Page 91 of His Greatest Treasure

When the silver dragon pushed at us and slashed with its claws, making us shriek with the sudden sharp pain in our leg, it managed to get past us. We rushed forward, desperate to get between it andour clan. We just needed to get between the threat and our clan.

As we rushed, our clan moved, backed away, and the dragon and I had more room to fight. Instinct made us drive it towards the border of our territory. If we could get it out, our clan would be safe.

It didn’t want to go, though. It fought for its life, and it was vicious.

We hadn’t been aware before that we could fight. We had never tried to harm anyone before. We found, though, that our instinct drew from a deep well, a hundred generations of pureuasaldragons. Of course we won.

At last, the dragon slumped to the ground and stopped moving.

We stood back, panting, and waited.

The dragon was barely alive, hanging by a thread. And then the bonds we’d been holding tightly with our own suddenly vanished.

Our own bonds straightened out, running directly from us to our clan, clear and pure and golden.

The threat was gone.

We looked to our mate, who was standing between our mother and our aunt, two of our clan,and the shining silver bond between them was wrapped around Blaze protectively. They were keeping him safe for us. We liked that. Liked that our mate was safe. Liked that our clan wanted to protect him.

Then we saw that his face was covered in tears and we whined. We didn’t want Blaze to cry.

He rushed across to us just as we moved towards him, and he flung himself at us as we reached him. His little arms wrapped around our neck and we began to purr, happy to have our mate so close to us.

We pulled back and nuzzled him, checking him for pain.

“It’s gone,” he said. “I burned the spell away. Yours are still inside you.”

He pointed at the sharp icy spells that were embedded inside us. We studied them, not sure what to do.

Now he pointed them out to us, we could feel them, radiating cold and making us bleed.

“Lay down,” said Blaze, and we obeyed. We stretched out on the cool ground which had become muddy and red from the fight. Weplaced our tail carefully so that we wouldn’t hit any of our clan.

We locked our eyes on our clan, but none of them met our gaze. We wanted them to come over to us, to join us and our mate, but they kept their eyes lowered and stayed where they were. We opened our mouth but, in this form, we couldn’t speak. We couldn’t ask them over.

Blaze flickered into his flame form and we breathed deeply. He pressed his flaming hand to our nose, petting us. It felt like a warm feather brushing against our scales.

“I’m going to burn them away. I won’t hurt you. Make sure everyone stands back.”

With that, he grew. His flames became brighter, burning hotter as he grew, and he pressed himself to our body. Our golden scales shone as bright as the sun in his light, and we’d never seen anything so beautiful.

The pain receded as the spells melted away.

Blaze worked until he had covered our entire body and then he stood beside our head. He looked into our eyes and spoke softly.

“I love you, my darling.”

We wanted to answer him, but we couldn’t in this form. It was that which made us shift back.

Chapter 37

Blaze

Alfie blinked at me as though he were surprised he’s shifted.

“My dragon’s gone,” he said. “You healed me. I love you. I have bonds with everybody. Wait, I didn’t mean to say it in that order. I meant to tell you I love you. That’s the most important one.”

My darling Alfie. Relief washed through me as I realised he was still the same, still the young man I knew.

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