Last Immortal Dragon (Gray Back Bears #6)(36)

He huffed a single, humorless laugh. “I knew you’d refuse.”

She approached slowly, wrapped her arms around his middle, and rested her cheek right between his shoulder blades. “Then why did you even ask?”

“Because I had to try, Clara.” His hand slid up her forearm and rested against her hands, keeping her touch there, just over his heart. His voice rang hollow when he murmured, “This place feels empty without them.”

She understood. He’d grown to care for the crews. The Ashe Crew and the Boarlanders. The Gray Backs and Kong’s Lowlanders. They had become a part of Damon’s mountains just as surely as the trees and forest animals.

“When this is all through, they’ll be back.” She hoped so because the pain and loneliness in Damon’s voice had cracked her heart open.

“And what if it’s never over? What if Marcus waits for years to come for me? To come for you? I’ll miss their entire lives. I’ll miss the babies growing up.” Damon swallowed audibly and squeezed her hands as if her letting go right now would hurt him.

Shadows danced across the walls in the glow of the lanterns, and Clara cast them a frown. Restless ghosts, uncomfortable with this kind of talk.

Damon turned in her arms, and his lips crashed onto hers. These weren’t the sweet kisses he used to tell her wordlessly that he loved her. This was allowing her to see the pain he was in. His lips were unforgiving as he deepened the kiss and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He let off a helpless sound and walked her backward. She gasped as her back hit the cold cave wall. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she bit his bottom lip and kissed him back so he could see how scared she was. He should see how determined she was to stay by his side despite that fear.

Something brushed her neck. A soft mist, like a tendril of fog, skittered across her skin, lifting gooseflesh. Clara jumped and pulled her mouth from Damon’s.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Clara stood frozen against him, breathing heavily as something sat just above her senses. A vibration out of place, or a change in the wind. She looked to the lantern shadows on her left, and the shadowy figures that had been so restless before were melting into the walls. Damon followed her gaze as another tendril of air curled over her shoulder.

“Clara, what are they saying?”

There was a soft whisper of something. A word. So soft, she had to strain her sensitive ears. Fear pounded through her veins as she lifted her horrified gaze to Damon.

“Your ghosts are telling us to run.”

A shadow covered the mouth of the opening, blocking out the sun, and Clara screamed as the massive head of a black dragon reached its long neck into the cave and opened his mouth. Rows of razor sharp teeth reached for them as the first clicks of a Firestarter echoed through the cliff opening.

“Go!” Damon yelled, shoving her toward the hallway.

Time slowed. Damon ran behind her, shoving her forward and shielding her with his back. She pushed her legs as hard as she could and screamed as heat blasted from behind them.

“Faster,” Damon ordered. “Don’t look back.”

Flames filled the hallway just inches behind them and coming fast. She ran for her life. She ran for Damon’s life because every instinct in her body screamed that he would never leave her to save himself.

Mason was there, waiting at the double doors. “Hurry!”

Clara’s legs burned and gave out the second she passed through, and she watched in horror as Damon turned and helped Mason close the doors against the fire. Flames licked through the cracks, and Mason gritted his teeth in pain as the metal decorated bands on the door heated and turned red against his hands.

Clara looked down at her body. It was betraying her. The inner grizzly she’d always been able to rely on when she was scared was curled up in a ball in her middle, and her arms and legs were tingling as if they’d fallen asleep.

Damon slammed down a wooden bar over the door and yanked her up, then hauled her down the hallway to his bedroom. “I have to get to open air. It’s too tight to Change in here.”

But just as he turned the corner to his bedroom door, the sound of shattering glass turned deafening.

Another scream lodged in Clara’s throat as she got a glimpse of Marcus’s long onyx-colored claws raking across the bedroom, destroying everything. A stream of fire and magma spewed through the room an instant after Damon and Mason had dragged her across the open doorway.

Work legs! She felt as if she were floating. As if her body wasn’t under her control anymore.

They missed fire by inches as the monster followed them room to room, clinging to the outside of the house, destroying it in his quest to get to them. The white marble hallway was the last barrier between them and air, but the fire was too close behind them, following them, singeing Clara’s skin. Where was her f*cking bear?

No good. The hallway stretched on and on, and they weren’t moving fast enough to escape the flames blasting around them.

“Damon!” she screamed just as the fire reached her back because, dammit, this was the tragedy. One week with him. One week of happiness. One week of feeling like she finally, finally belonged somewhere, and she was dying by dragon’s fire with the two men who’d become her crew.

“Hold on!” Damon ordered as he scooped her and Mason by the waist.

Power pulsed against her, stealing her breath as Damon’s battle cry turned into a bellowing roar. The space was too tight for him to Change, but that didn’t stop the enormous blue dragon that burst from his skin. Tucking them tight to his stomach with oversize claws, he exploded from the mansion and drove his powerful wings against the air, lifting them as the house shattered behind them. Marcus’s flames blasted around Damon’s exposed back as he shielded her and Mason and dropped them low to the ground. The drop was still too high. She and Mason tumbled end over end and Clara screamed out in pain as she slammed into a tree, arm first.