A familiar tingle ghosted down his spine.
Ivar’s attention snapped back toward the windows. Tilting his head, he called his magic. Heat rose in a powerful wave, setting his senses alight. He held onto the inferno-like rush, allowing it to gather strength, then let it roll. His sonar pinged. Static swirled between his temples. Mining the connection, he stared through the window glass into the backyard. With nothing more than a thought, he flung the double French doors open and stepped onto the narrow balcony. Cold air closed around him, bringing the fresh scent of midnight with it. He breathed deep, filling his lungs with the chill as he glanced to his right.
A hiss, warped by thick, damp air, slithered on the breeze.
Sensation thumped the inside of his skull. Pain sizzled between his temples. His brows snapped together. Oh shit. Something was off, wrong in a way he couldn’t place but knew held weight. A wagon full of it judging by the load of intense, terrible, and scary headed his way.
The wind picked up, howling in displeasure, ripping at the hem of his T-shirt. And still he waited, exposed beneath the night sky, wanting to know what caused the disruption as thunder rumbled and the moon disappeared behind thick cloud cover. As the horizon went dark, lightning forked, striking above the cityscape. Street lights faded in the flash and…
Movement flickered in his periphery.
Ivar drew a lungful of frosty air as a dark-gray blur streaked into view. Jesus fucking Christ. Hamersveld… moving like an inbound missile, coming in hot, dragging an electrical storm in his wake. More lightning cracked. Another round of thunder boomed. The male wobbling in midair, the angle of his wings all wrong. Christ, he was flying in way too fast. Was completely out of control. No way could the warrior land that way. Unless, of course, he wanted to snap his own neck.
Surprise took a nasty turn into concern. Disbelief whispered next, cranking holy shit into critical territory.
Oh, so not good. The Norwegian was in serious trouble.
Ivar could smell the singed scales and dragon blood. Both wafted on the updraft Hamersveld left in his wake. Which meant one thing. He’d been injured by the Nightfury, taken down a notch while fighting with Bastian’s water-rat beneath the surface of the water. In the stupid lake. Over the very HE female Ivar wanted caged and part of his breeding program.
Well, hell. Looked like he owed Hamersveld an apology for his unkind thoughts.
Another time, perhaps, ’cause…
Ivar cringed as Hamersveld wobbled, veering toward the beat-to-shit construction equipment that littered his backyard. A second later, the male fell out of the sky, landing without his usual grace. But worse? He skidded then rolled into a death spin, ripping a deep trench into the ground. Dirt mounded on either side of him. The jagged edge of his bladed tail caught a row of rusty oil tanks. The collision flipped him sideways. Steel banged into steel, the clang catastrophic in the silence. Calamity ringing in his ears, Ivar blinked, watching in disbelief as Hamersveld continued to skid, launching a loader skyward.
The thing crash-landed, scattering timber like toothpicks.
With a muttered curse, Ivar leapt over the railing and off the balcony. The chill of midnight rushed over him. Cold wind blasted his cheeks, blowing his hair back as he dropped three stories. He landed hard, knees rebounding toward his chest. Both hammered his breastbone, pushing the air from his lungs. Ivar ignored the burn and, not wasting a second, hauled ass across the backyard.
Frozen blades of grass crunching beneath his boots, he sprinted between two graders. Avoiding the sharp edges of twisted metal, he kept his gaze glued on Hamersveld. Chest heaving, shark-gray scales clicked with each movement. Laying in a tangled heap—wings bent at odd angles, horned head half buried beneath a mound of topsoil, huge talons twitching—blood seeped from a myriad of shallow cuts crisscrossing his torso. Not an issue under normal circumstances. Dragonkind healed quickly, the magic in their DNA closing wounds so fast they usually took care of themselves within hours. The problem here? It had been twenty-four hours since their showdown with the Nightfury pack and…
Jesus. The situation was anything but
What was his first clue? Hamersveld’s tattoo. Running along both sides of his jagged sawtooth spine, the tribal ink was glowing. Not its usual dark blue either… but bright frickin’ red.
The sight made Ivar’s stomach turn.
He approached anyway, keeping his pace slow and even, not wanting to startle the male. A downed dragon was a dangerous one. But one in pain? Even more so, and… yeah. No question. Hamersveld was in terrible pain. With the strange glow, he looked like he was on fire, flame eating him from the inside out. Something that wasn’t normal for a water dragon. Well, at least as far as Ivar knew. He and the warrior might have teamed up, but that didn’t mean he understood the propensities of a rare breed like Hamersveld.
The tattoo pulsed, beating in the frosty swirl, taking on a life of its own.
Ivar kept his feet moving, slipping between a couple of upended oil tanks. Keeping his tone soft, he murmured, “Hamersveld.”
“I’m here.” He laid a hand on the male’s scaled shoulder. Keeping his touch light, he examined a deep gash running along the side of the male’s neck. “What the hell happened?”
“Fen… injured. Nightfury assholes.” He coughed, then groaned through clenched fangs. “Sorry… had to leave fight. Needed to… feed him.”
Not following, Ivar frowned. “Who? Fen?”
Hamersveld nodded. A spasm rolled through him, making tense muscles quiver along his flank. Worry glimmered in the warrior’s gaze, and Ivar struggled to understand. Fen was a wren, a unique subset of Dragonkind. Light, fast, and vicious in a fight, the miniature dragons had been hunted to near extinction. Considered a sport, tracking and killing wrens had been big business. The practice had been outlawed by the Archguard over a century ago—and with so few wrens remaining, most of his kind couldn’t be bothered to hunt them anymore.
Humans, after all, made better prey.
“Where is the wren now?” Ivar asked.
“Safe… inside.”
The male’s head lulled in the dirt.
“What do you need?” Ivar jostled him a little, uncertain of the best tack to take. As a water dragon, Hamersveld had different needs than he did. “How can I help?”
“A female… must feed to keep Fen nourished. Need saltwater too.”
“Will a salt bath work?”
“Perfect.”
“I’ve got both inside the lair… all high-energy females. So shift,
With supreme effort, Hamersveld planted his webbed paw on the ground and pressed up. Muscles rippled. Shark-gray scales undulated beneath the faint glow of street lights. With a magical zap, he transformed, moving from dragon to human form. Blond hair matted with blood, he reached for Ivar. He didn’t hesitate, and slipping his arm around the male, hauled him off his knees to his feet. Hamersveld cursed as his bare feet touched down. Ivar offered no apology. He gritted his teeth around an f-bomb instead. Jesus, the SOB was heavy. Almost seven feet tall, the male’s bulk rivaled a WWE wrestler’s.
Great to have as backup during battle. Terrible to support while navigating the war zone that now constituted his backyard.
