What Fire Dragons Treasure - Cristina Rayne Page 0,6

she choked on a half cry, half gasp as her right calf erupted in fire. Her leg instantly crumpled. She barely managed to twist to the side and avoid landing on Matty as she slammed hard, side-first, into the ground in an uncontrolled skid.

“Help…me! P-please!” Amber cried desperately, gasping after the breath that had been knocked out of her.

She could hear men shouting behind her, but she couldn’t make out any words over the sound of her own heart beating frantically in her ears and Matty’s crying.

“They’re trying…to kill…me!” she wheezed. “They’re trying…to take…my son! Sanc…tuary…we need…!”

Amber tried to pull herself up onto her knees, but she couldn’t quite get enough breath for the effort. They were going to catch them! The bastard that had shot her would probably leave her to bleed out in the dirt and take Matty! She couldn’t allow—she couldn’t—

Darkness suddenly clouded her sight, and for one anguished breath, Amber thought she was losing consciousness. However, a wash of warm air abruptly engulfed her a split-second before something hard and just as warm wrapped around her body, pressing both Matty and his plushie more snuggly against her chest. It was only when she realized that her body had been lifted from the ground and the ground also started to move that she understood what must have happened.

Her arms instinctually tightened around Matty, and Amber stilled completely. More gunfire sounded, but she heard it as though from a TV playing in a distant room.

“Shh, it’s okay, Matty. It’s okay,” Amber soothed breathily, her lungs still not recovered from her fall.

She felt Matty’s hands grip her shirt more tightly, but at least his sobs were calming. She prayed that he hadn’t seen her bleeding. Her leg didn’t hurt at all, but she knew better. If they hadn’t been surrounded by warmth, she would likely have been cold and trembling from shock. The pain would definitely come later and with a vengeance.

“Don’t move,” a booming, deep and accented voice said from above as the darkness increased around them. “I must fly us to another location. You’re safe within my hands.”

Safe…

“You see, Matty,” Amber whispered into his ear, “the nice dragon helped us and is going to take us for a ride in the sky.”

Matty’s breaths were still coming in short, half-sobs, and she feared that he was too lost in his fear to really hear her. Those bastards! That complete asshole! Whether Garrett had been in the silver car or not, someone in that car had shot at them. Never mind her, but they could have hit Matty! What kind of sick bastard would shoot at someone carrying a toddler?

They had probably shot out her tires, too! It made her sick to think about how the car had nearly rolled. She had been going at least eighty. At that speed, both she and Matty could have been killed if she hadn’t gotten the car back under control.

As Amber shook and raged in her mind, her stomach abruptly dropped amidst the sound of wings flapping and a bit of jostling against the hard surface at her back. Scales? She couldn’t be sure. Matty gasped and pressed his face into her chest, likely feeling the abrupt change of elevation as well.

She took a moment to breathe deeply and try to calm herself, although in the back of her mind, she worried about the bleeding wound on her leg. The dragon had been watching her run towards the shield when she had been shot. Surely, he knew just how fragile humans were given that at least one human lived among them for sure.

Amber couldn’t bear the thought of passing out from blood loss and leaving Matty terrified among strangers, especially a dragon. Seeing dragons flying around on his tablet or on TV was one thing. Realizing just how big they were in real life and that one had you in its grip was another. This was likely one of the worst ways to introduce a child to a dragon, but at least he hadn’t seen one of them roast anyone or even roar. The dragons of Elysia South were firedrakes after all…

We made it into Elysia South!

The disbelief in that thought, that her whole improbable, crazy plan had actually worked, and they were now soaring across the sky clutched within the hands of a real-life dragon made Amber almost break out into hysterical giggles. It was absurd! It was glorious! It made Amber doubly terrified now of what was to become of