Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
And right now, he belonged to Samuel alone.
After a lifetime of being outside and different, of being born somehow less than all the other members of his family, Samuel was the one riding a dragon. He was the one leading a team of dragons to find the Sousa Clan. He was the one doing big and great things without magic.
But this was all temporary, right?
Mages were practically crawling out of the woodwork now. It was only a matter of time before Dimitri found his fated mate at last—a mage who could work magic like they were supposed to. Not a broken nobody like himself, clinging to a fantasy that was likely to never come true. But if he didn’t cling, what kind of future was he looking at?
“Sammy?” Dimitri’s voice snapped him out of his dark thoughts.
He ripped his hand away from Dimitri’s scales and gripped the pommel in front of him tightly. “It’s Sam. I mean, Samuel.” Useless, useless thoughts.
Dimitri deserved a real mage. And even if Samuel were a real mage, it wasn’t like he’d want a dragon like Dimitri. Overprotective, pushy, annoying, sexy, goofy know-it-all. Definitely not the kind of dragon he’d choose for a mate.
“The terrain seems rough directly east. Let’s search a little to the south. We might find an easier route up the mountain that way,” Samuel shouted. He needed to get his mind on the job in front of him.
“Got it!”
Dipping his right wing, Dimitri turned them around in a broad circle, putting them in the direction Samuel had indicated. The green of the forest blurred and the wind wildly whipped his hair. Everything inside of Samuel was urging him to throw his hands up into the air and shout his joy, but he was trying to act like an adult. He was a scientist. A respected archeologist of mage studies. He was not the type to scream “Wheeee!” like a five-year-old, even if he really wanted to.
They couldn’t have gotten more than a dozen miles from where the Jeeps were parked when a giant fireball shot through the canopy and roared toward them. A bone-chilling snarl rippled up Dimitri’s throat as he wildly jerked them out of its path. The fireball passed harmlessly beneath Dimitri as the dragon placed his own body between it and Samuel.
“What the fuck!” Samuel shouted. What could have shot such a thing at them? It didn’t look like anything manmade. Was there a fire-breathing dragon down there who was pissed at them?
But that didn’t make any sense. The fire dragons were the German Burkhard Dragon Clan, and the Valerii clearly stated that the ice and fire dragons were on good terms.
A rogue dragon?
Samuel didn’t get the chance to ask Dimitri what was shooting at them, as two more fireballs rocketed in their direction. Dimitri smoothly dodged both, his long body wiggling almost snake-like between them. The ice dragon roared, sending a frozen blast in the direction of the fireballs. Trees were instantly coated in a thick sheet of ice. Branches snapped under the weight, crashing to the forest floor.
Samuel leaned over and stared down into the new opening in the canopy in time to see a monstrously long snake with glowing red eyes slithering across the pile of broken branches. The thing had to be at least fifteen meters long and as thick as a full-grown man.
Dimitri growled. “Shit. We pissed off a boitata.”
“A what?” Samuel called.
Before Dimitri could reply, another roar ripped through the air. Samuel twisted in his saddle to see a dragon quickly approaching them. While he was roughly the same size as Dimitri, his coloring was darker. Dimitri’s scales were a brilliant white, while this dragon’s scales were a pale cerulean blue.
“Who?”
Dimitri glanced around. “Vasily. He’s got our back.” Dimitri stretched out his wings, catching the wind to glide along as they waited for Vasily to reach them. As soon as the other dragon was soaring with them, Dimitri shouted, “Boitata.”
“Fucker,” Vasily snarled.
Whatever a boitata was, the thing was clearly pissed at them. Two more fireballs raced through the air, but the ice dragons had it covered. They banked in unison and shot back their own ice balls to collide with the fire in an explosion of ice, steam, and water.
“Yay!” Samuel cheered, thrusting his fists into the air. There was a shaking and a rumbling under him like Dimitri was laughing, but he didn’t care. This was just too cool. The two dragons shot some more icy blasts at the snake-like creature, sending the thing slithering into the dark shadows of the forest.
As one, the dragons banked and turned toward the Jeeps, sweeping the region from a different direction. Samuel scoured the area, making some mental notes of a potential path they could take before they descended.
Dimitri landed lightly as if he weighed nothing more than a feather and settled on the ground, while Samuel detached the safety harness from the saddle. Vasily had barely touched the dirt when he shifted into his human form.