Dragon Tamer

Chapter 15

A shadow jumped in front of me, hands outstretched to the fire. As if it was hit by a bat, the fireball went flying in the opposite direction, hitting the manticore head on. It erupted into an inferno of red flames that rose up to lick the cage ceiling. The cage caught fire, the wooden structure already beginning to crumble.

The dragonlings ran to our sides and pushed us to the ashen ground. They hovered over us, spreading their wings to envelope us in a fireproof, leathery embrace. The person--man, judging by his build--who had saved me, held me tight, tucking my head into his chest just in case the dragonlings' embrace failed us. It didn't. Beams fell from above beating the dragons' backs over and over. They didn't falter, even when I saw Xanu wince when something particularly heavy landed on him. Forever grateful for their sacrifice, I stroked the muzzle of every dragonling brushing up against us. If it weren't for these four brave creatures I would have died long before their pen had the chance to collapse.

And then it all stopped. The manticore's cries. Elesor's furious snarls. The intense heat. Sounds of wood snapping and crackling.

The dragonlings eased their grip on us, one head popping out of the embrace at a time until they deemed it safe to fold their wings behind their backs and step away from us. Fire flickered around us, no taller than my hip, but most of the ground was in embers. The entire corral had been destroyed, turned to ash at our feet. The wind stirred it into the air, making me cough.

A hot hand laid on my cheek. Having completely forgotten I was huddled up against someone's chest on the ground, I looked up into a pair of intense green eyes; they were as wild as the fire around us. But that wasn't what caught my breath. They weren't human. Instead of a rounded pupil, it was a vertical slit like. . . a dragon's. Or I could be seeing things, because when he blinked, they rounded normally.

It must be all the smoke you're inhaling.

"Kali?"

I gaped. That voice. . . . raspy, because of the smoke, but still utterly sexy. Those undeniably gorgeous green eyes. . . . The faint scent of the sea breeze. . . .

Only one person could feel like him. But it couldn't have been him. It was impossible.

"Camden?" I coughed. Gods, my throat was so dry. "Wha-what just happened?"

One minute he was supposedly on the other side of town--actually, I guess, that was a long time ago now--and then the next he was standing in front of me, shielding me from a fire blast that should have killed us both. He must have been the one calling my name earlier. And now I was sitting in his lap, surrounded by his arms as if he hadn't just stupidly risked his life for me. By all accounts, we should be dead.

The thought was terribly unsettling.

Horrified that he'd sacrifice himself for me like that, I pushed out of his lap and stood up. "Get away from me, you lunatic!"

He rose to his feet, dusting ash off his pants indignantly with a scowl aimed for me. "Me? I'm the lunatic?? I'm not the one who went on a suicide run! Admit it, if I hadn't been there, you would be dead!"

"We both would!" I shouted back, furious the idiot had somehow survived his stupid stint and was now lecturing me on being suicidal. "That blast would have killed us both! I don't know how you did it, but don't be getting any ideas rushing in to do that again!"

"I'll do what I want!" he barked, stepping for me to prove a point--not that I was trying to stop him. Despite how stupid he was, after almost dying, it was nice to be near someone, to remind myself that I was actually alive, that this wasn't a dream. "Just be grateful I saved your life!"