Page 65 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

It’s nothing like the clearing. There’s no slow in it anywhere. Heat slams across the parking lot, their clothes shred straight off their bodies, and two dragons stand up out of the wreckage of two men, wings snapping open over the storefront. Jalen rises up forest green and shining. Dorian lands beside him in deep bronze, built even thicker through the chest, and the asphalt cracks under the both of them.

Then Renee points straight up.

Malachi’s dragon crosses the sky over the shopping center with his wings at full spread, copper-dark against the blue, and he pours fire into the empty air as he comes. The roar behind the flame rolls out across the whole valley. It’s a call. Even I can hear that much.

He lands behind Delilah with both feet planted and boxes her in.

She looks back and forth between the three of them, and then she laughs, high and wicked. “Three dragons.” Her hands spark brighter. “I can handle that.”

“No,” I get out.

Something heavy lands on the roof of Lena’s Crafts, and the whole storefront shudders. A bear the size of a delivery van leans out over the gutter line and shows Delilah every tooth in his head.

That does it for the parking lot. Whoever was still loading a trunk quits loading it, and the lot empties in a running scatter of townsfolk and abandoned shopping carts.

Renee hauls at my arm, dragging me toward the store door. “Z, come ON.”

“No.” I plant my feet. “I can’t leave Jalen.”

Jalen’s dragon swings his great green head around and snips at me, teeth clacking shut with plenty of scold in it.

I pop him right on the nose.

He wrinkles his snout at me, every inch of him annoyed, and swings back around to face Delilah.

Renee stares at me. “Did you just pop your dragon?”

“Jay and his dragon love to try me.” I square up beside her. “I said I’m staying.”

She rolls her eyes and stays right beside me.

Then the wolves come. They pour in around the edges of the lot, gray and brown and black coats moving low between the parked cars, and more shapes keep arriving behind them.

I look around the shopping center and run the math I’m best at. Delilah came here for the Carter clan. What she’s got is Shadow Wolf Creek, all of it, and she is surrounded and outnumbered.

The circle tightens while I watch. The wolves come up out of the lanes a step at a time. The bear drops off the roof and lands in front of Lena’s door with a thud I feel through my shoes. Three dragons lean in over all of it.

And Delilah runs the same math I just ran. I watch it land in her face.

“This isn’t the end.” Her voice carries over the whole lot, and the blue light climbs her arms. “I’m getting that amulet back.”

The wind whips up around her, the light wraps her whole body, and then she folds into it and is gone. The wind quits all at once, and the middle of the parking lot stands empty.

I look at Renee. Renee looks at me. We’re both still standing here in one piece, holding craft store bags, and I nearly sit down on the asphalt from relief.

Jalen’s dragon swings his head back around to me, and this time there’s no snip in him anywhere. I drop my bags and run to him, and I throw my arms around as much of his great neck as I can reach.

“Thank god it’s over,” I say into his warm scales. “I love you, Jay.”

His answer rumbles up through my whole body.

Then I lean back and take his huge face in both hands, as much of it as my hands can claim, and I press a kiss to his snout.

“And I love you too,” I tell his dragon.

26

ZURI