Page 58 of The Magic of Destiny
“Oh gods,” I groaned. “Why is he like this?”
“Because he loves you and apparently wants the entire realm to know that he's yours now.” Fischer tugged me against him, kissing the top of my head.
“It is pretty funny, Red,” Sloane teased, pulling his own shirt on. Fischer and I both laughed at Sloane, who was now proudly wearing a tank with the drawing of me on Bram’s back that Bram still had as the home screen on his phone.
“The fuck is this?” Sloane asked, exasperated.
I was about to respond when the ground trembled.
“What—” I shrieked when it happened a second time.
“We should go before whatever that was shows up…” Fischer said quietly, an edge of worry to his voice.
“Okay, step back and I'll open the portal,” I told them.Why can't we just get one normal day?
“Oh my moons,” Fish breathed, and I froze.
Turning my head slowly, I saw a glint within the thick brush. Two orange eyes practically glowed out at us, and navy scales shimmered in the moonlight.
“I don't want to die,” I whispered. “Oh gods, it's massive.”
“Hurry up, sweetheart,” Fischer urged.
I turned to focus once again on getting the portal open. The ground wasn't shaking any longer, so I hoped that meant the giant dragon was staying in one spot.
“Sloane!” Fischer hissed. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
My pyro mage was walking away from us and over to the dragon, like this was normal.I mean, it might be feral. Right? Dragons aren't domesticated. Who knows how long it's been since this creature had even seen a person?
“It's okay,” Sloane replied. “He's talking to me.”
It's okay? He's talking to me? What?!
‘Fischer. Sloane's lost it. We'll have to take him by force,’I pushed through the mental link as we inched closer together, our eyes locked on Sloane and the huge dragon.
“Wait a minute. It could very well be true. We don't know much about Sloane's dragon abilities. There's no reason why another of his species wouldn't be able to communicate with him. The dragon could’ve torched us easily by now, so maybe he did seek us out. Whatever he's saying to Sloane must be important enough that Sloane’s willing to speak with him in return,” Fischer explained calmly.
Had we all just seen too much shit at this point? Were we all losing our minds? Was this real? Maybe I was in a coma and all of this was completely made up in my imagination.
“What's he saying?” I asked Fischer. I could hear Sloane speaking back to the beast, but his voice wasn't loud enough to make out from this distance.
“I can't really hear him—something about helping? I don't know... Let's just give them a minute,” Fischer replied, pulling me against him.
I tried to calm myself down, but all I could focus on were those huge orange eyes, and how easy it would be for that dragon to chomp Sloane down in one bite.
Sloane reached the spot where the dragon was crouched. He held his hand out, and fire ignited in his palm. The dragon released a chuff, like he was impressed.Interesting.
“These are my mates,” Sloane announced, pointing over at us. I lifted my hand and waved. “You can come out. Nobody here will harm you.”
I swallowed roughly as the dragon stood to his full height, my head tipping back to follow him. Good gods, I'd thought Sloane was a big dragon. This one was nearly twice his size.
“What's he saying?” Fischer called out.
“Quite a lot, and his name is Vaeryn. He has a lot of information about what's going on here. He says he saw us leave that facility and he tracked us here,” Sloane explained, walking back over to where we were. The dragon followed behind him, and I clung to Fischer as the ground shook around us again.
“What does he know about that place?” I asked with a shiver. That whole facility needed to be shut down—the sooner, the better.
“He tells me that they've been capturing dragons for years now. They take them and hold them captive, running tests and experiments on them. This male has lost many friends and family to these facilities.”
