It pierced my soul and tap-danced on the grave of what I thought was my high pain tolerance.

Only when it eased, when I could sort of see through the tears, did I manage a few miserable feet before a massive shadow slanted over me. I froze, slowly looked up—and then screamed my lungs out as a huge dragon claw came at me. Panicked shuffling didn't do a damn thing. Suddenly, I was just a little stuffed toy at the arcade, targeted by the grabber claw.

Vidar scooped me up with a hefty bit of gravel too, but all that fell through his talons and thick, scaled fingers like sand through an hourglass. Dewey shouted my name, but the dragon answered with fire, flames licking up the hill and blazing into the mouth of the corridor where I'd once stood, gobsmacked, enthralled by the glittering gold creature below.

I never expected to get up close and personal with a dragon, never mind find myself caged in scales and steel. He had four fingers and a thumb, like a regular hand, and it closed in a loose fist as he held me to his heaving chest. A million percent sure I wouldn't survive a fall at this height, I latched on to whatever I could, arms and legs, then squealed and tucked my chin to my chest when he blasted the ceiling again, painting it a rainbow of yellows and oranges, canary and daffodil, honey and mustard, butterscotch and lemon. Smoke tangled in my hair. Cypress pooled between my thighs. Amber settled under my nose. His scents—his alpha pheromones clung to me like a drenched tee in a summer storm.

And then he jumped.

This time, I shrieked bloody murder as concrete cracked and shattered, falling all around us. He kept me close, but I still tasted dirt and ash with every breath. As Vidar clambered through the earth, he heaved and groaned, and, I could have been mistaken—because maybe it was me—but I swore I heard him whine.

For a few long minutes, the air was thick and stale and damp, and I finally gasped, filling my lungs, when we broke into the warehouse.

A warehouse Vidar plowed through like it was made of matchsticks. Hit with the dry heat of late June seconds later, shrouded in dust, I coughed and coughed, then finally screamed my throat to bloody ribbons when he took off.

His wings beat hard and fast, whipping up gale force winds with each powerful pump. The ground got smaller and smaller, and when another horrendous cramp struck, I tensed, shuddered—and finally, everything went black.

I came to dangling high over dark, choppy water. Night loomed around us, the sky alight with millions of stars, land nowhere to be seen. Head throbbing, perfume misting, I pushed off the two fingers cradling me and realized the thunder that felt like it was right on top of me was the beat of Vidar's wings.

Accompanied by his heaving breaths, a chorus of groans and growls reverberating in his chest.

He dropped suddenly, plummeting toward the Pacific. My stomach lurched; I could handle turbulence, but this was fucking ridiculous. Squealing, I grabbed at whatever I could again until he leveled out, coasting on humid, salty air currents.

Just as I was about to risk another look, a surge of dizziness hit, followed by an assault of rolling cramps, one right after the other.

And then I was out again, adrift on a different sea, weightless, dreamless, carried into the dark by amber, bonfire smoke, and cypress.