They sprang apart and lunged for one another. On this pass, Solar planted his claw directly over Dalyer’s heart. He dug in. He felt his claws break through the layer of scales, to the flesh beneath. He felt one of his claws scrape bone. He felt something soft and hot spill over his claw. Dalyer gave a vicious, rotting roar. Leaning forward, the tyrant king clamped his jaws directly over Solar’s neck. Solar’s vision tunneled as he felt something squeeze tight around his life. He felt Dalyer break his skin. There was no more air. There was only crushing. There was only a tight leash and his life, too short. The prophecy that O had given him echoed through his head. This was it. His wings kept him in the air only through muscle memory.
His vision was darkening as he lost air to his brain. Solar felt his own blood melting out of him, into the mouth of his enemy. Fuck the prophecy. He couldn’t die here. If he died here then so did Zara. He had to fight. He had to fight for Zara.
Zara.
Solar blinked his eyes because suddenly there was Zara. Her gray scales reflecting the blue sky around her. She was rising through the air in her dragon form. Pumping her gorgeous wings. An expression of pure, fierce hatred on her refined dragon face.
Zara planted one enormous claw on the top of Dalyer’s head. The blood-red dragon reflexively unhinged his jaw from Solar’s neck. Solar gasped for air and fought to stay in the air. His life flooded back to him in great, delicious gulps of cold air.
And then something happened that would change Solar for the rest of his life. Zara cranked back Dalyer’s neck so that he had to look right at her. Solar watched the woman he loved shoot hatred into the eyes of his mortal enemy. And then she opened her mouth and exploded. A river of fire poured out of Zara’s throat. Straight into Dalyer’s face.
Her fire was white with heat, purple at the edges and orange in the middle. This was no campfire, bubbling away. This was pure weaponry, plummeting out of her mouth with the force of a hurricane. Solar had never seen her look more beautiful.
Dragon fire was extremely rare. It only happened in the rare circumstance in which one dragon had to protect their true mate. It was the fiercest of all weapons.
Dalyer screamed in mortal pain before he spiraled back to the ground. Solar and Zara followed him there, both of their claws drawn.
“Look!” Keiko screamed. Still hovering over top of Javi, she nodded toward the sky. On one side, a wall of Surgere were headed toward them. At least forty dragons.
On the other side was an ocean of the king’s army. Five minutes distance. Hundreds if not thousands of dragons.
“We have to get them out of here!” Keiko screamed again. She was dancing back and forth between Javi, unconscious and foaming at the mouth, and O, bleeding profusely and moaning in pain.
Solar stalked toward where Dalyer had fallen. He was going to end this now.
“No!” Zara grabbed him by the wing. “The army is too close. We have to get O and Javi out of here or they’ll kill us all.”
Glancing back at the sky and seeing how fast the army was approaching, Solar cursed under his breath. O groaned again and that made the decision for Solar. Ducking one shoulder under O and one under Javi, with the women on either side, the dragons awkwardly lifted into the air, the injured ones dead weight on their backs. The injured bunch flew back toward the Surgere, refusing to look behind them at the army that gained and gained.
But once they reached the Surgere and there were other dragons to carry his injured comrades, Solar did turn and look. The ocean of militarized dragons had stopped. They fell into line at just about the place that Dalyer had fallen.
They awaited orders. But the king wasn’t giving them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The trip back to the jungle was the hardest two days of Zara’s life. And that was saying a lot. She’d had a lot of bad days. Javi had gotten better. Much better. He was even flying on his own, although the pace they were setting was too much for him. He had to be assisted by other dragons for much of it.
The Oracle, on the other hand, was still unconscious. Zara wasn’t the most trained nurse, and she certainly wasn’t a surgeon, but she didn’t think it would be possible to mend his wing. Which meant he wouldn’t be able to fly again. A dragon who couldn’t fly. They very idea of it struck her heart cleanly into two pieces.
Keiko ended up staying with the Oracle in a small town with a surgeon. One who had worked with the Surgere before. If he could be saved, it would be there. Neither Solar nor Zara had wanted to move on. They’d wanted to stay with the Oracle.
But in the end Solar had insisted they go home. Back to their jungle camp. They were all extremely weakened, by the journey and the battle, and they needed to go home. Regroup and recover. Keiko would stay with him.