Ash coated his mouth, dry and bitter. Val blinked against the pale sunlight filtering through the dead canopy, a dull ache spreading through his limbs. The forest was charred to the bone—trees snapped like ribs, smoke rising in lazy spirals from scorched trunks.
Val jolted awake with a gasp, heart pounding against his ribs. Yara. The last image seared into his mind—flames, a scream, a flash of that cursed spell arcing toward them. The mage. The child. His mate.
He scrambled upright, nearly slipping on the blackened slope beneath him. Pain stabbed through his side and thigh, but he didn't stop. "Yara?" he choked out, voice raw. "Yara!"
Nothing.
Just the skeletal trees around him, burned hollow, their silence mocking.
His breath came fast. His hands searched blindly through the ash, through scorched leaves and rubble. He turned, slipped again, cursed.
Then—
A sound. Soft. Weak.
His arms froze.
The baby dragon.
