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“Well that just means you’ll have to find us quickly,” Everett said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Claire barely kept in the groan when he moved away and he smirked at her. “Later, little mate. The faster you find us the faster we can get on to other things.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Claire promised, biting her lip for a whole new reason. Everett’s eyes darkened and he gave her a wink before clapping his hand on Desmond’s shoulder and guiding them towards the cousins.
To distract Claire while they waited, Malcolm had her take her daggers out and go through the warm-up forms he had first taught her at the Academy. Moving through the familiar stretches and footwork, Claire felt her body relax and take deeper breaths. The warm-up forms barely phased her now. She really had come so far since the first few weeks at the Academy, this training exercise would be challenging but nothing she shouldn’t be able to handle.
She kept that same optimism as the sand hourglass ran out of sand and she and Malcolm started in the tunnels. She stayed a half step behind him, as he stalked down the tunnel. His sword was outstretched before them, angled so he would be able to protect both of them from a forward attack.
The familiar darkness wrapped around her like a heavy blanket as Malcolm bypassed the torches at the tunnel’s entrance. The lack of torches would help keep their location hidden. Claire’s eyes adapted quickly as she walked on silent feet behind Malcolm’s broad back. She carefully pulled a small strand of magic up and cast it out in a light circle, pushing into the tunnel ahead of them and the rock around them. The Dragon Mountains were a maze of tunnels and caves.
She sensed their first attacker waiting twenty feet ahead and pushed the image to Malcolm who gripped his sword tighter. He stopped when they were about ten feet away and crouched down, picking up something from the ground and tossing it about five feet in front of them. A small pebble clattered against the rock and the dragon warrior lying in wait for them lunged towards the pebble. Malcolm waited half a beat until the dragon warrior lost his balance when he didn’t encounter them, and simply knocked his sword handle on the back of the attacker’s head. He went down in a heap.
Claire stared down at him. That was anticlimactic. She looked up at Malcolm, his face barely visible in the shadows. She was glad she had her sight back, because even this brief time in the darkness had her missing his golden eyes.
“We don’t know how many are between us and Desmond and Everett,” Malcolm said, answering her unasked question. “Better to not expend too much energy with the first few.”
Claire nodded. That was a brilliant strategy actually. And one she hadn’t thought of at all. But Malcolm was right, and Claire let the lesson sink in. Brute force wasn’t always the answer, sometimes you needed to think quickly and tip the situation to your advantage.
They continued down the tunnel and Claire cast her magic out again. It surged forward at her simple request like a tidal wave and Claire jolted at the intensity. Pebbles at their feet rattled as the magic hit them, giving away their location. Malcolm turned his head and she quickly grabbed onto her magic and wrestled it back. Frowning, she formed her intention again, just to find out if anyone was ahead, and sent it into her magic. Her magic still spun out faster than Claire would have liked. It was definitely stronger than yesterday. If it kept growing like this, Claire was going to hurt someone before she could figure out how to contain it. And that could be disastrous. She was going to have to be more careful. She sent the tiniest amount of magic into her surroundings. It still provided a range of fifteen paces so she and Malcolm continued.
Up ahead, the tunnel they were on ended at another tunnel running perpendicular to their current path. She sensed another dragon warrior waiting off to their right and pushed the thought to Malcolm. As they approached the T-shaped intersection, Malcolm shifted Claire over to his left so she could be protected against the attack. His overprotectiveness should have irritated her but Malcolm had been training with these warriors for years and was much better at close combat than Claire was so she was content to let him take the lead.
A rush of air was the only sound that the dragon warrior made when he lunged at Malcolm. The clang of metal against metal reverberated down the hallway as movement over Claire’s shoulder caught her eye.
A second warrior lunged at Claire, catching her off guard and sending her sprawling. She was barely able to deflect his blow with her daggers, her magic unable to react in time. This warrior must have cloaked himself somehow and Claire hadn’t sensed him with her magic so tightly controlled He came back with another overhead strike and Claire rolled to the side and back onto her feet. His sword hit the rock next to her, sparks flying with the force of the impact. None of these warriors were going to pull any punches even if it was a training exercise. Claire couldn’t either.
Recentering herself, she pulled a strand of magic up from her core, grunting as more tried to surge forward. She tamped it down. She was trying to disable the warrior, not kill him. She let the strand fill the daggers and the next time the dragon warrior struck, she absorbed the Energy with the daggers and pushed it quickly back out through her hand and into the warrior’s chest. He went flying backwards and hit the wall hard, slumping to the ground unmoving. Claire panicked that she had accidentally killed him and her magic responded to the panic, rushing out and swarming the man, assessing his injuries. Claire let out a sigh of relief when her magic found she had just knocked him out cold.
A hand on her back had her jumping and whirling on Malcolm, who held his hand up to soothe her. His opponent was also on the ground behind him, knocked out cold.
“Sorry,” Claire winced. She was still on edge.
‘’Don’t apologize,” Malcolm said. “Which way do we go?”
Claire had to take another two deep breaths before her magic settled enough to focus on the bonds with Desmond and Everett. The pull was definitely stronger coming from the right tunnel so she nodded her head in that direction. This tunnel was wider so she walked next to Malcolm. The bond grew stronger for about twenty paces until there was a bend in the tunnel and all of a sudden it felt like Desmond and Everett were miles away. She stopped, frowning and sent a little more magic into the bond, trying to figure out what had changed.
Malcolm waited patiently by her, eyes scanning around them keeping an eye out for danger while Claire tried to figure out which way to go.
“I think we are going to have to backtrack and go the other way,” Claire said softly, biting in a frustrated groan. The rock and endless tunnels around them were messing with her sense of direction with the bonds. It was a bit like playing the childhood game of ‘hot and cold’ where one person was blindfolded and had to find the other children who yelled hot or cold depending on if they were headed in the right direction or not.
Malcolm didn’t say anything except to squeeze her elbow as they turned around. They stepped over the other two dragon warriors still out cold and headed down the other tunnel. The bond faded in and out but didn’t cut off completely so they kept moving down the tunnel.
Slowly, she felt the bond grow stronger and a smile spread across her face. Finally. The ache in her chest returned with a force as she felt them getting closer to Desmond and Everett. It was like the ache was pushing her faster and Malcolm picked up the pace as well.
Pain sliced through the bond, bringing her down to her hands and knees as if she had been the one struck. Everett. Everett was hurt.
Her magic exploded out of her, overriding her control at one of her mates being hurt. Wave after wave exploded out of her center, desperate to hunt down whatever or whoever had hurt him. The ground shook underneath her and chunks of rock fell from the ceiling. Malcolm covered her body with his and yanked her chin up towards him. His lips were moving but it took Claire a few moments to hear what he was saying.
“Pull it back.” His voice was firm but soothing. “You have to pull it back.”
“Everett,” she choked out, her body shaking as her magic ran roughly through her.
“Everett will be fine,” Malcolm repeated. “We need to find him and to do that you need to pull it back.”
She gritted her teeth and tried to pull her magic back inside. It resisted her first attempt, her panic at it not listening only spinning her magic up more as it reacted to her feelings. The mountain continued to shake around them. A small rock hit Malcolm in the back and he grunted. Her magic flared brighter as she watched the pain flash across his face briefly. She frantically pulled on her magic but it resisted even more.
“I can’t!” she cried. “I need Puck to ground.”
“Use my bonds instead,” Malcolm said, crouching in front of her and grabbing her hands so she was forced to sit up. “Use our bonds to ground. You can do it.”
