Page 14 of Red Dragon’s Heart

No!

He fought, feeling his skin ripple, his bones break, his muscles bulge. He never won, but he always fought.

Even when the nightmares began.

The mission where this had happened, where he learned once again that even on earth, dragons weren’t invincible.

Images flickered through his mind like a film on fast-forward. Tristan Barnes, tall and slender with his long pale hair bound back, leading the team to rescue the white wolves from Grenadier Labs.

Breaching the compound walls. Clearing the cells of captives. Gathering computer drives and records. And that damn purple dragon, in human form.

It was so clear, every moment, happening in slow motion. Zakerek turning to fight him. Seeing him raise a fucking crossbow, like some medieval warrior. Watching the bolt hurtle through the air. Feeling it bury itself in his side, punching through skin and muscle with magical force.

And the other man laughing as Zak stared down at his side in disbelief, laughing as the bolt seeped burning poison into his bloodstream. Laughing as Zak pulled it out, knowing it was too late. The moment replayed over and over, that laugh haunting him.

He fought back to consciousness, trying to regain human form. He couldn’t hear his dragon—it was far away, obliterated by the beast, unable to help him. He was on his own, the way he’d always been, and he fought the way he always had.

But the monster was strong, and it was clever. It knew his rages and resentment, his pain and unhealable wounds, his deepest longings and hungers—and it used them against him.

Loneliness, terror, the black abyss of his lost clan, the knowledge that he’d never truly belong anywhere else. There was no place left for him in the world.

His body rippled again, and with a tearing of muscles and crack of bone, he Changed.

Maddie lay frozen on the cell floor, half-on, half-off the mattress, her back muscles screaming from her contorted position. Watching as the man who had kidnapped her—Zak, from the café—turned into a hideous monster.

She tried to move, but half her body was numb and unresponsive, as if she’d had a stroke. The purple creature—the dragon, she reminded herself, however unbelievable that was—it had somehow done this to her.

And she was trapped next to a creature from a horror movie.

His skin bulged and rippled, and he… erupted, into a part-human, part-reptile, part-werewolf thing, the size of a huge dog. It had a barrel chest that tapered to an impossibly slim waist, and powerful legs and arms that burst half the seams out of his clothes. It was covered in tiny red scales that moved like skin, and its snout was elongated like a wolf’s, with enormous, wickedly sharp teeth.

And its eyes. Glowing like flames, with slits for pupils.

It crouched on all fours, making strangled growling noises, looking all the more horrifying because it was still wearing human clothing.

Then it launched itself at the cell door.

Maddie flinched at the shuddering impact of its body against the bars. She expected the force to batter it straight through, but the cell door held. The faint light that coated the bars flared to life where it hit, like a force field in a sci-fi movie.

The creature howled in agony, but it did it again. And again. Maddie cringed each time.

Long thin welts appeared on its scaly skin, like the bars were burning it, but that only seemed to make it angrier. It was out of control, desperate to escape no matter what the cost.

Infuriated that it couldn’t, it tore around the cell, leaping at the two solid walls and pushing off, around and around. It hit the barred wall between them, and that one flared with light as well.

It seemed like such fragile protection.

The creature flung itself at the barred door again and then dropped to the floor. It still growled and twitched, unable to stay completely still, and its skin still bulged and moved, as if the man it used to be was trying to get out.

Maddie wanted to look away, to cover her eyes, to stop watching, but she could still barely move. Inch by inch she managed to heave her body onto the mattress, easing the cramp in her back.

But she still watched the thing Zak had become, fear warring with pity. She couldn’t stand to see any creature in that much pain and distress. Even a monster.

Was this what Eric had tried to do, making a deal on the dark web, to sell their research to people who would make regular humans into this? She remembered Zak’s joke about all-night parties. Was this what really happened, when he left the coffee shop at night?

She shivered.

Without warning, he launched himself at the cell door again, howling once more as the force field burned him.