Page 8 of Feathers and Scales

“Feel like sparring with me, or are you going to take another vehicle apart?”

“Rain check.” Daxton wanted to spar, but his current state of unease made him feel unpredictable.

Jamal wasn’t much younger than him, but it wouldn’t be a fair fight. Either Daxton wouldn’t be able to concentrate, or he would maul Jamal to have time to think. He suspected Jamal had a reason to ask. Sarah, their territory’s Healer, had probably prompted him. Passive-aggressive tactics were Sarah’s hallmark.

Denying the sparring challenge would raise red flags. For their kind, someone who didn’t find release from pent-up frustration was dangerous. Because Sarah wasn’t aware of the creature already calming him, if he didn’t use exercise to soothe his dragon, she would seek him out. Especially when she knew about the incident last year. He was her chief even if still in-training, and if something was wrong with him, his clanmates could suffer.

Figuring she might visit him soon, he strode straight to his quarters to clean up. He entered his small and tidy living room. As he headed toward the stairs to his bedroom loft, something stirred in his mind. A lightning bolt volleyed through him. He jerked.

His tagalong was awake.

Izzy stirred, her spirit flesh warm as if she slept by a fireplace.Wait—didn’t I die?No fierce winds slammed into her. No bright light blinded her. The pleasant heat was also different from the icy cold that other Fallen used to describe Limbo.

As she awakened, her energy illuminated the blue chamber surrounding her. More blue lights branched off in different directions. She was in a Spirit Cavity. Memories flooded back of the Archfiend and the bronze-eyed man who’d rescued her. Her spirit heart raced, fearing she’d spent too long inside him.

None of his Spirit Cavity’s streams of light appeared frail or damaged, and where some hosts might burn her presence, his seemed welcoming. Her injury throbbed in her rib cage, but a thin layer of new spirit flesh covered the wound.

Hovering in the Cavity’s space, she stretched and brushed against something firm.

She turned, panicked breaths shaking her core. Shiny scales loomed, and she gaped at the creature she thought existed only in legends. Fully bronze, it stood in the space with eyes like medallions.

She couldn’t think of the creature as anything other than a relapse of her brainwaves, but she still backed away from it. Her light fluctuated with her breaths, illuminating the beast in a strobe effect.

The feathers of its winged front legs shifted in an overlay of metallic browns and golds, mocking her in their beauty. Her featherless wings would never compare. Long canines and sharp talons marked the creature as a predator. A spike of adrenaline gave her clarity.

Dragon.

An aura of blue wrapped around the dragon and snaked throughout the Spirit Cavity as if it were one with the human. No other Fallen had ever spoken of finding such a beast inside a person. The Spirit Cavity was supposed to hold only spirit energy.

How was this possible?

“You’re awake?”a rough voice thundered inside the Cavity.

Izzy’s heart climbed into her throat. She wrenched her gaze to the dragon’s sharp-toothed mouth. Warm air from its nostrils heated her face. Its eyes were the same color as those of the man who had saved her—Daxton. Was he the one speaking to her? If so, the creature was a part of him—washim.

“Don’t be afraid,”he said.

Logic dictated she should not incite the prey drive of a predator by running, but her body was already moving. When she tried to flee, the dragon lunged. It grabbed her with the claws at the tip of its wings. Dragon spirit energy reached out and hers did the same—magnetically drawn until the tendrils of yellow and of blue touched.

Electricity wisped over her, trailing over the tips of her breasts and down her navel like a feather.

Arousal caught like wildfire, and she squirmed.What the hell?

Her body tingled. Tensed. Something inside her snapped, and she melded with the dragon. Their spirit energy—blue aura and yellow light—intertwined irrevocably. The combined energies prickledthrough her body and awoke a sense of nostalgia, as if she was returning to a home she’d forgotten until now.

A thin link of power formed between them. Even far from her body, a cacophony of emotions ravaged her being and swept away the last of the sensations.

“What just…happened?”His breathy speech made him sound as lost as she felt.

Had that happened to him, too?“I…that was…”

The dragon’s growl vibrated along her nerves. Its feathered wings folded around her, shielding her in a cocoon-like embrace. She pressed against the dragon, longing for a nearness that bordered an addiction to his presence. This bewildering desire threatened to overwhelm her hard-won logic, a chaos she couldn’t abide as it contradicted everything she believed about self-preservation and the vulnerability that came with caring for someone.

Walls closed in her mind, suffocating her. Izzy wasn’t a damsel thatneededanyone. She pushed against its wings.“Restrain yourself and release me.”

“It’s not that damn easy.”

“We will see about that.”She shot a warning flare of yellow power straight at the dragon’s eyes.