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There.
My shoulders sag in relief.
“Legion.”
He doesn’t answer. I resist the urge to shake him awake.
“Legion,” I call, louder now.
Fear twists inside me.
I felt my head connect with his shoulder earlier. And then his wings touched my skin when he used them to save me, which means the fact that he’s unconscious might be from the fall—or it might be from the poison in my skin entering his bloodstream.
The idea that I might have just killed him leaves me sick and panicked.
“Legion!”
My scream is guttural, echoing around us and bouncing off the hills we’ve landed between.
A rumbling follows, and for a fleeting, hopeful second, I think Legion is waking. But then the ground beneath me trembles, and the rocks on the hill above us begin sliding. Horror dawns slowly then with terrifying clarity as the landslide worsens. Giant boulders are uprooted and careen toward the bottom of the cliffside where Legion and I wait like sitting ducks.
“Legion, wake up,” I call urgently.
Above me, enormous boulders bounce and roll at startling speeds. The rumbling grows louder. Closer. The ground beneath me cracks and fissures just as a boulder the size of an RV flies right toward my head.
Without thinking, I throw myself over Legion’s dragon form, hoping to shield him from the inevitable. Just before the boulder would have reached us, the ground beneath gives way. Suddenly, I’m weightless, both of us swallowed by the earth, falling, falling…
Chapter 34
Legion
Flying is my specialty. Falling is not. Throbbing pain across every inch of my body wakes me with a groan. Trying to get my bearings, I blink, my eyes taking longer than usual to focus. Still in dragon form, I’m on my back in a pile of rubble. My right wing is pinned beneath a large rock, and my ribs are screaming.
Rock walls surround me on every side. Above me, a small opening in the Earth suggests how I got here. It’s nearly completely sealed by large boulders, making the light in this cavern almost nonexistent.
Sifting through foggy thoughts, I try to connect how I got here. Last I remember, Tori came at me on the mountain. She touched me. Fuck, the poison. So far, there’s nothing in me to suggest I’m dying. Well, other than the pain of falling hard on my ass in this cavern.
Then I remember how we got here. We fell. I shifted to shield her from the fall and then?—
Fuck. Tori!
I see her several yards away, half-buried beneath a pile of rock and dirt. She doesn’t move. Determined to get to her, I force myself to sit up, groaning at the piercing pain in my wing as it’s stretched taut from my movements. Doubling back to the boulder pinning me, I shove it aside with a clawed hand and then hurry to Tori. The dirt and rock are easy enough to scrape away with my dragon’s claws.
Fear is an acid on my tongue, and I grit my teeth against my dragon’s resistance to shifting back to my human form. It’ll make the healing process twice as long and three times as painful, but I have to get to her. To feel her pulse against my hands.
When I get close, I see that her breaths are shallow and barely audible to my sensitive ears. The moment my scales are swapped for flesh, I begin carefully picking away at the rubble half-burying her.
“Tori,” I call.
She doesn’t move, and fear grips me harder.
“Tori.” I raise my voice, letting urgency creep in. Her pulse is there, but her eyes remain closed. I pull the rocks off her, scanning her for injuries. Beyond a few shallow cuts and scrapes, I don’t spot anything. Then, I notice her veins darkening beneath her skin. They go from blue to gray to black, and fear beyond anything I’ve known grips me, squeezing my heart until it threatens to break apart. In this moment, I know with absolute conviction that this woman is the only reason I’ll ever have to live. Without her, I am nothing.
“Tori.” My voice is hoarse, but even so, it echoes in the silence of the cavern.
There’s no heartbeat.
I realize with horror that her breathing has stopped.
