Page 12 of Feathers and Scales

Daxton strode onto the asphalt as Sarah relayed their destination to a young male dragon with bleached blond hair.

Grumbling, Daxton tried not to clench his fists. Percy had saddled them with an chauffeur, or really, a spy.

The kid turned, eyes glued to the ground as Daxton approached. “Nice to meet you, Chief Dyamur,” he said. “My name’s Johnathan, and I’ll be your driver today.” He rocked on the balls of his feet, his hands twined behind his back. “Can I inquire why you need to go to the university?”

“No.” His jaw locked as he gave Sarah a low-key questioning glance. She hadn’t told him about their destination, though it seemed Miss Tagalong roused from her meditation long enough to relay the information.

Sarah crushed the dragon journal written by Centurion Cornelius they had found on his plane against her chest, avoiding Johnathan’s gaze.

Johnathan stared at her with narrowed eyes and rushed to the front passenger door. Daxton snapped his hand up, stopping the younger male. “I got it.”

Sarah was more receptive to Johnathan opening her door, and she climbed into the back. Silence suffocated the vehicle. Johnathan sat with his shoulders hunched in the driver’s seat beside Daxton. From his meekness, Daxton surmised that Percy meant to trick Daxton into a sense of security by sending someone nonthreatening. He wasn’t fooled. He’d still have to be careful around the kid, but his raging dragon was going to make that difficult.

With the overpowering tension, Daxton didn’t protest when Johnathan rolled down his window even though cool air blasted from the vents. Only so many unhappy dragons fit in a sedan.

When they arrived at a parking lot next to an apartment complex, Johnathan’s hands shook as he opened Sarah’s door. Daxton’s emotions were too frayed to care about comforting one young dragon. Their kind didn’t gain strength by being timid under a chief’s anger. If Johnathan had Daxton’s dragon, the pressure to shift would have torn the kid’s control apart. As it was, only fear kept his beast corralled.

“Where to now?” Daxton whispered to Sarah.

She nudged him to follow her, and a prickling along his spine made him glance back. Johnathan intended to shadow them.

“Stay in the car,” Daxton snapped.

The youngster fled back into the vehicle, keeping his eyes downcast.

Sarah sighed beside him. “We didn’t need a tail, but you’re going to get Percy’s cavalry called on us. Come on.”

He smoothed his fingers over his hair, trying to calm the frustration in his body before he followed her. College-aged kids milled around the recently developed apartment building, looking in their direction. Sarah headed straight to the elevator as if familiar with the layout.

He avoided his reflection in the elevator’s metallic walls, fearing his dragon’s slitted eyes might stare back at him. His dragon paced with a sense of longing fast turning into irritation at the blocked link. Sarah’s clenched hands whitened with nerves as she squeezed the opening of her scrub top.

Once they arrived at the fifth floor, she hurried down the hall. He took long strides to keep up with her. Sarah knocked on an apartment door.

A person with a saccharine-sweet, human spirit energy came to the door but didn’t open it.

“Can I help you?” A male voice with a British accent asked from the other side.

Sarah cleared her throat. “Hello Simon, can you help me find my Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau publication?”

The door swung open before Daxton could ponder Sarah’s words.

“About bloody time.” The young man with boyish features stepped back from the door, curly brown hair framing his face. “What happened? Who are these people?”

Sarah stepped inside the modern-styled dining room and Daxton followed. The lanky young man in a fashionable jacket and green pants eyed him up and down with assessing brown eyes before slamming the door shut.

“My name’s Sarah. I’ve been helping your friend…” Her eyebrows pinched together as if receiving a message internally. “Is her body safe?”

Her body?Daxton felt just as confused as Sarah looked.

“Yes. I took all the precautions. Pardon me, Sarah, as I speak with Izzy.” The man stamped his hands on his hips. “You’re at a random hospital. Now tell me what’s going on.”

A shift of energy crackled against Daxton’s skin, and his Insight picked up metal, purity, and guilt. Miss Tagalong’s familiar orb of yellow light flew from Sarah’s body. As the woman materialized into the room with a slight ethereal glow to her dressed form, the breathwhooshed from his lungs. He longed to touch her face to see how real she felt, and his dragon’s pawing became insistent with more claws, stinging his head.

She hunched on her way to a chair at the four-person table and sat, meaning that her injury hiding beneath a simple blue top had not fully healed. His protective instinct raged, but the barrier along the link kept him from pulling her toward him.

“An Archfiend attacked me,” she said.

That must be what she calls a Tattered One.