Page 45 of Burn for the Dragon
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Hawke heard an ominous clicking sound and a rush of hot air. Before he could react, nerve endings screamed and then went dead as fire licked along his back. An involuntary roar of pain and anger ripped from his throat.
As his body slammed into Everly’s, Hawke wondered if this was how he was going to go out. If, after all the years he’d been alive and all the things he’d survived, this was the end. And the only regret he had was that he hadn’t had time to make things right with this amazing female. She’d probably be better off. Hell, he couldn’t even fucking protect her properly.
Suddenly, he was flat on the ground on his back and Everly was on top of him, swatting at the flames on his shoulders and sides with her bare hands before ripping off her lab coat and covering him with it. A second stream of dragon’s fire seared the top of her head. The smell of burnt hair filled his nostrils. When it stopped, she sat up, and her own fire burned behind her eyes.
“I think I love you,” Hawke whispered, knowing she wouldn’t hear him, but needing to say it before death took him.
Everly stilled on top of him. Tears dropped from her chin to his face. And then she rose to her feet and was standing over him, staring up at her brother, screaming words Hawke couldn’t comprehend through the rush of blood in his ears.
Smoke drifted around her, blurring his vision. Or, maybe it was his body shutting down. Vampires could take a lot of pain. He knew that firsthand. Over the long years of his life, Hawke had been chopped into with swords and axes. He’d been strung up from a tree with rope so coarse it cut into his throat before they even pulled it taut. And he’d taken more bullets than this night a few times over. None of it was pleasant; however, he always healed within hours.
But this time felt different. He had no way of knowing how deep the fire had burned through him, but it was possible it had burned through to his heart. And if that were the case, he may not heal this time.
Everly’s form flickered above him. Her tears fell cold upon his face and neck. Or was that rain? She was still screaming, fist raised and red curls blowing in the wind.
There was a flash of light as she bent over Hawke, voice leaving her mid-scream, her body disjointed, bones breaking through skin that rippled with shades of red.
And then there was nothing.
Chapter 22
Everly watched Hawke’s features contort in pain. His hand reached for her, lifting only a few inches before it fell back to the ground.
“Hawke?” Mesmerized by the sight of Matthew, she hadn’t realized what he was about to do until fire shot from his mouth, straight at her and Hawke. Jostled from her frozen state of shock by Hawke’s roar of pain, she threw herself forward, knocking him to the ground with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, and following him down to smother the flames. She tried to remember what Hawke had said offhandedly that day about how much damage a vampire could take to his body before he wouldn’t heal anymore. Remove his heart or his head, he’d said. So, would he heal from burns like this?
His eyes, dull and lifeless, searched her face. His mouth opened and closed, and then his dry lips formed the words, “I think I love you.”
Sitting up, she stared down at him. “What?” Tears blurred her vision.
Matthew dipped into her line of vision, hovered for a moment, and then landed heavily not twenty feet in front of her, making the ground shake beneath them. She rose unsteadily to her feet, one foot on either side of Hawke’s prone body, and began to scream at her only flesh and blood, words tumbling over each other as they were torn from her throat. She had no idea what she was saying, only that she hurt more than she had ever hurt before in her life. And it was his fault. This brother she’d spent years of her life searching for. She raged her pain at him until her throat burned, until the muscles in her body screamed with her. She didn’t care if he wasn’t himself. Didn’t care if he couldn’t understand her. All she cared about was that he had hurt this male.
This male that she also was beginning to love. This male who she’d felt an instant connection with. This male who had somehow crawled inside of her heart.
Searing pain shot hard and fast down her spine, bending her body at an impossible angle and cutting off her tirade mid-shout. Her head swam as she felt her bones shifting beneath the muscle. With an uncontrollable shudder, they cracked, then broke, tearing through her flesh and jerking her body around like a disjointed puppet. Streaks of fire ripped through her as the skin covering her shoulder blades split and tore. Turning her head to the side, she watched in horror as a skeletal wing stretched outward from her back.
Holy mother of God. She was shifting.
Everly screamed over and over as her body took over the transition, and when it was finished, she stood over a prone body, sucking in a lungful of cool, night air. Lowering her nose, she breathed in the male’s scent.
Instinct made her step carefully so as not to crush the motionless form below her as she kept a careful eye on the other dragon. There was a sense of kinship to it, but it was quickly overridden by the recognition of a threat and a driving need to protect the male beneath her.
Spreading her wings wide, she prepared to defend her injured mate.
Hawke drifted in and out of a foggy sense of awareness. Or perhaps he was chasing the oblivion of death, and this was his mind’s last hoorah.
But he couldn’t be dying. Because only being alive hurt this fucking much.
The screech of a dragon above him jostled his consciousness.
Everly. Where the fuck was Everly?
Fighting the darkness that threatened to consume him, he pried his dry eyes open with sheer force of will. His back, from his neck to his thighs, screamed in agony. When he tried to sit up, he found he was stuck to the grass gripped in his fists. Gearing up to try again, he inhaled, and smelled the coppery scent of blood. His blood, if he were to take a guess. His body, with its advanced healing, was reacting to the inflammation already happening by sending fluids to the burned area, which in turn were leaking all over the ground below him.
Another shriek sounded, this time directly above him. He recognized her voice at once. Forcing his eyes open wider, he searched the sky above him for some sign of what was happening. Only there was something wrong. Instead of a blanket of stars, he found himself staring at a pattern of milky white scales tinged with red on the edges.
The scales shifted, sliding in and out of each other, and the ground trembled beside him. Letting his head fall to the side, he followed the pattern down to a large, clawed foot. Same on the other side. Following the sea of colorful scales down the length of his body, he found they darkened as they neared the tail. His mind, hazy in its efforts to protect him from his physical trauma, slowly grasped that this wasn’t the dragon Parasupe had captured.
This was Everly.
