I’m panic-stricken by this point, terrified that he’s really going to do it. That he’s really going to kill me…and worse, he’s going do it before I know the truth behind what happened to my parents.
“Flint, stop!” I try to get more out, try to beg him to tell me what he’s talking about, but the pressure on my throat is too much. I can’t speak anymore, can’t breathe, can hardly think as the world starts going dark around me.
“I’m sorry, Grace.” He sounds tortured, devastated, but the squeeze of his fingers around my throat never falters. “I wish it didn’t have to be like this. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted—”
He breaks off on a scream and suddenly the pressure around my neck is gone, his fingers bending back from my skin at an unnatural angle.
I gasp, try to suck air into my starving lungs via my abused throat. It hurts, a lot, but the pain doesn’t matter right now. Nothing does except being able to breathe again.
When I finally have enough oxygen inside of me to think semi-clearly again, I look around for Lia. Find her crumpled on the floor in the same spot where Flint had been beating her head against the floor with all the strength of the dragon inside him.
Convinced she isn’t a threat—at least for now—I focus back on Flint who has sunk to his knees at this point. He’s clutching his hands, his face a mask of agony, and for a second—just a second—I feel sorry for him. Which is bizarre considering a few moments ago he was using those very fingers to strangle me.
I beat back the sympathy and take a step away, sliding along the wall in the most unobtrusive manner I can muster. I don’t know what’s happening here, don’t know which of the many, many supernatural forces surrounding us is responsible for Flint’s suffering, but I have a pretty good idea. And if I’m right, things are about to get a million times more dicey. If I’m right, Flint is about to have a very bad—
Jaxon bursts into the room like a dragon-seeking missile, his focus completely and totally on Flint as he races across the room at an unimaginable speed. His eyes, glowing and livid and filled with violence, meet mine for a second before sliding over every inch of me as if cataloging my injuries. Moments later, he’s on Flint, grabbing him by the hair and heaving him across the room into the opposite wall.
Flint hits back-first, hard enough to make the wall shake. Then Jaxon’s on him, his snarls of rage filling the room and echoing off the ceiling. There’s a part of me that wants to run to him, that wants to beg him to hold me and take care of me after he deals with Flint. But there’s another part that can’t get over Flint’s words. That can’t get over the casual way he said Jaxon was part of Lia’s crazy plan.
It doesn’t make any sense. If Jaxon was a part of her plan all along, why did she give him tea to drug him? And why did she shoot him full of tranquilizers?
No, Flint has to be wrong, I tell myself as sobs I refuse to let escape threaten to tear my chest apart. Jaxon wouldn’t deliberately hurt me, and he definitely wouldn’t have had anything to do with killing my parents. He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that, not after everything that happened with Hudson.
Out of nowhere, Flint roars an answer to one of Jaxon’s snarls, and then he starts fighting back. Jaxon’s response is to send him flying once more, this time headfirst into another wall.
Anyone else would be dead after the impact Flint makes, but dragons are obviously built very different from humans—even when in their human form. Because Flint shakes off the blow then whirls around to face Jaxon once again.
But when he brings his arms up to fight, his hands are no longer human. Instead they’re talons, and he punches straight out with them, aiming for Jaxon’s heart.
A strangled scream escapes me, and I slap my bloodied right hand over my mouth, desperate to avoid attention even as Jaxon deflects the blow. Then he reaches out, aiming to wrap his fingers around Flint’s throat the way Flint just did to me, but before Jaxon can get a good grip, Flint starts to shift.
It takes a few seconds, and Jaxon tries to stop him—or at least, that’s what I think he’s doing when he thrusts a hand into the magical rainbow glow that comes whenever Flint changes form. But his hand goes right through it and he doesn’t grab onto anything while we both wait to see what monstrous version of Flint this new edition can add to the story.
We get our answer when he comes back into focus in his full dragon form. Tall and majestic and a sparkling emerald green, all of his power, all of his strength and determination and fire are focused on Jaxon.