Page 57 of Knotted By the Triad

“Um... Nothing.”

I had to stop talking out loud to my inner dragon. His arm tightened around my shoulders. My dragon practically rolled around inside me like a happy cat. We reached the house. The front door was locked. I looked at Daemin.

“Damn it. We don’t have the key,” I told him.

His eyes were barely open, sweat covered his forehead, and his skin still felt frighteningly cold against mine.

“Please tell me you have a key hidden somewhere around here. Under a rug maybe.”

He shook his head, then pulled his arm from around my shoulders. For one terrifying second, I thought he was falling, and I grabbed for him. Instead, Daemin braced himself against the door and raised one hand toward the lock.

Dark scales appeared over his fingers. I watched as his nails lengthened into black claws, his dragon rising just enough to partially transform his hand. His breathing became harsher from the effort.

He slid the tip of one claw into the lock, twisting it. There was a faint click. Then another. The lock released. I stared at his hand as the claws slowly receded. Daemin had just picked a lock with a dragon claw. For a few seconds, all I could do was look at him.

“Okay,” I finally said. “That was impressive.”

A weak smile touched his mouth before his legs gave out. I caught him against me with a grunt.

“And now show-off time is over. Come on.”

I pushed the door open and helped him across the threshold. Moonlight filtered through the windows, giving me just enough light to make out dark furniture, shelves lined with books, and a few paintings on the walls. Thankfully, I spotted a couch in the sitting room.

“That's as far as we're going.”

Daemin glanced toward the hallway as if he might argue.

“Don't even think about suggesting a bedroom. I am not carrying your giant ass another foot farther than necessary.”

“Giant?”

“Focus.”

I got him to the couch and lowered him onto it as carefully as I could. The second his weight left me, my knees nearly buckled from relief. Daemin sank against the cushions, his eyes closing.

I took a moment to check his wound again, trying to remember if anything about this had been in the book. I leaned in closer. Wait a minute. This was mentioned in the book. This shard was part of a bigger crystal that originated in the Runeborne Kingdom.

In the book, the magical kingdom of Runeborne was allied with the dragon kingdom of Ashborne. In the magical kingdom, its people spelled crystals to perform different kinds of magic and sold them for profit.

Some crystals created portals. Some made people invisible. Others created storage spaces that could hold or hide things. What the crystal did depended on the spell placed inside it, but the magic itself was contained within the crystal.

Damn it. I only have one shard left.

That was what the smuggler had said in the forest before he’d spotted us. Oh, shit. Okay. It was coming back to me now. The smugglers worked with witches who sold invisibility crystals and golem warrior crystals. I’d forgotten all about the golems. Damn, I should’ve warned the alphas about that.

The smuggler had stabbed Daemin with a shard from one of those crystals. The shard itself wasn’t poisoned. But some crystals only worked when you broke them. And this one was already broken.

So, its magic was seeping out, and right now, that magic was seeping into Daemin, making him weak. The fragment pulsed. Another blue line crept beneath Daemin's skin. My stomach dropped. The magic was still coming out of it.

“Daemin, I have to take this out,” I warned, knowing he probably couldn’t hear me.

I was surprised when his eyes drifted open. “Okay, mate. Do what you have to do.”

There he goes with that mate stuff again.

“Um,” I started, flustered. “I can't just yank it out without something to stop the bleeding. I need water. Cloth. Bandages. A nurse. A doctor. Some liquor.”

He chuckled. “I don’t have a nurse or a doctor. But the rest is in the kitchen. Including liquor.”