Page 1 of Firedrake Betrayal
1
PATTEN
“Patten!”
I lift my pounding head, take in the utter devastation of a ruined building and immediately lie back down, closing my eyes. “Oh good, I’m still alive.”
“Patten! Can you hear me?”
I recoil from Shep’s yell rattling around my head. “I hear you,” I mutter.
Something is poking me in the kidney. A piece of crumbling stone or whatever the fuck Atticus Chira, AKA the collector, built his compound with. The second my migraine eases, I’ll roll off it. Until then, I think of it as a rock version of acupuncture.
Footsteps crunch toward me, then I’m off the rock, massaging my kidney and face to face with the big, blond, naked shifter holding me up.
“You look like shit.” Shep’s brow furrows in concern.
“And you look naked. You can put me down now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m good,” I assure him, squinting up at a gray sky through bleary eyes. It’s darker than I remember. “How long have we been out?”
He shrugs. “Not sure. I just woke up.”
He sets me on my feet and lets go.
The ground stretches toward me.
A hand grips the back of my shirt, saving me from the white brick I was on my way to head-butting.
Shep raises a blond brow.
“Yeah, maybe my legs are still a little wobbly,” I concede.
“Not surprising. Where’s Jade?” Shep returns me to my upright position, keeping his hand on my shoulder this time as he sweeps his eyes over crumbled white stone, shattered glass and burned brick.
“Never mind Jade,” I mutter, frowning even as I look for her. “Where the hell is the dragon who flattened us?”
And then I see him.
Brennan is like an alien fallen to Earth, face down amid a pile of ruin, naked ass pointed to the sky with a silver bolt through his side. Jade’s dad had been a dark red dragon, felled by what seemed like a flimsy, piece-of-shit silver bolt.
“Who’d have thought a bolt could do that?” I mutter. His hide or scales or whatever the fuck dragons have had looked way too thick for anything to puncture it.
Shep lets go of my arm.
I smack into the ground.
“Sorry!” Shep calls back, busy digging something out of the ground. Or someone.
Grumbling, I briefly consider staying down until I remember Jade is still missing. I push myself up as Shep pulls a scowling, dark-haired, gray suited vampire free from the ruins. “Are you okay?”
Isaiah stares at him. “A dragon fell on top of us. What do you think?”
“Can you stand?” Shep asks.
“Of course I can stand.” Isaiah’s French accent is heavier than usual, a big indication he’s pissed off about something.
