been here for them.
Lorach. It has to be.
But… how?
Jason had been focused on the dragons, finding the misfits, understanding the bones, that he’d forgotten what he had promised to Sarah—and in effect, Dragon Haven. He had been asked to find what Lorach intended.
Now he was too late.
This felt different than anything they had faced from Lorach before. Those had been targeted upon the dragons, ultimately to try to find a way to capture and control the Dragon Haven dragons and ultimately to destroy the entire city, but for whatever reason, this felt personal. This felt as if he had been attacked, that Jessica had targeting the city, emptying it of power, as a way of coming after him.
Jason focused, and he sent out a request to the dragons, using the strength of his connections to them. Now was not the time for subtlety.
Something had happened to Dragon Haven. It was time he respond.
Power flowed from him to the dragon misfits.
All of the dragon misfits, including the night dragon, wherever he ended up.
The night dragon knew something and Jason needed to understand what was going on. He had been the one who had wanted Jason to come here.
Suddenly, a glistening white dragon dropped from the sky. The ice dragon shot toward them. The iron dragon started to slither out of the forest.
Jason could feel a trembling beneath him. The earth dragons. More than that, the mist dragons and the smoke dragons somehow found their way toward them too.
As they did, Jason stood in the clearing of Dragon Haven.
An empty Dragon Haven.
He thought about the first time he’d ever come here. He’d been the outsider then.
Now Janeya was the outsider, but she still seemed comfortable—far more comfortable than he had been when he had first come here.
The iron dragon rumbled, radiating heat along his side. Janeya stared at him.
“How is this dragon even possible?” she whispered.
“I’ve asked that about all of the dragons before,” Jason said.
“He’s… amazing,” she said.
Worry overwhelmed him but he needed to be calm. For her, for the dragons, and for himself.
He forced a smile. “Don’t spoil them too much. I’m sure he would love to hear the compliments, but I don’t know if it’s good for them.” Heat radiated down the sides of the iron dragon. Jason held his hand out, turning toward him. “I’m going to need your help. Was it Lorach?”
“I don’t know.”
Jason wasn’t about to ask how the iron dragon didn’t know. He’d been watching the night dragon as Jason had asked.
“If it is, you know what I’ll have to do.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but…”
The dragon snorted. “I will do whatever we must to protect the others.”
Others.
That meant other dragons.
He tried again to reach for the night dragon, but that connection was faint and fickle. There was a wisp of it in the back of his mind, but barely more than that. He believed he could reach it, but he grasped for power he did not have.
As he felt power coming off the iron dragon, the energy coming through the iron dragon glove once again, he breathed in the energy and heat, recognizing that power within him. He glanced over at the ice dragon. Power radiated off him too, only his power was of the cold and the mountains and the north wind channeling through him.
What he felt was something more than just channeled power. Jason had to understand that, only he hadn’t taken the time to do so. He turned to the ice dragon. They didn’t really have that much time right now for him to question, but he had to know.
“Am I somehow drawing upon that power myself?”
“It’s possible that you are,” the ice dragon said. “Perhaps you were changed by your time in the mountains. You could have been changed the same way that I was. Could not the people who have power of the dragons be influenced the same way that the dragons are?”
Jason hadn’t considered it and didn’t think that was the case, knowing he had only a connection to the dragons, not necessarily the power of the dragons.
Only, that wasn’t entirely true. The one thing he had learned about his connection and the power he possessed was that it was different than others. The only other person he had ever met who had a similar power to him was David.
The auran had a way that he was able to draw upon power, a way to summon it without even using the