Dragon Fire Academy 1 First Term an RH academy romance - Rachel Jonas Page 0,24
hands to the sides of his neck, I felt the pain lifting away from him. There were no words to describe it, only that his soul felt lighter, less troubled. Once I was fully engrossed in the spell, it was okay to reopen my eyes. When I did, the glow of a blindingly bright light had engulfed us both—the healing light. Once it began to fade, I was confident it had done its job.
I pulled away, rearing back on my shins as I watched him, surprised by how much more handsome he was when he wasn’t glaring at me like he wished I’d burst into flames.
“Better?” I asked.
Speechless, he only nodded, still leaning with his face a mere six inches away. There was a brief moment where I felt something. It was similar to the tug inside my chest when we all met for the first time, but it was rooted deeper than that. Uncomfortable with the sensation, I cleared my throat and got to my feet.
“Well … good. Glad it worked.” I turned, already taking a step away from them, but I didn’t get very far.
“Wait.” Ori had stepped forward when I turned.
“Yeah?” I sighed, glancing up into the silhouetted palm leaves as the sun dipped lower.
“What’d you do to him?” The question left Ori’s mouth gruffly, bordering on accusatory. Apparently, helping his friend hadn’t softened him any.
Realizing he was a lost cause, I laughed a bit and turned to continue my walk toward the academy.
“You’re welcome,” was the only answer I had for him. It didn’t seem to matter what I did, I was on this guy’s crap-list indefinitely.
Chapter Seven
Ori
“She helped me,” was Kai’s feeble attempt at reasoning.
“Doesn’t change the facts.”
“Exactly.” I pointed at Paulo when he took the words right out of my mouth.
Most of us didn’t bother following mainlander history all that closely, but I knew of their queen, how she’d been reborn after centuries. She was said to be the hybrid offspring of the original wolf of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, and original dragon of Ars-en-Ré, France. Her king, Noelle’s father I presumed, was said to be a bloodthirsty dragon warrior who hailed from Cairo, Egypt.
So how the heck was Noelle part witch, too? That factor didn’t quite fit into the equation. When it came to witches, there were three rules I knew to be fact.
One: they stunk to high-heaven when they dabbled in the dark arts.
Two: they could only survive past the age of one hundred by regularly ingesting the blood of lycans.
Three: a witch could only be a witch. Not a witch/dragon/lycan mashup. That simply didn’t happen.
“She hasn’t even shifted yet. You can tell by her scent,” Rayen interjected.
“That doesn’t mean she’s harmless! It only means she’s a wildcard!” I snapped. “The Advisors must have made an exception because she’s on the verge of her twentieth birthday. Give or take a few months. She wouldn’t have been granted admittance otherwise. So basically, she’s a ticking timebomb,” I explained. “There’s a reason a shifter mating with a witch always produces a shifter with no magic. Because the outcome would be catastrophic. A combination of witch DNA manifesting with even one shifter breed would be bad news. But both?”
I couldn’t stop pacing. It felt like we were harboring an unstable nuclear warhead on our island. And when she detonated, there was no way to know how devastating the fallout would be.
Would she be able to harness her magic? The rage we dragons are born with and must be taught to control? The ferocity of her wolf? There wasn’t anything about this situation that I liked.
“Well, at least it makes sense now,” Rayen sighed. “For a second, I wondered if Chief thought less of us, demoting us to security detail. Turns out, he put us on the most dangerous mission any of the Firekeepers have ever been assigned.”
The floorboards of our bungalow creaked as I walked them, trying to come up with a plan. It wasn’t easy to do under so much pressure.
“Think we should alert the other hives?” Paulo chimed in. “Maybe they should be on standby in case things go bad.”
Before he even finished speaking, I was already shaking my head. “The last thing we need is to distract them from patrolling the border. It’s bad enough our own duties have been split between two assignments. Let’s not break their focus, too.”
Agreeing, Paulo nodded and went back into deep thought.
“Again,” Kai spoke up, “she saved my life. I think that counts for something.”