Page 4 of Rook
On Vemion, the smoke from a dragon’s fire meant home, meant safety, meant power. The scent would curl around him as he shifted, as he let loose the inferno inside him and watched it dance across the stones.
But there, in that damp, alien wood, smoke was an enemy. Someone was loose with their power, careless or cruel, and the world would pay the price for it. The air tasted bitter, stinging the back of his throat and making his eyes water.
He pushed forward, boots sinking into the soft ground, his mind racing. Where was the fire? Had his fugitives lost control? Or were they being careless, thinking no one would notice a little blaze in the middle of nowhere? His briefing had been clear: Earth’s forests burned easily, their flora unaccustomed to dragon heat. The humans there didn’t know how to handle real fire, not the way his people did.
But the ground was damp, the leaves slick from a recent rain. The fire shouldn’t be spreading that fast.
He rounded a bend and skidded to a halt, the world narrowing to a single point.
There, flashing between the trees, a woman.
She was running, stumbling, her bright red flannel shirt a slash of color against the green. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy knot, strands escaping to stick to her sweat-damp face. She looked up as she caught sight of him, her eyes wide, wild, too bright.
His body reacted before his mind caught up, a jolt of heat, a flare of protectiveness that had nothing to do with duty. The urge to shield her, to put himself between her and whatever hunted her, was immediate, overwhelming. Something in his chest twisted, sharp and unfamiliar.
She was human, yes, but there was something else, a pull he couldn’t name, a sense that he’d been waiting his whole life to meet her there, in that moment, with the world burning down behind her.
“Get behind me,” he ordered, voice low and rough.
The woman stared at him, frozen for a heartbeat, her chest heaving. He saw the flicker of calculation in her eyes. But whatever she saw in his face must have convinced her, because she scrambled toward him, boots sliding in the mud. She ducked behind his shoulder, close enough that he could feel the heat of her body, the frantic hammering of her heart.
“Do you work for the park?” she gasped, voice shaking. “There’s—there …”
She tried to say more, but the words tangled up, lost in another shuddering breath. Behind them, a wave of fire arced through the trees, a living ribbon of gold and red that devoured everything in its path. The heat was intense, almost physical, and Rook felt the old urge to answer it, to call up his own flames in response.
His fugitives.
Of course. Only a dragon could conjure fire like that, even there. But why were they hunting her? She was human, no threat to them.
It didn’t matter. Right then, she was his to protect.
“Move.”
3
The park ranger urged her back the way he’d come, acting like the fire was nothing more than an inconvenience, a brush-clearing project, not a living threat swallowing the forest.
Shouldn’t he be calling it in?
Shouldn’t he have a radio, a sense of urgency, a plan that involved more than just hustling her along a muddy trail?
“They had flamethrowers,” she panted out, one boot scrambling for purchase as she vaulted over an old, moss-blanketed pine. “I think it’s drug dealers, maybe. Or … you do work for the park, right? Are you a cop?”
Her words came out in gasps, half carried by panic, half by the need to make sense of the impossible. He couldn’t just be a regular hiker—not in that uniform.
She risked a look at him. His uniform wasn’t right. It hugged his body, all black and slightly glossy. The material looked too sleek, too fitted, as if it were tailored to his broad shoulders and lean waist. There were panels of something that caught the light in flashes, and the seams looked reinforced, not stitched.
No patches, no name tag, no faded green or khaki like every ranger she’d ever known. He moved in the uniform easily, with a kind of grace she’d never seen on anyone in government-issued polyester.
It wasn’t just the uniform that made her heart beat faster. Even with the panic thrumming beneath her skin, she couldn’t help noticing how he filled it out. He was tall, at least a head above her, and built like he could haul a full-grown elk out of a ravine with one arm.
His jaw was all hard lines and stubble, his hair black and a little too long to be regulation, curling just above his collar. There was a heat to him, a presence that felt physical, almost magnetic. She felt it even with the fire behind them, even with her brain screaming at her to run. Her hands were shaking, but not entirely from fear.
He glanced at her, his strange yellow eyes catching the light for a split second. Her stomach knotted.
What the hell was wrong with her?
She was fleeing flamethrower-wielding drug dealers, and her heart was fluttering like a teenager’s.
