Ember (The Dragao 1)

I tipped my head back and roared a ground-shaking sound, flames bursting forth from my anger. I let my fire spew in a brilliant arc of light and heat and destruction.

I heard my mate cry out from my rapturous sound and picked up on the male gasping in fear. I swooped down, a laser-eyed focus on the male who was now staring up at me with wide eyes, his body covering my mate’s. Another explosion of sound left me that he still dared to touch her, to be so close to her.

She’s mine! She’s ours!

My female watched me as well, the shock and fear clear on her face.

Protect her. Kill the male touching her.

Thunderous sound after thunderous sound left me, the fire in the pit of my belly churning and growing hotter. I’d roast the human male alive for daring to look at my mate.

At the thought of killing him, a sadistic pleasure filled me, the pumping, drumming roar of sound a continuous noise from my throat. My small female covered her ears and cried out, and I hated that I was the cause of her discomfort and fear. But right now I was working purely on instinct, my dragon the driving force that took me lower and lower.

My great wings moved up and down as I landed on the ground, the claws on my hind legs digging into the red dirt. I let my forelegs become flush with the ground, lowered my head, and kept my eyes trained on the soon-to-be dead human male.

At the sight of my teeth bared, he fell off my mate and scrambled backward and farther away from my female. He was a coward. I could smell the stench of his fear filling my nose. I rumbled a low growl as I prowled forward, my steps slow, my body lowering to the ground as I went into attack mode. My barbed tail lashed back and forth with anticipation of bloodshed.

Everything in me was demanding I go to her, to pull her to my chest and take her to our den. I could protect her fully there. But the threat of this male was too great to ignore.

And the only thing that would calm me right now was blood being shed from the threat. I would get it tenfold from him.

6

Emma

A dragon. An actual dragon was mere feet from me, it’s body massive. Huge.

Monstrously… beautiful.

This beast, monster, creature, whatever you wanted to call it, was absolutely magnificent. And terrifying. And I couldn’t look away, couldn’t even breathe as it stalked toward Bryce. There was no other word for the way it slowly slinked forward, its huge body parallel with the ground, eyes trained solely on Bryce. Its barbed tail was twice as long as my body as it whipped back and forth aggressively, irritably.

Its body was the biggest thing I’d ever seen, seemingly as large as the mountains, just as hard and strong. Just as powerful.

It was covered in scales as it walked on all fours. Reds and oranges, iridescent yellows and whites on its entire body. It sported horns on either side of its head, thick ones that curved back, sharp at the ends and easily able to split someone in two.

And then there were its front and back legs, its paws bigger than my head, dark, razor-sharp claws tipping each of the five points. Its mouth was partially open as it growled low in Bryce’s direction, razor-sharp, serrated teeth flashing white. Deadly.

There were fangs protruding from its upper jaw, nearly as long as my forearm, saliva dripping off them.

And the entire time, Bryce scuttled backward, his legs and arms working in tandem as he tried to get away from the creature. His eyes were so wide there was no doubt this was his first real taste of fear.

I was moving back as well, my brain screaming to go fast, run hard. Get away! But my body didn’t feel actual fear as I watched the dragon come closer… and closer… and closer still.

And when the dragon was close enough to me that I could smell it, I felt myself relax further. It smelled… incredible. Like spice and heat and fire and all the things I didn’t know I’d been missing until this moment.

My body suddenly didn’t feel like my own. I was dizzy although I was sitting down. My heart was racing, yet it had nothing to do with fear. I was breathing harder, but it wasn’t from the exertion of running. I felt like I was drowning, and I wasn’t surrounded by water.

And when the dragon stopped and slowly turned its head in my direction, I stared into twin eyes that seemed as big as the moon, as dark as the night. I felt like nothing but getting lost in those black orbs.

The aroma that surrounded me—the one coming from the dragon itself—grew stronger, more concentrated. It seeped into my pores, and every time I inhaled, I took more of it into me until it was moving through every single cell in my body, every muscle right to my bone marrow, and kept going until it wove into the very makeup of who I was.