Chapter 182: Enter Kael Ashenvale
Kael Ashenvale was grey, blue-balled, recently resurrected, and currently commanding a military that belonged to his brother.
He was still in the forest when his body said hard pass, because sprinting through trees after coming back from the dead was apparently too much to ask.
Legs? Immediate no.
Lungs? Go fuck yourself.
Pride? Stubborn, arrogant, and undefeated.
The perimeter had been secured hours ago on Maddox’s order. Dragons were posted at every checkpoint and mages held the forest line. Nothing was getting through without being seen. But she believed she’d been abducted and was scared. So standing orders were to hold position, report on sight, and do not engage.
That strategy had produced four grown men in a pile on the forest floor and one woman outrunning and outwitting all of them. It was safe to say the four of them had been bent over and spanked on their bare asses by a girl who didn’t know where the fuck she was.
Polite was over.
Kael: Ryker. Full grid sweep. Visual confirmation means immediate retrieval. Whatever it takes to bring her in. She comes back unharmed. That part is not flexible.
Ryker: Copy. Dropping perimeter holds. Moving all units to active sweep, standard grid, starting from her last known position.
Kael could feel the mindlink chain firing outward, orders cascading through the ranks with the precision of a machine.
Sterling: I have three squads repositioning now. She went south from the collision point. I’m covering the southern corridor from the air.
Dragons moved overhead, their wingbeats shaking the canopy. The grid was tightening.
Kael leaned on a tree like the dramatic bastard he was, because unaided standing had become a losing negotiation with his own skeleton. His ribs bitched loudly. He told them to fuck off.
Then Maddox’s mindlink came through, and the temperature of everything changed.
Maddox: She jumped off the Widow’s Drop. Get me air above the river now.
Kael’s body went still against the tree. The grey in his face darkened by two full shades.
Ryker: Copy.
Maddox: Landon just entered the water with Nicholas and I.
Ryker: Water temperature?
Maddox: Pick a number between freezing and fuck you.
Kael closed his eyes. Opened them.
Ryker: Even a dragon can’t withstand that, Commander.
Maddox: I am not leaving this river without her.
Kael: He didn’t ask what you wanted. He is telling you what your body can handle.
Maddox: Noted. Ignored.
Kael heard that. A ghost of a smirk crossed his grey face before it vanished into the focused, iron expression of a man running a rescue he was too injured to join.
Sterling: Repositioning eastern squads along the river corridor.
Kael pushed off the tree and started walking south.
Walking was generous. It was closer to a controlled stagger with excellent posture, his ribs filing formal complaints with every step, his lungs submitting a resignation letter his legs had already signed.
Kael: Griffin. I need a ride. South side of the forest. Don’t make it weird.
Griffin’s green dragon dropped through the canopy forty seconds later, landing with more enthusiasm than the situation required. Kael climbed onto his back and the motion alone nearly sent him unconscious. His vision greyed at the edges. His hands found Griffin’s ridge scales and held.
Griffin: You look like absolute shit.
Kael: I feel fantastic. Fly south along the river. Low. Slow.
Griffin: Kael, I can feel your hands shaking on my scales.
Kael: Then fly smoother.
Griffin banked south. The river appeared below them, black and fast. From fifty feet, the water looked like it was moving at a speed designed to kill anything stupid enough to be in it.
Kael closed his eyes and reached.
Calling for the Drakencrest flame was a fated mate ability. Something he watched Maddox do two nights ago at the gala. And last night, something that Kael had also successfully done in a tent to block Landon’s light. It was fast and she probably had no idea that it was him.
She had also been sitting right next to him then. This was far away, where he couldn’t see her and she was moving through a cold, dark river.
Nothing.
He called again. Harder. The effort cost him a rib’s worth of pain and a full shade of color from his already grey face.
Nothing.
Every time he reached for her flame, it cost him energy.
Kael: Lower. Get me closer to the water and go south. Past them. She’s further downstream than they think.
Griffin dropped altitude. Below him, the water was black moving at speed, and the banks were narrowing, which meant the current was accelerating, which meant she was moving faster than the three men behind him could chase.
He called a third time, and this time he didn’t hold back.
The pull ripped through his chest with enough force to make his vision white out. For two full seconds he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except hold onto Griffin’s scales and wait for his body to decide whether it was going to cooperate or quit.
He felt it before he confirmed it visually. Her flame answered him. The pull in his chest locked onto the flicker and held.
His vision came back. And there, a full mile ahead of the others, deep in the black water, a flicker. Gold. Faint. The guttering signature of a flame that was dying in a body that was dying around it.
Kael: Found her. Maddox. One mile south of your position. She’s deep.
He didn’t wait for the reply.
Kael swung his legs over Griffin’s side and dropped fifty feet into a river that was trying to kill everything in it.
Kael: Gwen, I’m coming.
Grey, broken, blue-balled, freshly back from the dead, and currently the only one who knew exactly where she was. He swam towards her with everything he had, carrying the confidence of a dragon who had already beaten death once for this girl and was about to do it again.