In a Dragon’s Dream by Riley Storm Page 0,14

slamming a punch through the Cado’s defenses and into his stomach, doubling him over.

Flames blossomed all around them as the Cado shifter poured his attack into the ground, creating a ring of pure dragonfire. It drove Rakell back, shielding his eyes with an arm.

Crafty little bugger. Quick to react too.

There wasn’t going to be any sort of easy way to defeat him. Rakell was going to have to fight smart, and hope he found an opening.

The two traded blows for a while, circling, flames and fists lashing out in equal succession, with neither getting the upper hand. Rakell thought he might have the better stamina, that his foe’s fire attacks were dulling, but it could also be a trick, and so he didn’t let himself believe it.

Rakell found an opening and his fist broke the Cado’s jaw, but he earned a wicked cut across his stomach in return as the other shifter dragged his flame-covered hand across the exposed scales, burning through them with ease.

Both shifters bellowed in pain and fell back, taking a moment to compose themselves. Around them the cave rocked and somewhere nearby a stalactite fell from the ceiling. Rakell didn’t have time to watch the rest of his team. He could only hope they were winning.

It’s time to end this, he decided, realizing that his team might need his help.

Rakell closed again, accepting several blasts of fire to get close to his enemy. There, he let his superior combat skills take over. Slowly, but surely, he wore his foe down, attacking his body, his legs, his face, everywhere in an unceasing flurry of fire-covered fists.

The Cado struck back. He was losing, but that didn’t mean Rakell was going to emerge unscathed. It was simply a matter of who would crumble first.

Rakell had no intentions of it being anyone other than the Cado.

He blasted both of his foe’s arms out wide, leaned back and slammed his foot—no longer booted, the fire had burned all clothing away—into the Cado’s chest, partially crushing it and sending him staggering backward.

That was his opening.

Rakell brought both palms together, channeling extra energy into his fire, burning it bright yellow as he prepared to launch it.

A foot-long, blue-white spike flew through the air, impaling the Cado through the chest at the same moment Rakell released his strike. The fire met frost, and quite literally blew his opponent apart.

“Cheater,” he muttered, turning to see that Lara was shaking her hands, wiping off the pain of the frost. “You’re a fire dragon.”

“Yeah, but he left such a perfectly good weapon,” Lara said with a shrug, uncaring about the frost lance she’d thrown. “Come on, let’s end this.”

Rakell nodded, watching as she bent down and with a shout, snapped the neck of her brutish frost-dragon foe.

At the same time, Rakell saw Blede finish off Nisour, the head of the Cado team.

It was over.

Prate had been avenged.

Rakell turned to look down the passageway out the back of the cavern.

Sam was back there. Which meant Laura was alone.

Not for long, he vowed.

Not for long.

Chapter Nine

Laura

She woke with a start, not having realized that sleep had overtaken her.

Looking around, Laura pulled herself up from the couch with a frown.

“Sam?” she called, wondering if her new friend had snuck in and passed out somewhere. “You here?”

Only silence greeted her.

The frown intensified, her brow furrowing, eyes narrowing as Laura became more alert, looking around her house. There was no sign of another person—Sam or otherwise—as far as she could tell. Nobody had come for her in the night, but nor had Sam come back.

“Hello?” she called again, just in case, wandering back toward the front of the house.

That was when she noted the distinct lack of shoes at the front door.

Sam wasn’t there. And where was Rakell?

A momentary spike of fear pitted her stomach, but Laura shook her head, fighting that off. Rakell had said he wouldn’t be back until morning. She’d known not to expect him until later.

Glancing at the clock she saw it was only slightly after nine a.m. He could still quite easily be delayed for a bit yet. She couldn’t make any assumptions yet on his part.

But where was Sam?

Picking up her phone she didn’t see any missed calls or messages either. The last she’d heard was from Rakell the night before, checking in to see that everything was fine.

She pulled up Sam’s contact information and was just about to hit the send button when the doorbell rang.

Laura yelped, losing her grip on her phone and then