Thoughts of a certain hot tongue took me there for the sixth. No Dragona sex had ever felt like this—lightning zinging from the base of my spine to shoot through my dick, leaving me gasping and thrusting as I sprayed the rocks around me.
As my heart rate slowly returned to normal, it seemed that six was the magic number. I felt the Deranger relent, temporarily giving up on the nutzoid thoughts of sinking itself into the Dreambitch.
Ofmatingher.
My Dragon hadn’t given up on it, but my beast was less direct than my monster, more willing to bide its time. I embraced my wings with a sense of relief, and took to the sky.
I would go back to the academy and retrieve Fang. That meant facing the focus of all this chaos, but once it was done, I could decide what I was going to do from there.
So long as Brock and Isobel were free, my choices were limited. The assassin Dragon had made a good point by suggesting I stay at the academy—they would be unlikely to come after me there.
But I wasn’t about to join any fucking academy. Especially one withherin attendance.
I soared just below the clouds, looking down at the activity below. Legion Dragons and Sabres prowled the grounds around Isobel’s hideout, searching for clues to her whereabouts. I was sure the interior was even busier.
I wanted Isobel caught so I could roam the realms without looking over my shoulder. That’s all. Isobel’s carnage-strewn mission meant little to me.
As I debated vacating the premises, I swooped low over the palace. Those below looked up, and many watched me. They were warriors, after all. And the lack of trust went both ways.
The Watchers had built a gate in the trees just to one side of the courtyard. It fluoresced as I soared past—the traffic through it was almost nonstop. I observed the groups waiting to leave and decided to stay aloft until the activity slowed.
I banked, and the palace slid by beneath me. Behind it was the valley wall that housed the cave network. It rose above the building and extended back about a hundred dragon lengths before dropping off abruptly.
I had just decided to head back toward the gate when I spotted something. I reversed direction and dropped lower.
The early morning sun had been struggling to break through the clouds, but now it sent stray rays through. They revealed a hole in this side of the wall close to the ground—and just below it, the rays glistened on something else.
I could ignore it. They’d find it eventually, once they were done with combing through the palace itself. But the thought of Marcus, and his struggles with whatever the Isobitch had put inside him… Fucking hell.
And it tweaked my curiosity, too. Because I had no idea as to what I’d seen jumping through his fucking skin.
I turned and winged back over the wall and the palace, searching those below—
When I dove to the ground, the surrounding warriors all snapped to attention, assessing me for risk. I ignored them, landing with my customary screw-you thump.
While those further away crouched or drew their tailspikes, neither Talakai nor Tyrez even flinched. They just surveyed me with raised brows.
“Haves somethings to shows yous,” I said. Without waiting for a reply, I launched again.
Talakai joined me when he was only half transformed, and Tyrez was right behind him. They followed me to the far side of the valley wall, where I hovered over what I’d found.
I didn’t need to see their faces to sense their shock.
Bones.Thousandsof them. And worse.
We landed on a small rise that was relatively clear. And looked around us to carnage.
Without a word, we all shifted to human. There simply wasn’t enough room to walk through this as a Dragon, but we all were uneasy enough to keep our wings.
The smell was appalling, but not as bad as it could have been—the bodies had been partially burned, and the remains picked at by the local scavengers.
No one said anything as we walked among them. I’d seen carnage in my life—been the cause of most of it—but this was something else again.
Tyrez spun around and then pointed to a skull. “That’s a Tuluvian cave bear, I think.”
“I’ve counted five Wyverns so far. And a Karstian wolf.” Talakai’s wings were half-spread, an unconscious expression of his desire to leave this place in a hurry.
“How is she doing what she’s doing?” I growled. My gaze focused on a skeleton with long finger bones stretched out around the body, and a triangular skull—Wyvern. “She’s putting them into the Centaurs? But how?”
