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Buildings everywhere had been abandoned, half scorched. Houses were quiet, families on the run, and our resources destroyed.
The rivers ran black in color and the farms were filled with dead crops. The dark forest and the mountains that remained too cold for anybody to live there seemed to be the only things within sight that remained unharmed.
We finally headed back to the ground, and the shift from beast to man was back to feeling empowering instead of agonizing.
Lykem shifted back as well, staring at me with his signature smirk. The dragon was one of the fiercest warriors I knew, but he often annoyed the shit out of me with that grin.
There was little that could shake my friend. As irritated as I wanted to be with his overly happy demeanor, I was sometimes jealous of his ability to put walls up and keep out all the dark shit I often held on to.
“Feel better now?” he asked, stepping closer to me.
“No,” I grumbled.
His responding chuckle didn’t help my sour mood. “Great. So, do you want to tell me more about this mate you mentioned before losing your shit?”
I didn’t want to talk about Dawsyn. Not yet. Not until I understood what the hell had been happening here and how that information might help me find her.
“You first,” I said. “Where is everyone?”
They couldn’t all be dead or missing.
“There are about a hundred of us in the caves beneath Rock Point,” he answered, and I promptly cut him off.
“Where are the others?” Our realm should have had thousands of people right here in the main town with another thousand living remotely.
The grimace on his normally jovial face didn’t ease the rage inside. “They’re either dead or trying to survive on their own in the mountains and will be dead soon. We gathered as many as we could, but there wasn’t much warning before the worst of the attacks began. Your uncles were among the first to die.”
The ache in my chest intensified. “And my grandmother?”
“None of us have seen her,” Lykem answered. “I went to her house myself, but she was already gone. I would have sent for you, but our numbers were already so few, I couldn’t risk losing anyone else.”
“How are you surviving in the caves?” I asked. “Isn’t it freezing there right now?”
He shrugged and smiled again. “With enough dragon fire, anything can be warm enough. Plus, the snow melt from the extra heat is giving us clean water, which is something we didn’t have here in town any longer. A group goes out every other day to hunt for meat.”
Looking at him closer, I could see not everyone was eating as they needed to be, including my friend.
“So, that’s what happened, but what are you doing about it?” I asked, glancing around at the dying farm we’d landed by.
This time his laugh was dark and defensive. “We’re surviving, Cillian. You might have buried your uncles, but I’ve dug more holes than one should in an entire lifetime. For the old and young and all those in between.”
My hand clasped his shoulder. “I’m sorry. If I’d known…”
“We know you would have been here,” he said, then smiled again. “So, about that mate?”
Of course, he wasn’t going to let that go. Though, this time I was okay with talking about her, because nothing he’d said had given me any ideas as to where I needed to start looking for Dawsyn.
“She’s a wolf shifter I met at the academy where I was searching for information.”
He gaped at me. “But if she’s not a dragon shifter…”
I knew what he was already thinking, and I wasn’t ready to rehash that rage.
“Someone took her and our bond broke, but in the process, they left someone else alive,” I said. “My mate’s best friend. He said something that made me feel confident that she was brought here.”
“She’s not with us,” Lykem replied, “but she might be in the dark forest.”
I tilted my head. “I thought you said you’d searched that area and found nothing.”
