Captured By The Dragon
Episode 81

Someone cried out as they were torn in half. Shots were fired and another explosion filled the air. The wind shifted direction and I smelled Patara. It wasn’t faint, but it smelled off and pained and tinged with b***d. The scent seemed to be coming from the river.

I swooped down to tell everyone to pull back and follow my lead. The canon fired at me, narrowly missing before the high-pitched whirring sound filled the air. I felt the others taking to the air and streaking after me as the explosion filled the air.

I didn’t look back as the pillar of fire shot into the air. I followed Patara’s scent towards the scent of ash and another patch of fire that seemed to be growing. I banked left, following the river before I found her.

My heart lurched at the sight of her, barely clinging to a rock. B***d stained the cloth on her back in four long jagged rips. She was pale and bruised. She slipped from the rock, and I swooped low, shifting and diving into the river after her. The current wasn’t too strong, but it was clear that she wasn’t conscious. I swam after her and grabbed her before getting her to the shore.

She wasn’t breathing. I pressed on her chest as lightly as I could before breathing into her mouth and pinching her nose. Her chest expanded, but nothing happened. I tried again and again, not willing to think she was dead. Her heart was still beating, I could hear it. The mark still tingled.

Finally, she coughed and sputtered, gasping for air.

“Dylan! Ethan!” She coughed, reaching out blindly. I tried to turn her over but she fought me with a screech of terror. “Let me go! Let me go! Dylan! Ethan!”

“Patara!” I yelled at her, grabbing her and lifting her, so she had to look into my eyes. I watched her focus on me, panting in my arms and slowly calming down.

“Dylan?”

“I have you now. You’re safe.”

She sobbed and curled into my arms, “I thought… the canons… They have weapons and—And he was going to– They’re trading with the hunters. M-Malcolm was here….”

She wasn’t making much sense, but I knew she was trying to explain everything that had happened because she thought it was important.

She was being ridiculous.

“None of that is important right now,” I said and lifted her from the ground. “I—”

“Ethan. Is Ethan okay? And Erik? You’re not hurt are y—”

I pressed my lips to her to get her to stop talking. She grunted as I pulled back and stared at her.

“No more questions until we get back, alright?”

She seemed like she was going to protest, but she nodded eventually and leaned against me, turning her face into my shoulder and clinging to me.

A few moments later she was asleep, and we were on our way back to my house. I heard another explosion in the distance and smirked. It would serve the tiger king right to die in a blaze of glory. I might even be satisfied if he did die screaming in agony as the fire devoured his flesh.

“Casualties?”

“None on our side.”

I nodded. It was good. It had been a long time since we’d had a battle where we lost no one.

By the time we reached the house, all I wanted to do was curl up with Ethan and Patara and sleep for a week, but I knew that wasn’t possible.

We ran into several other groups of shifters. Most of them weren’t armed the way the tiger king’s commander had been, but it was still enough to be a concern.

I walked into the house and found Erik seated at the table, leaning slightly as if it was painful to sit up.

“You should be on bed rest.”

Erik’s lips twitched before he went pale at the sight of Patara in his arms.

Ethan rounded the table and rushed to me, grabbing my leg and sobbing, clinging to me.

I shifted Patara in my arms and lifted Ethan before heading upstairs.

“Rest. We’ll debrief and plan in a few hours. The tiger king might not be dead, but it’s going to take him a while to sort out the mess he made of his place.”

“Him?” Erik asked, “Not you?”

“I didn’t buy rigged weapons from humans.”

I walked up the stairs. I felt the doctor following me to my bedroom. I lay Patara on the bed and lifted Ethan into my arms, careful to cradle him close and stay close enough that he could see Patara.

“Mom’s going to be okay,” I said softly.

He let out sounds that stopped and started garbled gibberish, but it was better than his silence. The healer undressed her mostly to bind her injuries, by the end of it there wasn’t much of her skin I could see, but she was breathing slowly and steadily.

“Thank you,” I told the woman. She nodded and left us alone. I got Ethan cleaned up and changed for bed before letting him get into bed with her. He whimpered and curled close to her. He trembled and slowly fell asleep.

With them settled, I went to the bathroom to clean up, bandage the wounds that were still healing and calm myself.

Guilt hit me first. I shouldn’t have doubted her words, but I couldn’t blame myself much. It all seemed too perfectly timed, considering.

Fury followed. I had gotten Patara back, but how had she ended up alone in the jungle. The wounds on her back had come from a shifter’s hand. Who was chasing her? Was that son of a bitch still alive?

How had she gotten out of the tiger king’s house like this?

I tried to clear my mind and focus on the dangers of the new shifter weapons. They were dangerous against us and against the people that were trying to kill us.

The problem was how to stop the weapons from crossing the border. If I could expose the tiger king’s deal with the humans, I might have some luck of finally getting a better hold on the shifters who keep bucking my authority.

Part of me still wants to just kill them all, but it would take too long. If the peace that I wanted was going to be a reality, I had to start somewhere.

Somewhere after I had ripped the tiger king’s guts out for taking what is mine that is.

I got out of the shower and looked at Patara and Ethan in bed. Had it been so long since the last time the three of us shared a bed. He’d grown a lot since then. I knew he’d continue to shoot up until he was closer to my height.

Would he be speaking by then? I didn’t know. I hoped so, but there was no telling of how his recovery would go. I was impressed that he managed even a single word. As I crawled into bed on the other side of Patara, I wrapped my arm around her waist and buried my face in her neck.

Having her safe in my arms was probably the last bit of peace I would get for a long while.

War was here. This was just a short lull.