Page 65 of Feralheart

The word came with images of me kneeling in mud, my hands slick with dragon blood, crushing herbs. Me running through the forest while a bonewailer shrieked. Me standing in a stable yard while a bucket spilled water across stone.

Moments I’d lived, seen through eyes that weren’t my own.

A name rose through the heat, not spoken but branded.

Selira.

The wild dragon. The one I’d freed. The one who’d circled overhead and dropped this scale that was burning a hole through my leg.

Claiming me.

The presence pulled, a hook fused to my spine, demanding I come. Now. Leave this stone tomb and rush to where she waited. A barbed thing, the tug reeled me toward something I couldn’t see. My hands remained on Lykor’s saddle horn, but part of me had been drawn through stone and distance to wherever the wild dragon waited.

Leave him. Come. Mine.

The command had weight behind it. Certainty. The way water knew which way to flow.

But Lykor’s terror was a scream in my heart, his body locked so tight I could feel his ribs straining. If I left, he’d die here. Alone.

I’d freed Selira from a trap. I wouldn’t abandon a different dragon to this one.

“I can’t,” I hissed through my teeth, speaking to a presence that had no ears, no body. “Not yet. I can’t.”

The presence retreated, leaving a hollow in my chest that ached worse than the burn on my foot.

Selira wasn’t angry I’d chosen Lykor. Selira was waiting. Giving me time to finish what I’d started with the broken dragon who’d never asked to be here.

Permission to come after.

This wasn’t a choice. It never had been. I’d been claimed whether I wanted it or not, whether it made sense or not, whether it was allowed or not.

Flames erupted ahead of us, and Lykor’s shriek echoed around me. He reeled up, his wings beating at a feverish pace, trying to escape certain death.

I had seconds to decide.

I couldn’t force him through this. Not when he’d already saved me once.

So I urged him down, and he landed on the sand, skidding sideways until his right side impacted with a boulder.

I slid off his spine, tumbling down to the ground. My boots hit sand that was already heating for the next eruption, and my decision was made.

We’d walk through together, or we’d burn.

Father would call this stupid. Silvie would call it a death wish. They’d both be right.

But watching Lykor’s body shake with pain, I couldn’t be the person who broke him further. Not even if it killed me.

A blaze radiated up through my boot soles, the runes getting ready to discharge beneath my feet.

The official’s voice boomed through the maze, amplified by magic. “Rider down.”

The crowd’s roar rushed through the stone channel, followed by calls for my death.

I ran to Lykor’s head and stroked his jaw, staring into his eyes.

“Stay with me,” I said. “Focus on me. Please.”

I gently tugged on his harness and urged him to follow.