Page 16 of Destined Paranormals: Volume One

“If that is your mate, Konrad, you got a grumpy one,” Wilhelm said. Lukas chuckled, and I kept quiet. I had to agree to some degree. I did not even know his name as of yet. But he was good at giving commands. And, apparently, breaking chains from walls.

We left the room, discovering a giant dragon-sized hole in the hallway. The exterior walls were missing, as was some of the floor as well as the roof above us.

We walked to the edge, peering down to the floor below us.

“Now what? We cannot jump that distance without added strength. Even then, I am not sure I could make that jump,” Lukas said.

I pulled him and Wilhelm back as the dragon’s body started to move out of the destroyed wall on our right. Elias followed the giant head out of the hole in the wall, quickly rushing over to us and throwing his arms around me. I hugged him back, trying my hardest to not cry. We’d been kept the farthest apart over the past months. It was only a little reassuring that Lukas or Wil were able to talk to Elias and pass on messages to me.

“We cannot make that jump. How will we get down?” I asked the dragon alpha.

His scales shimmered, then paled. As they were replaced with skin, I once more could not deny how handsome the alpha was.

“Are there more of you that were taken?” he asked.

“If there were, they were never with us,” Lukas said. The alpha seemed to accept that, nodded, then moved to the edge and looked down. He looked up, then decided against that and ushered us back into the room we had just left.

“I will shift, and we will go out the wall. You four will climb onto my back, and I will fly us to safety.”

We were not given a choice when the alpha started shifting into his dragon scales once again. There was not nearly enough room in here for him in that form, so we all ran for the door and into the hallway. That was our mistake, though, because there was the old man that came into our rooms and stood there staring at us, and he was not alone. The weird one that had been the one to give us the food that had been tainted was with him.

We screamed and rushed back into the room. Our cries caught the attention of the alpha. The room was all but gone, the ceiling crumbled on the floor, and the outer wall was gone.

“Behind the alpha,” Lukas said, and we all ran under a black wing while the dragon tried to turn in the room.

The old man stopped just inside the door, his eyes growing large at the sight of the massive dragon in front of him. I heard the familiar rumble in the chest next to me and pushed the others closer to where the wall had once been just as there was a blast of heat and a loud, angry roar. Loud screams of pain quickly died. The scent of burnt flesh caused me to wrinkle my nose, but I did not fault the alpha even a little. If I’d been able to torch them, I would have, as would the others with me.

The alpha moved again, simply walking out of the missing wall, then spreading his wings. We watched, enthralled by the beauty of one so majestic and graceful for his size.

“He is not like us, is he?” Elias asked.

“I don’t think so, no,” I said. I moved to the edge of the wall and looked out, watching the dragon as he circled around and came back to us. He was large enough to land on the ground and allow us to carefully step out onto his wide shoulders and sit down.

“How are we going to hang on?” Elias asked.

“I’m not sure. Tightly. Hang on as best as you can,” I called out from the back. My arms were still chained together, as were Lukas’s, but we did the best we could. A smooth jump and two flaps of his wings, and we were airborne.

While I expected the alpha to fly us away, he instead circled around, carefully landing on the ground just at the tree line. When he lay down and leaned to the side, we all made a noise as we slid off the back of the dragon. He circled around, sniffing at Lukas’s wrists, and when he opened his mouth, Lukas placed the chain near the shackle on his wrist in the mouth of the dragon. A quick bite had the chain breaking, and with it this time, the shackle.

Lukas cried out in pain, falling to the ground. We all moved closer, ready to help if we could.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I felt a pull. One that felt like it was ripping something from inside me,” Lukas said. He held out his arm, revealing the dark mark on his wrist. I quickly looked down at mine, but the shackles were on too tightly to see anything.

“Do you want the other one removed, Lukas?” Wilhelm asked. He was staring at the dragon, who was looking at…me.

“I want mine removed,” I said, volunteering. I didn’t know if I would feel the same, but I did not care. I simply wanted them gone. I held out my arms, wondering if the alpha would agree to help me get mine off. When his mouth parted slightly, I walked closer. I held my arms upward, placing the edge of each shackle within the dragon’s bite. I took a deep breath, kissed the scaled snout in front of me, and closed my eyes.

When the alpha bit down, I cried out when I, too, felt as if something were being ripped from inside me. I fell to the ground, immediately surrounded by the others, and a dragon’s head pushed against my chest. I weakly reached out, touching him.

“Thank you, Alpha,” I panted out. When his nose pushed against me, I felt something I had not felt in too long. My dragon was just under the surface, more than ready to come out and say hello.

“It’s the shackles. Somehow, they have kept us from shifting,” I called out to the others as I tried to sit up. With Lukas’s help, I sat, picking up the pieces of the shackles that had been on my wrists for so long. They looked like nothing special, just black metal that had been locked into place. Only, they weren’t locked. They were somehow fused together.

“Will you bite the other one of mine off?” Lukas asked. The dragon alpha nodded once and opened his mouth just enough to get the shackle inside. Lukas called out and fell, just as I did, when the alpha bit and the shackle fell to the ground.

“I don’t understand,” Elias said. “Why is it hurting?”