Dark Highland Fire

Rowan flexed her wings, almost giving in to the urge to take to the sky, and instead coiled her long neck around to look at Mordred. He looked thunderstruck ... and pleased. Incredibly, insanely pleased.

"She can Change," he said, his voice quavering. "She's magnificent. I never dreamed you would gain the ability after so much time had passed, my child. And yet you are all that an Andrakkar should be ... oh, yes," he purred when Rowan hissed at him, "I can see you want to kill me. I would almost allow it, and die happy, but there is so much I can teach you. Such things you will be capable of. And the children you could produce. The restoration of the dragons to their glory." His voice was reverent as he reached out to touch her iridescent green scales. "Let me teach you. I'll give you everything ..."

It was a twisted echo of the promise Lucien had once given her, and infinitely more disturbing. She knew then that Mordred truly had no heart, to cast aside the son he'd raised so easily. That he would do anything to retain his house's grip on power.

And that to end the darkness his reign had brought to Coracin, he would have to die.

"So she tells the truth," Lucien said, his deep voice hoarse and strained. "You would have allowed this union, knowing that we were ... that we were ..." He seemed unable to say it, so repulsive the idea was to him.

"I would have encouraged it!" Mordred screamed, withdrawing his hand when Rowan snapped at it. "I knew when I saw her that the bitch Elara had conceived the one night I convinced her to lay with me. I can see now who is the fitter successor. Perhaps I should just be done with you now and take her back in chains." Smoke poured from his mouth as he spoke, and he and Lucien began to circle each other. "Even as misguided as she is, she has the anger, the lust for the kill. I can feel it!"

Rowan watched intently, barely restraining the urge to tear into both of them. The compulsion to violence was strong, stronger than she would have imagined. And she was so new to this form, controlling it was utterly foreign to her. The dragon came with its own vices as well as virtues. Now was not the time to learn them.

There was a sudden comforting warmth at her side. She looked down to see Gabriel, his Wolf form so big and strong and yet somehow diminutive next to her, come to stand at her side, fur brushing against scale. Her rioting senses calmed almost immediately. His presence reminded her of who she was, why she stood here. And for the first time, he didn't place himself in front of her, but stood where he belonged. Right at her side.

Rowan was filled with a fierce, all-consuming love in that moment. Gabriel, without saying a word, had just given her the most precious gift of all. He had accepted her fully as both an equal and mate. He would not only stand for her, but with her. And in return he would have her heart into eternity.

She felt as though she could defeat an army of dragon.

Lucien and Mordred, however, seemed to have forgotten she was there. They were brewing a battle of their own.

"You would kill me, your only son and heir," Lucien snarled, not looking a thing like the weakling Mordred had described.

"I would do what is best for the House of Andrakkar!" Mordred spat back. "How could that be you, who doesn't believe in conquest, who has no appreciation for the power inherent in being a child of the Drak? You may have my strength, Lucien," he hissed, "but you have no true lust for blood, for treasure. Under you, the dragons will continue to die. If another house takes the throne, the Andrakkar vanish forever. I can't allow either to happen."

"But my own blood. The things I've done, blinded. How you could have deceived me ..." His voice shook slightly with anger and more than a hint of despair, seeking something, anything to assure him that there was more here than met the eye. That his father's selfishness truly did hide some small affection.

But Mordred's eye had been caught by the dark shape beside Rowan, and all else was forgotten. "Enough!" he cried, breathing heavily in his excitement. "The cowardly arukhin emerges!" He turned to the dragons at the edge of the clearing. "Take him, and kill any who try to prevent it. And you, my wayward daughter," he growled as he turned to Rowan, already growing, sprouting horns and wings once more, "are coming with me, even if I have to drag you home with my teeth in your neck. I'll teach you what it means to carry my blood. To obey your king."

Rowan knew the time was at hand. The dragons started forward, prompting a loud, deep bark from Gabriel, followed by a low growl. Mordred, now entirely dragon, made a swipe at him with huge and deadly claws. Gabriel leaped to the side, and Rowan shoved herself in front of Mordred when he tried to give chase, breathing a wave of flame that slammed into Mordred's chest. Though he was protected by his scales, he staggered backward from the force. And by the time he recovered, he was immobilized by the sight of the creatures pouring toward him from the cover of the trees.

Rowan threw back her head and gave a battle cry. It was returned by a chorus of voices raised in Wolf song.

The dragons stilled at the sound, hanging hauntingly in the night air.

The arukhin had returned to the forest.

They raced into the clearing, some hundred Wolves, golden eyes glowing bright and teeth bared. But whether it was the nature of their enemy that inspired them or just the air of their ancestral home, these warriors were more than they had been in the Earthly realm. Their fur crackled with sparks of power, flickering over their forms until they each seemed outlined in light. Their speed made them a blur, and they seemed able to strike blows that inflicted more damage than their size might indicate. The dragons reared and snapped, their great heavy bodies unused to having to fight creatures smaller and nimbler that were so intent on harming them. The Wolves dodged every angry swipe, leaping to sink teeth into wings, crawling up scaly backs to claw at vulnerable eyes. And the light that filled them looked to Rowan as though it burned.

Rowan watched as a yellow and black dragon, half covered in arukhin warriors doing their utmost to disable it, took off in blinded and lopsided flight, only to crash back to the ground moments later with a howl of agony. Bastian was among the attackers, Rowan saw, icy light flying from his fingertips that caused any it hit to bleed. Her sisters hurled their own blasts from the trees, moving constantly, invisible to the besieged dragons but deadly with their aim.

Rowan was deep in the fray, slashing, using her tail as Mordred fought for purchase. She knew that he would do as he'd promised and sink his teeth into her neck to carry her off if he could, whether or not she had much life left in her. He was larger than she, but clumsier. She was thankful for his wound, because with her inexperience at fighting this way, at full power he would undoubtedly have had a huge advantage. As it was, it was taking all of her concentration and strength to hold him off. The rest, thankfully, were occupied by the MacInnes Wolves, though it gradually occurred to her that there was one dragon she had not seen fighting.

A flash of movement beyond the battle caught her eye. She had a brief image of Lucien fleeing into the forest on foot, a Wolf that could only be Gabriel following close at his heels. Mordred had seen them too and turned his head ever so slightly, momentarily distracted.

It was all the opening she needed.

Rowan struck hard, aiming for the already gaping wound in Mordred's neck. Her mouth was instantly filled with a rush of inky blood as her enemy's death cry screamed into the night, Still, she didn't let go, letting all of her rage go in this final act of retribution for all he had done to her, and her people. She shook his neck hard, snapping his vile horned head back and forth with lethal force long after he'd drawn a final, gasping breath.

It was only the howl, distant through the trees, that brought her back to herself.

Gabriel!

She threw Mordred's lifeless body to the ground with a terrible crash and immediately saw that the fight was over for the dragons. Two of the others lay as dead as Mordred, and two more were nothing but rapidly disappearing shadows backlit by the moon. The Wolf shifters were beginning to celebrate, their song raining into the deep blue sky as they gamboled in the clearing. Their wild dance and excited barks were victory itself. The fierce and joyful cries of her tribe reverberated through the trees.

They had won.

But there would be no celebrating for her. Not until this was truly finished.

She felt as though she was contracting into herself as she Changed back, wings, scales, claws compressing until the dragon was tucked neatly away inside. She crouched as her form returned completely to that of a woman, gasping. It had taken more out of her than she'd expected, but there was no time to rest. She picked herself up unsteadily, staggering a little before heading off in the direction she'd seen Gabriel and Lucien go.

Two other Wolves appeared out of the throng to pad at her sides, black like Gabriel but with slightly different features, and one with a hint of silver on his muzzle. She immediately knew them to be Gideon and Duncan, and she was grateful for the backup. Lucien might not want her any longer, but he had to be reeling from the betrayal. Again, she wondered just what he might do if pushed too hard.

They made their way quickly through the trees, her feet as noiseless as their paws on the soft ground of the Carith Nook Dread began to creep through her veins as the silence became oppressive, not a hint of what was happening to Gabriel carried through the night air. She could scent the both of them, Gabriel's warm spice and Lucien's faint incense, intermingled with fear and hatred.

Bastian's voice in her ear made her gasp.

"Wait. We're not alone."

She stopped short, her companions following suit. She looked behind her and saw that Bastian had joined them at some point without her notice. His pale hair shone in the darkness, and his fangs were still lengthened from battle. He jerked his head to indicate that something was ahead of them, then put a finger to his lips. They began to move again, but more slowly, and soon the whispering of the trees became whispers of a far more sinister nature.

Rowan's heart sank.

There were daemon in the woods.

Gabriel hunched low to the ground, staring at the familiar creatures who stepped out from behind the trees to stop him and his quarry in their tracks. Their heads were smooth, their faces so nondescript that they were almost interchangeable but for the festering burn on the cheek of the one in the middle. That one he would know anywhere.