The Cursed King by Abigail Owen

Chapter Sixteen

Angelika wasn’t sure if the screams in her head actually made it out of her throat or not. She sprinted after Airk, who’d moved with inhuman, even un-dragon-like speeds—more like a vampire than anything.

The dragon shifters beat her to the broken window and were already staring downward by the time she got there. Pushing her way through bodies with frantic hands, she leaned over, careful to avoid the jagged edges of the knee-high ledge left by the remaining wall. But she couldn’t see him. No plummeting bodies, no dragon wings. Nothing but a tall chasm—a chamber, really—not round but shaped with the ins and outs of the mountain itself.

Mös happened to be standing beside her. Without thinking, she clutched his arm. “Where’d they go?”

Please, gods, don’t let him be dead.

The Beta’s answer didn’t help, though. “Brock shifted and took Airk outside.”

Outside. Oh gods. To what? Rend him into pieces in front of anyone who cared to watch? She jerked her head around, looking over the shocked faces of the men and women with her. Someone had to stop him, but no one was following.

“Get me out there,” she ordered.

Mös frowned, white-blue gaze scanning her face. “It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care.”

Something that might have been anger rippled over his features. “I won’t sign my death warrant with Pytheios by helping you now.”

Cowards. Fucking cowards. All of them.

“The rest of you abandoned Airk once, but I won’t. Not ever.”

But she could see in the Beta’s face that he wasn’t going to budge. Which meant she’d have to force his hand.

“You want to keep me safe to hand me over to your new leader? Fine. Then you’d better be fast.”

Before he had time to do more than frown in confusion, she vaulted the low wall, throwing herself into the abyss, turning onto her back in the air—thankful she’d gone with Skylar to learn to skydive, because whoa—so that she could see the horror twisting his face as she fell away.

For a heartbeat, she regretted the rash move as he didn’t budge. But then it worked. Mös pitched himself after her, shifting with remarkable speed. She wasn’t even halfway down to the atrium floor before he caught up to her, snatching her up in his massive talons, careful not to slice her with the edges of claws built to rend through diamond-hard dragon scales.

This was not how she’d pictured any of this visit going. That was for damn sure.

Angelika turned in his grasp and wrapped herself around one digit, watching where they went. Mös didn’t stop their headlong plummet until the last moment, flaring his wings and shooting them over the tops of shops and the marketplace that took up the base of the mountain, similar to the Ben Nevis setup. Then out across the hanger and training area before bursting into pristine blue skies surrounding a mountain bounded by more mountains.

Angelika didn’t bother with her surroundings, though. Instead, she was busy searching all around her, everywhere not blocked by the clotted-cream-colored dragon carrying her, searching for Brock and Airk. Brock, mostly, who would be bigger. Based on his eyes, he’d be a gold so dark he might look like antiqued bronze. In these skies, he should be easy to spot.

Please don’t have already killed him.

Below them, more white dragons poured from the mountain. The Curia Regis had followed. Maybe others.

“Tell them to find Brock,” she yelled at the Beta. “Get Airk away from him—”

A sound that she’d never in her life heard screeched from somewhere out in front of her, lower to the ground. A sound of pure agony ripped from the throat of a man.

“There.” Mös’s voice sounded in her head as he tipped his wings. “On the ground.”

Wind rushed around her, stealing any further sounds she might have caught as she searched the ground in that direction. She couldn’t see anything other than trees and mountain below until a patch of dark brown started to move. What was vaguely difficult to make out at first transformed gradually in her sight into wings, then a tail, until finally Brock lifted off from the ground.

“Do you see Airk?” she asked Mös.

“No.” Pause. “Seven hells.” He tipped his wings, turning them back toward the entrance, away from where Brock and Airk were.

“Wait!” Angelika tried to turn in his grasp, but he tightened around her, not letting her move. “Where are you going? Airk—”

“Dead. Brock is coming for you, and I’m not getting caught between a dragon and his prize.”

Dead? Airk was…dead?

Angelika stilled in Mös’s talon, eyes closing tight against the detonation of sorrow that hit her heart so hard she thought it might stop beating altogether. “Are you sure?” The question came out small.

“I didn’t see him, but there’d be no other reason Brock would leave him.”

The old dragon was right. Angelika dropped her forehead against the leathery digit she was wrapped around, breathing through her nose, trying to keep her head even as everything inside her was splintering, shattering with cataclysmic force. This was too much. Too many sacrifices. How could she do this without Airk beside her, keeping her out of trouble while she dragged him headlong into it?

Mös landing on the outcropping that turned into the large indoor platform jerked her out of her agony, if only for a second. She needed to take Brock down. She couldn’t be taken. She’d fix that first, then mourn when the danger was past.

Released by Mös, she stepped back on shaky legs and lifted her gaze. “Please,” she begged.

Scaled brows drew down over one large dragon eye facing her.

“You’ll have the backing of my sisters and their kings. Three clans behind you. Don’t let him have me, and you have my word.”

The white dragon shook his head, but there had been a smidge of hesitation.

“Do you really want a gold dragon on your throne? Is that what is best for this clan?”

The eye she could see went hard, then lit with the fires of fury. Suddenly Mös pivoted, wings out, blocking her from Brock’s view, and blasted a challenge at the gold dragon now visible in the skies. At the same time, more white dragons landed or appeared from behind her, lining up on the Beta’s right and left and behind her, surrounding them both. All with wings out, presenting a united front.

Airk. I wish you could see your kin. They only needed a chance. Even Mös.

She’d done nothing to earn this loyalty beyond being who she was and the promise she’d made, but she vowed that she would in that moment. Even without Airk.

A notion that wrapped around her heart like a clamp, and the fates were turning the screws tighter and tighter.

“Where are you, little firebird?”Brock’s voice sounded in her head.

Angelika shifted closer to Mös’s leg, trying to stay out of sight, listening for Brock flying overhead as he searched for her under the veil of dragon wings.

A shadow filtered through, passing close by. The white dragons held their positions. Brock would have to have a death wish to try to get her out from under them.

“She’s mine.” He was speaking to all the dragons now. “Release her to me, and maybe I’ll convince the High King to let you live—”

A new horrendous sound shattered the stillness, coming from below them down the side of the mountain—agony and terror and fury.

Angelika’s heart jump-started as though she’d been shocked back to life.

Airk.

He was alive…and no longer human.

…

The sound of Airk’s dragon blasted from his body on a wall of anguish and fury. Because he’d heard. Lying on the ground, out cold, Airk’s dragon had still heard Brock’s claim. The gold dragon was going for Angelika.

And Airk’s dragon responded, wresting control from an unconscious Airk, the violence of it yanking him out of the void and right into pain. He flipped over to his hands and knees, vomiting blood. Brock had cut him, but the shifting of his body was holding the injury together with scales and somehow healing him faster, making it the least of his problems.

The shimmering of his vision, the glitter of pure white scales, told him that much.

Airk closed his eyes, not breathing steadily, not focusing on holding his control, none of that. Fuck all that. He could die on the ground in a pathetic human heap, leaving Angelika with people he didn’t trust for protection from what was coming for her. Or he could use the only weapon at his disposal.

Himself.

With another heave, blood pouring from his mouth, he gave in. Ceded control and let his dragon take over. Rip from his body like a cannon shot.

He’d seen other dragons shift before. Theirs came on in a silent rush that didn’t appear painful. His soul should stay in place as his physical form shifted around his essence—everything human about him, including his clothes, should be absorbed into his new shape.

But this…this was like being flash heated in fire, forged by agony. As though his dragon was shredding his way out of the human half of himself. Another roar clawed its way from his throat as he grew to massive proportions, his perspective adjusting so rapidly his vision blurred. Already on all fours, he felt his claws gouge long marks in the mountainside as his talons curled and fisted with the torment of the change.

Eyes open now, his perspective changed, allowing him to see over the tops of the trees. His sight sharpened, and he could make out details of the dragons protecting Angelika miles away and the bronze bastard overhead. Rage blasted through every single nerve ending, and Airk lost himself to the dragon, any part of him still human melding into the beast.

All emotion, all control.

He unfurled the wings tucked against his back, and before the full transformation had completed, he launched himself into the air. He’d never flown a day in his life, but the dragon took to the air like he’d been born there.

Not yet fully shifted, he finished the details as he flew—scales both malleable and hard as diamonds, so white they glinted opalescent in the sunlight with all the colors of the rainbow, long tail trailing behind him like a rudder, razor-sharp teeth, spiked ridges along his back.

In this form, his sense of smell honed to a greater degree, and Angelika’s sunlight-warmed scent drew him, but the next scent hit—smoke and bitter ale—and his dragon zeroed in on the dragon threatening her life.

No one touched Angelika. No one.

Brock was already coming for him. Flying straight at him with murder in his eyes. Airk’s dragon blasted a challenge and flew faster.

Matched one on one, a white dragon should be no opponent for gold, who were brutishly large and good only for pulverizing, while white dragons, who were longer and leaner, were pretty flyers who could go longer distances. More than that, Airk was untrained and untried.

But Brock didn’t count on dealing with a feral fucking dragon.

They clashed with a boom that rang out through the skies, but Airk’s dragon was smarter than he’d given the creature side of him credit for. From deep inside, he watched in fascinated horror as, rather than attempt to take the gold dragon down in his turf of the sky, Airk’s dragon pulled in his wings and turned himself into dead weight.

Brock’s attack turned from beating against Airk to mortally wound to trying, at first, to slow them down, then trying to let go. Except, while the gold dragon had been distracted with blood lust and then survival, Airk’s dragon had wrapped his tail around Brock’s like a dog could wind a leash around its human’s legs.

Brock thrashed and beat at him, trying to get to Airk’s underbelly or his gizzard, where the scales were easier to slice open. But Airk had been beaten before. Even in his human form, he knew how to self-protect. Apparently, his dragon had paid attention, curling in on himself to present only the spiked back, and the gold dragon couldn’t land a blow.

The problem was, Airk’s dragon was so determined to kill Brock, he was blocking other instincts for self-preservation. Airk could feel the creature letting go and readying himself to ride this to the ground.

Seven hells. He’d kill them. The rage would kill them both.

Flip over,Airk willed his animal half.

Nothing.

The ground was rushing at them. They had seconds at most.

Flip. Over.He was yelling now at the creature he’d become.

Still no response.

If you flip and survive, you can rip into this fucker. Leave a message for any dragon who ever thinks to come after her.

His dragon snarled in his head, and Airk couldn’t tell it even heard until the last moment, ground screaming up at them, when it stuck out a wing that caught the wind and whipped them over so hard his long neck twisted harshly, pain splintering down his back. Even flaring his own wings and Brock’s already out, they hit the ground with bone-crushing force, and Airk feared the split in his human body might open up from the impact, spilling his guts all over the place.

But his dragon was too enraged to fear anything.

Before they’d even finished plowing into the ground, he reared back, then tore into Brock in an attack both violent and vicious. And out of control. He shredded through the gold dragon’s scales until he exposed skin, then went at him with teeth and talons, rending bone and meat from body until the pulp in front of him wasn’t even identifiable as a once-living creature.

And all Airk could do was watch from inside.

A shadow passed overhead, near enough that Airk’s dragon simultaneously snarled and cowered, blocking his kill with tail and wings and body like a bird of prey.

We’re dead.

They’d be labeled feral and a danger to all around them, killed on sight. And maybe that needed to happen.

“Oh my gods, Airk.” Angelika’s voice penetrated both for him and his dragon, and his dragon jerked his head up, almost frantically searching for her, only to find her clasped in Mös’s talons in the sky, like a bird in a cage, staring down at them.

Not in horror, of course, because this was Angelika. Airk wasn’t remotely surprised by the combination of compassion and fascination reflected in her features, her white-blue eyes wide. He should be frustrated with that kind of reaction, but fuck if he wasn’t rigid with the tension of need. Instantly.

His dragon felt exactly the same, though.

“Stay away!”Airk shouted at her.

“Put me down,” she said, but not to him—to the Beta.

The older dragon hovered in the air, not lowering as she’d asked.

Airk’s dragon growled a warning to the man. Airk growled his own warning—to Angelika. His creature could kill her without blinking. She needed to stay away. Far away.

Except his dragon growled again, this time leaving his kill to posture.

“If you don’t want him to do the same to you,” Angelika said, still addressing the dragon holding her, “I suggest you set me down.”

With visible reluctance, Mös did so, maintaining a healthy distance from Airk. But Angelika threw personal safety to the wind and, as soon as her feet touched the ground, ran his direction, stumbling over the rocks and through the trees in her haste.

“Stay back!”he yelled at her again, trying to use telepathic communication, but his dragon was blocking him.

Meanwhile, his dragon stood still, muscles quivering, breath blowing heavily in and out of his nostrils. Airk couldn’t get a read on him—bloodlust and frenzy? Or the need to be near her? Both were equally possible.

Don’t hurt her.

His dragon ignored him because Angelika had reached an outcropping of rock, standing out from the trees like a damned pedestal, as though the mountain was raising her to him. Airk’s dragon lowered his head, and her eyes grew wide as he neared.

“Please don’t eat me,” she whispered.

Nowshe decided to be scared? But his dragon, though still trembling, stopped just short of touching her.

“Airk, gods.” She reached out a tentative hand and put it to his snout, and his dragon actually leaned into her touch. “You’re alive. Are you hurt?”

The damn animal might’ve purred, except Angelika suddenly gasped, making it jerk back.

Then, with zero warning, she burst into brilliant, red-gold flames.