Page 80 of Wild Bond

Without hesitation Skye showed me a succession of images that carried the sentiment that something had been done to his mind, and that she couldn’t reach him.

As she relayed this to me, the bronze dragon broke away from Nevina and was now flying straight for the retreating children.

Skye swerved to intercept him, and he veered off-course to avoid her. He roared in fury. The hair whipped in my face as I glanced behind us and saw that the distraction had worked, and he was now following us.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Declan groaned. Poor thing wasn’t used to flying on a dragon.

“You’ll be just fine,” I promised. “Just hold on.”

We now had the wild dragon’s attention, but unfortunately, we were also now soaring over the center of The Tower compound and its many surrounding buildings.

By this time, other riders had finally realized something was going on. I could see several of them, including Dembe, mounting up and lifting into the air in pursuit. But they were still quite a way behind us.

Head toward the mountain, I told Skye in the bond.Away from the—

Skye jerked upward without warning and my stomach plunged as she just missed the roof of the trainee barracks, the tip of her tail clipping a stone chimney.

Our bronze pursuer was not so lucky, and it was mere seconds later that I twisted and watched the male crash headlong into the roof of the building, demolishing a large chunk of it on impact. I could only pray that because it was mid-morning and most trainees were in classes, that no one was inside.

The dragon roared in pain and rolled, crashing to the ground in a heap. In a matter of minutes, several riders and their dragons were on the male, holding him down as he struggled. I thought I saw someone prick him with something. Sedation of some kind?

Whatever they did, the male dragon stopped struggling, and then a few long moments later went entirely limp.

I dropped Declan off at the infirmary and left him with the healers, then Gemma and I explained to Rake and the other council leaders what had happened, or at least the best we could figure. Honestly, it seemed like no one knew how or why this had happened exactly. Nothing like this had ever happened in recent memory, if at all. It made no sense for a wild dragon to attack unprovoked.

Several hours after the attack, we were clearing up some of the debris when Rake found me, his face grim. I glanced up as he approached.

“You need to see this,” he said, motioning to where the unconscious dragon still lay.

Perplexed, I stepped over bits of stone and broken glass and followed after him. He led me to where the wild dragon’s head lay lolled to the side. His eyes were closed, his nostrils flaring with every exhale.

“Remind you of anything?” Rake inquired cryptically, gesturing to the male.

I crouched down, looking more closely at the creature. Like I had observed during the attack, the dragon’s bronze scales were of a pale, bleached color, almost sickly, if I were describing a human. The skin itself looked rough and flaking almost as if he was molting, and was that . . .

“Is that foam dripping from his mouth?”

Rake nodded, his face like granite. “Check his eyes.”

A sense of dread took up residence in my stomach. I reached out and raised a single eyelid, having an inkling of what I’d find as I saw the red inflamed eye.

My mind raced as I stared up at Rake in shock, seeing the similarities and making the connections just as he had.

Pale, sickly pallor, foaming at the mouth, red eyes.

“Borden,” I breathed in disbelief, thinking of the night we had watched him die before our eyes. “This dragon has the same symptoms as Borden and the others.”

Itwasearlyeveningby the time I entered the infirmary, a small building to the left of the trainee barracks, where Declan had been since the attack. I was exhausted, and it felt like a lifetime ago that I was watching him get beaten by Stella. It had taken some time to set everything to rights on the training fields and clean up the debris from the building that was damaged. Several riders and younger trainees were wounded in the collapse of the building, while others had been injured in the attempt to subdue the crazed dragon after he started to rouse from his initial sedation. Luckily, riders healed fast.

I desperately needed a bath but wanted to make sure Declan was alright first.

Skye hadn’t left my side since the incident. She sat vigilantly on my shoulder, gazing around as if there might be a threat around every corner. We entered a long rectangular room with twelve beds lined up on either side. A healer smiled at us as we walked in. She was treating a rider with burns on his arm.

The only other patient in the room was Declan. The young boy was sitting up in bed with a couple pillows propped up behind him. He had several bandages on his arms and one wrapped around his head at an angle that made his hair stand up in odd ways. Izzy was curled up in his lap and had the same watchful, protective bearing that Skye had. I had never seen the little dragon look so alert before.

A man and a woman I recognized from the Exodus Ball—and who had to be Declan’s parents—sat at his bedside. They both looked as tired as I felt, but both were smiling at their little boy who prattled on about something as I approached.

Declan saw me then, and his face broke out in a wide grin. “Rin,” he cried happily. “Skye!”

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