Page 36 of Ashborne: Defiance

‘You go nowhere you say no, Firebird,’ she sent me.

Vane’s eyes widened as she extended her snout and bared her teeth, letting her breath puff over his face and blow his hair back. ‘If Piggy so strong, he can force me.’

I couldn’t help but grin. “I think he understands that,” I said, rolling my lips together to keep from laughing when he spluttered.

“What? What did she say?”

I would have answered him, but at that moment a huge dragon with pale, shimmering gold scales and dark eyes slipped out of the trees, easing across the small clearing until it stood facing Koa, behind Vane’s head.

I backed away, recognizing his dragon from the moment he’d landed between us on that first night. He was bigger than Koa, and loyal to Vane. I worried he’d be angry with her for pinning him.

But as Koa crooned and nudged him with her snout, he gave a low, deep rumble that shook the earth under our feet. A moment later, he made a strange noise in his throat.

Koa snorted once more on Vane, then lifted her foot, stepping back.

He scrambled to his feet, stammering at the gold dragon. My chest pinched because I didn’t want him to say bad things about Koa, who was just being protective.

But the male gave a short, sharp growl and Vane’s mouth closed so quickly his teeth clacked. His shoulders hunched a second later, and his expression turned dark.

Nerve chittered in my chest, but when he turned to face me, the gold dragon’s eyes stayed on him, not me.

His jaw rolled like he had something distasteful in his mouth, but then he sighed and his hands clenched at his sides.

“I’m sorry,” he said tightly.

I frowned. “For what?”

“You’re right,” he replied a moment later with a glance at his dragon. “Of course you have to stay with Koa. And Koa has to stay with Kham. And Kham is with me. You two are bonded just as strongly as we are. It’s not my place to ask you to separate from her.”

Then he looked at the dragon who snorted once, so hard that the leaves at Vane’s feet skittered. Then it turned and walked away. Koa crooned once to me, then followed him, while Vane stood, jaw jutting forward, glaring at his back like a child who’d been reprimanded.

When the dragons were gone, he reluctantly turned to face me again. “We both need to get clean,” he said coldly. “Then we’ll figure something out.”

13. From the Shadows

~ GRACE ~

I hated myself because I couldn’t stand to have Vane out of sight. I’d told him to wash first, because he’d had no chance throughout these awful days. But the moment he disappeared into the shadows, panic lit in my chest.

Before I knew it, I’d crept through the trees after him.

I went slowly to give him time, but the pinch in my chest didn’t ease until I’d squatted below the level of some bushes, twenty feet from the creek, and inched up to peer at him over the top of them, where my hair would be in shadow.

My first glimpse was shocking.

I’d expected to see Vane at the water’s edge, washing as I would, hunched over the stream. But to my shock, he stood with his back to me, knee deep in the water, fully stripped, one arm crossed over his body—the unseen hand cupping his privates, I assumed.

The morning sun gleamed on muscles, gilding his shoulders and striking blue sparks from his midnight-black hair, which was stringy with sweat and dirt. Yet, in this light, he was a gleaming raven. And his skin… Despite dirt, sweat, scars, and scrapes, the skin on his torso was warmed by suntan, even at this time of year.

The shocking part was the startlingly white buttocks and thighs. A distinct line circled his waist, and each of his legs, a few inches above the knee. Between those sun-dark lines, his skin was nearly as pale as mine.

It was a strange juxtaposition—the muscles and obvious strength set off by scars and minor injuries from the past few days. But the unmarred skin of his buttocks and thighs seemed vulnerable. An intimacy.

I watched, fascinated, as he must have changed his mind about the water, because he didn’t step in deeper. He let go of himself and squatted.

Thickly muscled thighs flexed as he lowered himself, the lines on his back rippled when he leaned forward to scoop water with both hands. But it was the startling appearance of a dangling sack of flesh between his legs that was all at once, so utterly primal, and so shockingly vulnerable, that made my heart leap into my throat.

His testicles swung. Like the little leather pouches the farriers wore at their waists full of nails for shoeing horses. Yet, they were a part of him.