Prologue
TALAKAI
As my friend Haki and I danced through the clouds, I continued to ponder just why he had chosen to visit me here at the academy.
His presence risked everything that we’d tried to achieve. If he’d been followed, my time here was at an end. His revelation that his soul mate, Kala, was pregnant was cause for celebration, but was it enough to explain the risk? I wasn’t sure.
I had told him about the Sabre twins, but all he’d said was that it might work, before leading me off on another cloud game. Was he considering options? Or was something else on his mind?
The sunlight reflected off my scales as I banked. Mere feet off my right wingtip, Haki copied my movements. The air this high up was crystal clear and icy cold. I tucked my wings and dove through the clouds.
You had to be clever when surrounded by vapor. Dragons had been known to collide in such circumstances, but he and I had been playing these games since our first stumbling efforts into the sky. Not that we’d had much time for it—being trained as deadly killers didn’t leave a lot of room for fun.
Especially when your instructors didn’t care whether you lived or died.
A shape plummeted out of the clouds. Wings tight to his body, Haki snorted at me as he zipped past, close enough that the vortex trailing behind him almost spun me around. I dove after him, beginning a darting, dodging game of cat and mouse through the clouds.
It was hard to believe that Haki was going to be a father. I told myself I was happy for him, and I was. Yet my sense of self-preservation was on high alert. I was still alive after operating as an assassin in the underworld because Ialwayslistened to my instincts.
Something was definitely off.
Perhaps it was because Haki wasn’t acting like a Dragon excited to be a father. Did he have misgivings? Or was it something else?
I hadn’t seen my friend since the night he’d rescued me from Xumi. Did he and Kala regret buying me out of the Guild? It hadn’t come cheap, and only the fact Haki’s soul mate was wealthy had enabled him to do it at all. Having a powerful underworld Dragona put a contract out on me was bad enough, but if the Guild had been after me as well...
I wouldn’t still be walking the realms, and that was the truth.
She’d tried to buy Xumi off too, but it hadn’t worked. Xumi could be bought, but the price had to be right. And considering her current twisted obsession with me, the price for me would be high.
My mind flashed back to when I had just left a mission debrief and approached a small group standing in the hall of the Guild headquarters. Among them was a Dragona—a combination of curves and raw beauty that drew the eye of every male around. When I went to step past them, she was suddenly in front of me. She’d moved so fluidly that it caught me by surprise—not an easy feat.
She’d gazed up at me without blinking, and what I saw within those eyes sent every alarm I had ringing. When she lowered her gaze and raked it over me, it rose to a shriek.
A talon danced over my belly, and I’d fought not to flinch.
“You,” she’d licked her lips, “are luscious.”
I remembered how my gut had clenched, as though someone held a knife to it. But I’d closed hands on her shoulders, lifted her off her feet, and set her to the side, before continuing up the hall.
If I’d known then what I knew now—would it have changed anything? I shook my head. All that mattered was that I would need serious currency to even tempt her to set me free.
As I plunged through a rain cloud, Haki almost vanished amid the vapor. It beaded and ran along my scales as I chased his tail.
We broke through into sunlight just as a familiar pulse of power trickled over me. I banked away from him—the crystal in my blood had reacted to a realm gate opening. Was the strike team back from their mission to catch the rogue Bellati, Galeran?
I wanted to know who had just come through that gate. And whether they’d been successful. I was, after all, a Dragon. Curiosity was my eccentricity.
Haki came up beside me.
“Let’s check that out,” I said.
Haki must have sensed it activate as well. He didn’t meet my gaze. “I should be going.”
My heart twisted. It was an answer, of sorts. If I pursued my goals for buying my freedom, I’d be doing it without him.
There had been a time when we were inseparable, and so efficient together that the Black Guild had often assigned us as a team. But now, he was a claimed Dragon, with a pregnant soul mate waiting for him at home. And I was pursued by a ruthless underworld Dragona who would stop at nothing to get me. I didn’t begrudge Haki for not wishing to get any further involved. But who knows when, or if, I would see him again?
As we headed back toward the academy building, my instincts shrieked at me. Were they telling me to leave with Haki? But that would only endanger him and Kala. If I couldn’t buy Xumi off—she would hunt me down, no matter what. She wanted me that badly.
