“We can’t go without Xanthe,” Josef said firmly. “I can head down, see if she’s in the trees close by—Seth? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Seth murmured, his brow furrowing. “At least… is there something strange about the rock up here?”
Elza looked down at the rock beneath them, a sneer twisting her usually taciturn expression. “Dragon tracks. They can’t help themselves.” Sure enough, the stone beneath their feet was torn and gouged as if by long talons—for all the world as though it was as soft as sand. Seth recalled the bleeding stump that the monstrosity had been nursing, remembered the acrid black blood that had decorated the dragon’s talons. A shiver ran down his spine, and for no reason he could place, he looked up at the mountain peak.
And as he did, a shadow fell across them. He heard Elza swear, felt rather than saw Victor ready himself to shift, and barked a swift instruction to hold their position. Dragonwings, blotting out the sky—he counted at least a dozen, their scales glinting in the warm light of sunset. Far more than four wolves could take on … and there was no sense antagonizing the dragons by shifting into their more battle-ready forms. Seth stood tall, keeping the trepidation from his face as the contingent of dragons winged their way into land on the Plateau.
Until Lana, he’d never seen a dragon up close before… and seeing a dozen was a whole new experience again. His heart pounded hard in his chest as the great reptiles settled, and he tried not to look at the careless way their razor-sharp claws dug into the rock of the Plateau, tearing chunks out of it the way his paws displaced soft sand. Was it true, then, that the dragons had hollowed out the whole peak of the mountain they lived in? He’d always thought those stories were silly, that nothing could be sharp enough to dig through stone… but looking at the creatures now, he was beginning to realize that more of the stories were true than he’d thought.
“Seth,” Elza said through gritted teeth. “They’re not shifting.”
“They will,” he said, trying to sound like he believed it himself. “They’re suspicious of us too. With good reason. It’s not like their side hasn’t suffered losses.”
“Less than ours,” was all Elza muttered, but he felt her subside. Angry as she was, she trusted him. They all did. He was their Alpha, like his parents before him. It was his job to lead them, to keep them safe. He’d spent his whole life in training for situations just like this one.
And then, finally, a dragon stepped forward, talons digging hard into the rocky surface of the Plateau. The creature’s long, serpentine head tilted in first one direction, then the other, its great crystalline eyes scanning the windswept Plateau—looking for more wolves, he supposed. Worry gnawed at him. Where was Xanthe? She wouldn’t be foolish enough to come jumping out at the dragons from wherever she’d hidden herself, would she? She was a young wolf, rash and impetuous, but she had more sense than that.
The dragon, seemingly satisfied, suddenly vanished. In its place stood a man, tall and lean, a long crimson cloak pulled tight around his shoulders and an imposing look on his regal face. There was a band of dull silver around his temples, standing in contrast to his pale skin and sandy brown hair. The dragon’s eyes were blue, Seth noticed… but a sky blue, not the icy white-blue of Lana’s curious eyes. Lana. Where was she? He felt his muscles tighten, then unclench a little when he saw her hastening across the Plateau, a look of surprise and delight on her face.
“You must be the Prince?” Seth stepped forward to make a formal introduction—but before he’d taken more than a couple of steps, there was a flurry of motion from the dragons behind the Prince. Behind him, his packmates shouted a warning. The Prince’s expression didn’t change as four of his dragons shot forward, their sinuous bodies moving across the stone with alarming speed … and then there was a talon at his throat, pressing coldly against the skin there. He didn’t need to look behind him to know that his pack had been similarly cornered.
Only now did the Prince speak—and his voice was cold and remote as the mountain peak he and his subjects hailed from.
“Alpha Seth. You and your men will be taken into our custody immediately and held until we’ve ascertained the locations of our missing subjects.”
Behind him, he heard Elza swear. “What are you talking—”
“Silence,” the Prince snapped, and Seth tensed at the yelp of pain he heard from Elza—but a warning press of the talon at his throat forbade him from looking around. He straightened his spine, heart thudding against his ribcage, despair and fury warring with one another. An ambush. He’d led his pack straight into an ambush.
He should have known better than to trust a dragon.
Chapter 5 - Lana
The view from up here was so spectacular that Lana almost forgot that she was trying to figure out where she was. After the long and grueling climb up the side of what felt like Mount Everest, she’d been just about ready to collapse… but with the canopy of trees finally out of the way and the sky properly visible, she’d felt a rush of fresh energy surge through her. It was absolutely stunning up here. Above them, the mountain they were climbing continued even further, its peak invisible amidst the thick cloud cover. But it wasn’t the mountain that she was interested in—it was the view from halfway up.
Seth had called the area ‘the valley’, and it was only now that she understood what he’d meant. The mountain they were halfway up loomed above the surrounding countryside, part of what looked like a range of at least two or three more peaks, just visible in the east. Between them, the land rippled and undulated, the thick canopy of trees broken only by a river that seemed to wind its way through the valley and towards a lake in the distance. Beyond that was hard to make out… and for a moment, she had worried that something was wrong with her eyes. The landscape seemed to disappear, much sooner than it should have, replaced by a dense gray that was indistinguishable from the overcast sky above. It was as though the whole valley was encircled by clouds… or by fog.
A shiver ran down her spine. When Seth had told her that the mist never cleared, she’d assumed he meant at this time of year… or else that she’d misinterpreted what he was saying. The language was coming back to her slowly, but she still felt very rusty, especially compared to how fluently and beautifully he spoke. She’d been distracted, too, by the way he’d talked about the fog using the grammar associated with names and titles, assigning it the status of a proper noun. What kind of climate had year-round fog—or Fog, whatever that meant? Certainly not anywhere she’d been recently. And as beautiful as this view was, it was doing nothing to tell her where she was. There wasn’t a single landmark she recognized, not a single clue about where she was. If anything, she felt even more lost than she had when she’d arrived.
But the familiar sound of dragonwings soon pulled her from her reflections. She shaded her eyes with one hand as a dozen dragons descended from the sky, surprised by how quickly they’d appeared—hidden in the cloud cover above, perhaps? They were a beautiful sight as they circled down to land. She came a little closer, watching as the little group of wolves squared up to the dragons. Even from here, the tension between the groups was unmistakable. Best not to interfere with diplomacy, she decided.
But then, quicker than blinking, something changed. Suddenly, the wolves were being taken prisoner, sharp talons at their throat, the leader of the dragons shouting orders as his men took Seth and his wolves into custody. Shocked, she hastened across the Plateau, not stopping to think that this might be foolish of her. Seth and his wolves had saved her life—she wasn’t going to let them be taken prisoner by dragons if there was anything she could do about it.
“Hey! Stop!”
Only one of the dragons had shifted—she met his hard blue eyes, noticing the silver band he wore around his temples and trying to hide her scowl. Why were dragons so obsessed with royalty and monarchies? All around the world, the story was the same—dragons passing crowns around, arguing over who should be King or Queen, who deserved the most status, the most titles, the most pointless demonstrations of wealth and power. It seemed the same was true in this little valley.
“Who are you, then?” she demanded, folding her arms across her chest. “The King? Why are you taking these wolves prisoners?”
The dragon with the crown was staring at her, his eyes wide… but his shock didn’t seem to have anything to do with what she’d said. His men certainly didn’t stop dragging Seth and his wolves away—and as Seth was marched past her, she caught a look of cold rage in his silver eyes that chilled her to the bone.
“Seth, I have no idea what these guys are doing—” she started, realizing too late that she’d defaulted to English. Seth turned away from her, and she felt a lump rise to her throat at the expression of absolute betrayal on his face. “I did not know,” she called after him, scrambling helplessly for the right words in the language she hadn’t spoken since she was a child.
But something was happening among the other dragons. When she turned back to confront the man with the crown, she was startled to see that the others had shifted, too, and now eight curious faces were studying her. But it was the one in the crown who stepped forward, his expression full of wonder. When he greeted her, she had to stifle a groan. It had clearly been too much to hope for that it was only the wolves who spoke ancient Draconic around here. But her grasp of the language must have been rustier than she thought. The greeting this man used for her—she’d always thought it was a special one, reserved only for royalty. God, her father would be furious with her.
“My name is Conrad, caretaker Prince of the valley. I am honored to—”
“Right,” she said impatiently, aware that Seth and his wolves were being quietly escorted away. “My name is Lana. Why are you capturing these wolves?” she demanded, grateful for the practice she’d had talking with Seth on the walk here. “What crime have they committed?”