a cartoon as a strange backdrop. It was a bit disconcerting that she couldn’t feel even a hint of pressure as Lady Serie used a long and thin tool that resembled a giant metal toothpick and another metal tool with a flat plate at the end like a miniature yard hoe to begin digging out the bullet. It was as though she were poking at someone else’s leg.
She glanced over at Matty and Emma worriedly. Someone digging into her leg was definitely something she didn’t want her three-year-old son to see. Thankfully, Matty was completely engrossed with his cartoon and didn’t show any signs of having witnessed any of the horror show happening with her leg.
Amber turned back to her crude surgery in enough time to see Lady Serie pop out the bloody bullet. She wrapped it up in a used cloth and then spent a few seconds cleaning up the bit of blood extracting the bullet had left behind on the skin around the wound with more of the green disinfectant.
“Now, don’t be alarmed,” Lady Serie said, her lips suddenly stretching into that same soft smile she had worn earlier. “I know this isn’t something humans have ever seen, but my Lockran won’t hurt you, either.”
Lockran?
Then Amber forgot to breathe when Lady Serie’s hands began to glow a pale blue as she placed them over Amber’s wound. While Amber felt absolutely nothing on her numbed leg, all the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck rose as the air around her suddenly seemed electrically charged.
It could have been ten minutes or an hour she watched the dragon-woman’s glowing hands, before Lady Serie moved them away from her leg and the blue glow faded completely. Where a bullet hole once lay was now a slightly raised pucker of pink skin, now looking weeks instead of an hour or so old.
“Magic…” Amber whispered in awe.
“Yeah, magic,” Emma said with a chuckle. “Welcome to the world of dragons.”
CHAPTER SIX
Despite his hands having been naturally cleansed as usual between form shifts, Raphek could still feel Amber’s warm blood staining his human hands as he knelt before his king, and the ghost sensation made him itch to bare his teeth and roar in fury.
Just seeing the Terran woman with the golden hair curled protectively around the sobbing little boy with desperation twisting her face even as her own bleeding injury went ignored had instantly ignited the Fire deep within him. After snatching Amber and Matty through the shield to safety, Raphek had barely stopped himself from sticking his snout through the shield as well in order to roar his ignited Fire upon the men who had dared shoot their foul weapons at a mother and her child. Thank the Sacred Fires that the child had not been shot as well, or he likely wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. No matter the reason, burning humans to ash would have been a PR nightmare for the Rekkan.
Of course, bringing a couple of Terrans into Elysia South in full view of other Terrans when such an action was forbidden by the US government had a high probability of causing its own complications that could become just as bad of a PR nightmare if they weren’t careful. While he would never regret saving those who were helpless, Raphek hated that the king would likely bear the larger brunt of the consequences of his actions.
His Majesty hated dealing with the powers that be in Washington.
“Not that I think you should have ignored such brutality happening right under your nose, but…” King Dagon trailed off with a heavy sigh as he leaned back against the end of the long conference table.
“I know,” Raphek acknowledged grimly.
“And right next to one of those blasted viewing platforms,” the king continued. “I knew agreeing to such daily observation would, as my brother would say, come back to bite us in the ass. Frankly, I’m just surprised something like this didn’t happen sooner. You’re sure that the woman’s wound wasn’t life-threatening?”
“The wound was small, and didn’t hit anything vital,” Raphek assured him. “I’m sure the healer Emma called for her has finished treating her by now.”
“Asylum,” Dagon said thoughtfully. “Her situation must be dire indeed to plead help from a kingdom still relatively new to her own world and not from her people’s own authorities.”
“Amber said that she believed Elysia South was the one place on this earth that her son would be safe from his father, who comes from