The man stopped dead. “A Dragon?”
“No, I said he’s a Morph.”
The faintest traces of black swirled through the colorless expanse of his eyes. “You don’t look like a Dragon.” But his gaze dropped to her hands, and the wicked talons that still extended from the tips.
He seemed confused. The human realm was considered virgin. But how could he possess such power and not know about shapeshifters like Dragons?
Perhaps she’d misunderstood his reaction. Dragon shifters weren’t common in his realm. Aria planted herself in front of him and pushed the transformation of her hands and forearms until they were minor versions of her Dragon forelegs.
His eyes widened, and the blackness spread across them. Traces of dark fog swirled around him, and Aria’s hair lifted off her shoulders.
Her skin prickled as danger and ozone filled the air in equal parts. She swallowed, and said, “I can’t do much while wearing this damned collar. It keeps me from transforming to full Dragon.”
He seemed shaken, and the fog thickened. His hair continued to drift upward, and now it coiled like a snake. From beneath it, tiny, bright eyes peered down at Aria. The little shrew chittered and waved an elongated snout at her.
The man raised a hand to it, and this time it let him stroke one big finger through the soft fur. Some of the fog dissipated.
She had so many questions—but they’d have to wait. Aria deliberately turned her back on him. There was an urgency to the search for Lucas that she didn’t entirely understand. Thehurry, hurry, hurrychanted in the back of her mind. She continued to race along the hall, peering in windows.
Why was he just standing there? “Help me look,” she shouted to him in frustration. He’d closed his eyes, even, as though he planned to meditate while upright.
“Thereisa life essence that is different.”
She turned to him. “What?”
His eyes were still closed. “Up two levels. It’s very faint.”
This guy was powerful enough to not only sense Lucas’s life essence from a distance, but to separate him from others? Who the shards was he?
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “It’s fading. He doesn’t have long.”
Aria’s heart constricted. “Take me there.”
His eyes snapped open—there was an alarming amount of black showing within them, and wisps of the fog swirled through the air, but he turned and moved along the hall with long, determined strides.
Aria hurried to catch up.
* * *
The life essence Nikolai sensed weakened by the second.
If what he detected was Lucas, they didn’t have long. This place was already mostly sucked dry by the battle between him and this Demeti guy. It was a miracle anything survived.
Lucas. In the middle of the fight with Demeti, he’d sensed another presence. And it had spoken to him, in his mind. Just like the other voice, only much fainter.
He’d thought it was a figment of his imagination, something associated with the wild energy he’d been flinging around. But now, it seemed that Lucas might be real.
With all the weirdness that he’d experienced over the last few days, another person in his head was just something to be shrugged off. Power that could rip people apart and drain the essences from others, gateways that took you places far from where you started, and now Dragons...
Maybe he’d wake up and it all would be just a dream. But somehow, he didn’t think so. If Lucas was real, he owed him a debt. Because it was his words that caused Nikolai to rein back on the rage, and let go of the deep core power he’d been pulling from.
Lucas had likely saved the woman’s life.
He could have lost her, and his heart twisted at the thought. That had been a closer thing than he wanted to admit. In the middle of the life-energy mudslinging match with Demeti, he’d sensed her like a bright star in the darkness. A star being sucked dry of its light—and when Lucas had screamed at him, he’d shut it all down.
Demeti took advantage of the respite to flee back through the doorway. But Nikolai hadn’t cared, because Aria was already depleted enough that her essence flickered, threatening to go out. There had been enough left for Nikolai to locate her...
His relief at finding her alive had been nearly overwhelming.
