Morgan roared with fury, slashing at the enemy with furious speed. The dragon was faster than he was, but only just, and Morgan whipped his body around to cut at the dragon with the downward fall of his tail.
That connected, Morgan's tail across the other dragon's ribs, and his opponent plummeted a good ten feet in the air before righting himself. Morgan waited a half-second to see if his enemy would flee, and when he didn't, he dove in again.
He couldn't afford to be careful. He couldn't afford to let this play out. He could already feel the pain screaming through his right shoulder, and if anything, it seemed to spread faster this time. He had been carried upwards on pure adrenaline and fear, and now he could see that that had likely gotten him through the first fight as well. When that panic and fury leaked away, it pulled back to reveal a dragon crippled in a fight that had happened almost eighty years ago.
No. Don't think about that. Fight him. Fight him. If you can't, if Harper gets hurt, it will be your fault!
His dragon screamed at that, and Morgan opened his fanged mouth to hiss a direct spray of hot steam at his opponent. He was faltering, his wing stuttering over every fourth beat, but his aim was as true as it ever was. His steam caught the dragon on the side of the neck, and he wasn't sorry in the least for what might have been a fatal blow.
“Leave!” he bellowed, his voice rough and hoarse. “Leave, or I will kill you!”
There was no elegance to the threat, nothing to it but desperate fury, but somehow, it managed to get the point across. The attacking dragon wheeled around, flying straight north without a look back.
With a vicious satisfaction, Morgan saw the steam rising from the wound he had inflicted. There was a moment, a terrible moment, where the only thing that he wanted to do was to give chase. He wanted to make sure that that dragon wouldn't come upon them unawares again in the most final way possible.
His dragon bayed for vengeance, and Morgan might have given in if his right wing hadn't stuttered once last time, and then gave way entirely. It refused to obey the frantic commands of his mind or his body, and a moment after that, he found himself diving towards the earth.
No, no, n …
He spread his left wing, hoping to glide at least part of the way down, but the earth was rushing towards him far too quickly, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Harper break from cover, running towards him.
Oh Harper, no, he thought, and then he hit the ground with a thunderous quake.
Chapter Fifteen
∞∞∞
Harper watched the sky battle with her hands over her mouth to keep from crying out. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wished she could simply step back and take in the beauty of it, two legendary monsters twisting around in each other in feats of deadly daring and fury.
Of course she couldn't; that was Morgan in the sky, and every time he faltered, every time the other dragon struck out at him, she had to stifle a scream.
She could see clearly now how much trouble he was in. They were evenly matched in size, but where the other dragon moved smoothly, there was something stilted about Morgan's movements. He was stiffer, slower, and her heart almost stopped when the other dragon lashed out with a clawed hand intending to open his throat.
Harper exhaled in almost overwhelming relief when the other dragon turned tail and fled, but that relief only lasted a moment before Morgan fell through the sky. For a second, Harper thought that he intended to land, but from the limp way his left wing fluttered, she realized that, no, this was a fall.
Beyond things like hauling around forty-pound bins of fabric and twelve-hour sewing marathons, Harper had never considered herself athletic. However, athletic or not, she was somehow clear of the ditch and sprinting across the open ground towards the falling dragon in a heartbeat. There was an appalled moment where she realized she had absolutely no idea what she would do, how in the world to break his fall or to help him as he was, and then as he had before, Morgan fell to the earth as a human. She skidded to a stop at his side, falling down hard on her knees.
“Morgan? Morgan, speak to me, Morgan…!”
This time, his eyes were closed, and his face was as pale as bleached linen. Falling back on some half-remembered first aid, she felt for his pulse. For a moment, she thought she couldn't feel anything, but then she found it, strong and steady as far as she could tell. He was breathing without problems, nothing seemed broken, and then she was stuck.
“Morgan,” she said, trying to keep herself from both tears and hysterical laughter, “Please. Please get up. You are going to absolutely hate it if I have to drag you through the woods and back to the car. Please.”
Morgan showed no sign of getting up at all, and Harper forced herself to be calm. She had to think. If Morgan didn't get up soon, she had to do something. She could not – would not – sit by helpless while he was unconscious.
He was her mate.
A thought occurred, and she patted his pockets. It made made her blush a little to handle him so intimately, and that was how she knew that she was likely at least in a bit of shock from everything that had happened.
“Sorry, babe,” she murmured. “I'll make it up to you later, all right?”
She found his phone, and wonder of
