Immense heat spread through my entire body as an invisible protection barrier materialized around me. Though Reagan's flames never touched my skin, their heat still warmed my entire body. It was more pleasant than uncomfortable, but his outburst had still caught me completely off guard.
Yelling, I cussed at him. "In all the gods' names, what is wrong with you?"
"You woke me!" Reagan roared back, his chest heaving with shock. His breathing only caused smoke to engulf me and make my lungs nearly collapse.
Coughing I said, "Is that supposed to be a crime? How else am I to tell you that we need to go?" Outraged, I tried to calm my nerves. I poured in extra energy into the effort once the rest of the pack woke up and grew alarmed at the amount of smoke that traveled through the air. A few bushes were burned to a crisp behind me, and two trees on my right were on fire. Luckily, none of my pack members had been injured.
This was now officially the second time he'd tried to burn me alive. Thank all the gods that promiseds couldn't harm each other bad enough to murder. He would have within seconds!
"Haven't you ever heard not to wake a sleeping dragon?" Reagan muttered, anxiously whipping his armored tail back and forth.
I wanted to say 'how about an apology' but instead decided not to push it.
"Obviously not," though I still managed to push it far enough that another cloud of smoke shot out of his nostrils.
"Well now you know!" he answered, a whiny tone lining his voice.
Rolling my eyes, I calmed myself down and steered my attention to the others who'd been watching with wide eyes.
They all stood in a semi-circle slightly behind me, opposite of Reagan and the other two waking dragons. The bulky brown one shook himself, then continued to stretch his legs and wings. Ryker simply stood up and towered over us with an observant look in his icy gray eyes.
"I'm rethinking the approval of you two being promised to each other," Reece gasped, taken aback by the state we were in. I turned to him and chuckled lightly.
"This isn't the first time he's tried to grill me alive," I said, joking.
Slight outrage traveled towards me. "What! I have never actually tried to grill you alive. You just pop up out of nowhere!" Reagan exclaimed, clearly frustrated and defensive.
My shock had worn off and instead I began to enjoy the playful banter. Especially putting him in this position made my heart warm.
"As a dragon, shouldn't you be used to surprises?"
That retort earned a bellowing -oh- from both Dante and Reece. I chuckled. Reagan wasn't laughing, though.
"Believe me, I'm used to much worse." And suddenly, the banter was over and instead the mood turned dark.
"Oh yeah? Like what? Flying into rocks hanging over the edges of cliffs when you're busy staring at the ground?" Dante butt in, lightening the mood again. I wouldn't have expected Dante to tease Reagan. Maybe one of the other two, but certainly not Reagan.
He didn't take it well.
"Watch it, Onar."
"You're one to talk, you've lost more scales than I can count because you can't fly a straight line!" Though the bantering continued, I was relieved to hear that it was Tyrion speaking to Dante and everyone let Reagan be.
He was definitely not someone to joke around with. At least, not for very long.
"Oh shut up, you can barely fly four hundred kilometers without breaking down," Dante shot back, seemingly unfazed by Reagan's warning.
"And you suck at mathematics."
"You can't even roar, so shut up before I do it in your face and you become deafer than you already are!"
That nearly made me burst from laughter, but I tried hard to keep it in, considering the two brothers weren't much in the light-bantery mood anymore and instead harbored annoyed feelings towards each other. I would only piss Dante off more, probably, so I kept to the background. Thankfully, my brother changed the subject smoothly.
"That shield around her, the one that protected her from the fire. Is that only limited to Promised's?" Emmet butt in, looking up at silent Ryker with his pale eyes.
The dragon's slits dilated the tiniest bit, as if slightly taken by surprise at being spoken to by one of us. How did Emmet even know to ask Ryker, out of the four?
"As far as we know, yes. But that you shifters display gifts that all stem from the Promised Bond, I imagine it can also be shared if one has the ability to."
I stared at the gray dragon quizzically, my attention now fully on what he had said. What did he mean, gifts that stemmed from the Promised Bond? Were there more of us? With my heart racing as excitement rushed through me, I waited anxiously for him to elaborate. "Do you know of more shifters that have gifts like... Catherine does?" Emmet asked.
Ryker shook his head. "It is not common for our kind to be linked to yours. Normally, our mates are within our kind. But as you can see, this is not true."
Reece, Emmet and I all had racing hearts. I could hear Reece's speed up, too. What if they had the answers we'd been searching for our whole lives? Could they possibly know—
"So, Kendra and my sister are the first to be Promised to one of you?" Reece questioned, his eyebrow raised with interest flaring in his eyes.
"Not exactly," Ryker said, now turning his head to look at the sleek black dragon whose nostrils were still emanating smoke. He nodded, giving Ryker his approval to continue the conversation.
"There is a list," he began, "a list of names." Ryker waited, as if to see if anyone would show a sign of knowing what he spoke of. When nobody seemed to give him a satisfactory reaction, he inhaled deeply.
"A list you seem to know nothing of, then." His voice sounded defeated, though I couldn't imagine why. What was he even talking about?
A voice that sounded a lot like Shyla came to my ears then, one I hadn't heard in what felt like months. It was muffled, considering she was trapped within a prison made up of boulders Tyrion had constructed to keep them from escaping.
"Did you just hear that?" Cora muttered.
"Yes, the traitor," Jaxxon answered. "Bet she's just bored and wants out."
"What if she wants to say something about the list? Maybe she knows something?" Debrova suggested.
Ryker and Reagan both turned their attention to the ball of boulders. Each stone—or rather boulder—had been carefully placed on top and around each other for slits to be large enough to let air in but not enough to make them movable. Close-up it just looked like a pile of huge rock formations, but from afar it would have definitely seemed out of place.
"Maybe what the shifter says contains some truth." Ryker craned his neck to look at Reagan. He kept his sight on the prison and said nothing.
"She's up to something. I wouldn't put it past her to weasel herself out, somehow, if she's let free to speak," Leana, Debrova's sister, said. I mostly barely even acknowledged her presence here, since she and I didn't know each other very well, yet what she said was true.
I didn't trust Shyla to simply 'want to talk' either.
Aside from that, we didn't even know the full story of what it was they wanted.
Ryker had suggested having that conversation in a place where escape was not even remotely a possibility. Here, if they managed to escape, they could run off into every possible direction. It was easier slipping out of their ironhard grip. Which was why we needed to get going.
"The council keeps that list locked away," Shyla croaked from within her prison walls, barely louder than a whisper. All three of them barely had anything to drink or eat in the past few days.
Alarmed and concerned Reagan took a step closer to the boulders. "They have a lot of things locked away, traitor," he said, his voice flowing like poisonous silk, dangerous yet beautifully smooth. The jokingly light emotions of before were completely replaced by a dark cloud of mistrust hanging over us like a bad omen.
Something in my stomach didn't sit right.
Just talking to her made my guts turn into knots. Actual pain erupted then, starting as a jolt in my lower abdomen.
Flinching, I tried to keep it to myself. Of course my promised noticed anyway and his face was inches in front of mine within seconds. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I think we should get going, have this conversation when we're there," I said quickly in order not to gasp loudly.
The jolts of pain turned into heavy cramps increasingly fast.
If we complete the last stage, I could take your pain away, a voice sounded in my head, a foreign yet familiar presence lingering between my thoughts. As it had last time, my mind felt at ease as the warmth of his being flowed into me.
"This is probably still left from whatever they gave me," I said, referring to the three traitors. "I'll be fine." Though I was grateful he would take it away if he could.
The fact he wanted to sunk down to my bones, even more so than his suggestion for us to complete the third and fourth stage.
We barely touched enough for me to get used to that—and here he was, suggesting we kiss. And completing the last stage.... Which meant much more than a kiss that sealed the third.
Albeit I had to admit, it was not a thought I banned from my mind but rather something I pictured happening. Would his lips feel soft? Would he hold me? Would it feel like an explosion?
Before I let my imagination run free, I reminded myself of how many people were still around. If they hadn't been, who knew what would have happened...
I certainly wouldn't kiss a scaled lizard though, so even without them present nothing would have happened. It would have been an awkward peck at best.
A chuckle hollered through my head. You picture amusing things, leiirin. You make it hard for me to resist...
"Okay, time to leave now. Else I might find something to torch you with," I muttered and tried to animate the rest of the pack to start shifting so we could get on with our journey.
And once all that could shifted, the run continued.