Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“You weren’t the one being choked!” I protest.
“If she fuckin’ tries that shit again I’m gonna put a bullet in her head,” Tom says, rubbing his arm. “The dragon can fuck her dead body for all I give a shit.”
“No one is going to touch the female,” a calm, quiet voice says, cutting through the argument. Everyone goes silent at Azar’s words. I look up at the creepy, too-pale leader and watch as his nostrils flare, just a bit. Just like Zohr’s did. His gaze focuses on me for a moment, and then he says, “We will have need of her to keep the dragon in line. You harm one hair on her, you answer to me.”
I…guess I’m safe. For now.
But I’m also more trapped than ever. I’m not leaving that poor dragon in these people’s hands. I think of the way he looked at me. Like he’d just seen the best thing in his life. Like he’d finally found a friend. There was joy there. Joy and hope and so much love that it makes my throat tighten just to think about it.
And I was the reason he got captured.
I can’t leave him. I’d leave Boyd in a heartbeat. But Zohr? It’s my fault he’s been taken and I’ve got to figure out how to free him. But how?
I don’t get a chance to help Zohr right away, though. Things get crazy around camp for a while. One of the nomads—some guy low in the pecking order named Tate—helps them kidnap someone nearby, and I’m shocked to see it’s my friend Sasha. It seems that Azar’s interested in getting more than one dragon, and Tate somehow knew that she had one.
It takes a few days, but I help Sasha escape. Even as we’re breaking out, the dragons are breaking in. Sasha’s dragon and one of his friends raid Azar’s headquarters and in one blood-filled night, kill about half of the nomads…including Boyd. I’m too shocked to grieve.
Sasha offers to take me with her. She promises to keep me safe.
I want to go, more than anything.
But Zohr’s stuck, and I won’t abandon him. It’s still my fault that he’s here. I’ve been in bad situations before, and I know I can worm my way out. It feels wrong to abandon him.
So I stay…but I hope I’m not making a mistake.
4
EMMA
“Hold still,” a gruff voice tells me. “Yer squirming.”
“Sorry,” I say meekly, and cringe when Old Jerry pushes the needle through my scalp again. Glad I can’t see what he’s doing. I force myself to sit still in the chair, eyes squeezed shut as I try to ignore the fact that the pain’s getting worse as it gets “fixed.” “Fucking hurts, that’s all.”
“Next time, don’t get taken hostage,” Old Jerry tells me in a curt voice.
Har de har har.
He tugs on my head, and then I hear a snip. A moment later, a thick bandage is wrapped around my head. “There you go. Good as new.” He laughs at his own joke.
“Thanks, Jer.” I get to my feet, wincing. My head feels all tight from the stitches, and it throbs like the dickens. I guess I shouldn’t have told Sasha to hit me in the head quite so hard, but at least it’s believable. Tom was the one who found me on the roof, my head split open and bleeding. In a way, I guess it’s a good thing that Sasha nearly brained me within an inch of my life. No one’s questioned my loyalty, especially not since I’ve spent the entire night weeping over my injuries…and the loss of my douchebag brother.
I hated Boyd, but Boyd was safety, in a sense. He was family. He was the devil I knew, and while he was a piece of shit and a half, I could handle him. I knew what to expect when he was up to his tricks, and he’d keep me relatively safe as long as it suited his needs.
Now I’ve got no one. Nothing.
I don’t even have my friend Sasha. I had the chance to leave with her and the dragons and I stayed, even though I hate that I did.
It wasn’t a choice, though. Not really. Sometimes you have to do what you feel is right rather than what’s safest.
I can’t think about that right now, though. I can dwell on that stuff later. Time to pay up. I know how the wheels are greased in a nomad band, even with Boyd gone, so I pull a couple of old granola bars out of my bag and offer them to Old Jerry as payment for the stitches. His weathered face lights up, and he beams at me, his smile full of gaps. Jerry’s the nicest one in this gang of nomads. He’s still a bloodthirsty killer, but sometimes there’s a hint of a fatherly attitude with him. Sometimes.