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My mate. She’s here.
Scourge pulls in his wings and plummets toward the ground, landing with a deafeningwhompand sending clouds of dust up into the sky. As it settles around us, I slide from the saddle and draw my sword, hunting in the shadows between cottages for enemies. The village seems deserted, but after the events of the past week, I trust nothing and walk nowhere in Maledin without a blade in my hand.
Everything is silent apart from the wind gusting through the thatched eaves.
Scourge opens his jaws and bares his teeth. He’s not readying to roar or send a plume of fire toward the wooden houses. Rather, he’s exposing the sensitive scent receptors in his gums and lining his throat. He turns this way and that, and then rears up and stomps his forelegs on the ground.
The girl’s scent is everywhere, but it’s fading and he can’t find her. With a growl of frustration, I realize this must have been her village. She once lived here and knocked on every door. Drew water from that stone well. Walked over the cobbles. Perhaps she was here recently, but now she’s gone.
I close my eyes and inhale deeply, and I breathe her in.
Honeysuckle on a dewy morning. The earth after rain. The color turquoise and a joyous flash of sunshine. Sticky sweet apple fritters and kites dancing in the wind. As I savor the nuance of her scent, I can feel her coming to life around me. Everything to a mature dragonrider has a scent. Sights, sounds, even emotions. This girl’s scent is sweet and playful, and it’s filled with my favorite things.
I’ve hoped and yearned all my life for my Omega. I was beginning to believe that I would never find the one true mate that every Alpha craves. The one who he is fated to love and protect. The mate he recognizes as soon as he scents her.
The tension in my body melts into bliss, and even the hand gripping my sword grows loose as I keep breathing her in. Is that a hint of wind-whipped sky? Every inhalation brings new things to enjoy. I could live in her scent forever. I want to drown in it. I’ve held her in my arms. I pressed my face into her throat and knew a moment of perfection.
I had her, but then she slipped through my fingers.
There’s a muffled sound from our left. I open my eyes, and both Scourge and I turn sharply in that direction. There’s nothing to see.
But there’s something there.
We’re not alone after all.
I swing my body in that direction and stride across the square. With every step I take, the girl’s scent grows stronger and stronger. Sheishere. Rage mounts in my chest, and I raise my sword. Someone’s keeping her hidden from me. I’ll drive my blade through their heart for daring to imprison my mate.
The muffled sounds are coming from inside a ramshackle cottage on the edge of the village, up a dark and winding lane. Trees have overgrown the road, creating a tunnel of branches that block out the sun. The fence is rotted and leans drunkenly inward, and the tiny front garden is overgrown with a variety of weeds.
I stride up the path, shove the front door open, and bend nearly double as I burst into the room. The door slams shut behind me.
A voice shrieks angrily in the darkness. “Who dares enter this place with steel drawn? I’ll roast your gizzards on my fire if you don’t turn around and leave at once.”
I blink to adjust my eyesight and try to straighten up, but I knock my head against the ancient, iron-hard oak beams overhead.
“Blast you with dragonfire,” I growl through my teeth as I’m showered with soot and rub my scalp. “Who’s there?”
A crone dressed in black rags is sitting in an old stuffed chair, the seat of which sags on the ground like the belly of an old tabby cat. One of the woman’s gnarled hands is braced before her on an equally knotted and gnarled walking stick. Her other hand cups a putrid and smoking pipe. She sits bolt upright in the low chair, like a queen on her throne, surveying me with a wickedly sharp gaze.
“You’re too late. They took her hours ago.”
I breathe in deeply and sense that she’s telling the truth. The girl’s scent is here, but it’s fading away. I sheathe my sword with a muttered curse, anguish piercing my heart.
Where has she gone?
Why did she flee from me?
“Did the Brethren take her, Grandmother?”
Grandmother is a term of respect for an old woman, especially one who knows things that others don’t. Secret, dangerous things.
The hag cackles, plumes of smoke erupting from her mouth and nose. “Grandmother? You have six times more years than mine, though you look better than me for them, I’ll give you that.”
“Has it been so long?”
“Aye.”
Devastation washes over me. None of the dragonriders or my soldiers have been able to discern how long we slept under that mountain. Maledin looks different, but I had hoped we only slumbered for a decade or two, not hundreds upon hundreds of years.
