dragons breath 01 - stalked by flames (40 page)
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
He looked good, even with his black hair tousled and circles under his eyes. His camrium vest and pants did an amazing job of highlighting his muscles. I could sense the power he kept restrained inside himself. It was in the way he moved—as if he could defeat any enemy who got in his way, no matter their size. For some reason, he’d decided not to be my enemy.
“Yes.” He took a step closer to me. “It is better if I return before they wake at the fortress and I must check on Donar.”
“Well,” Earl said, stepping off the porch. “Justin and I need to organize a group to put out containers to collect the rain that’s comin’ soon. We’ll leave you two to talk.”
Justin gave Earl a grateful look. “That’s an excellent idea.”
I waited for them to leave before turning my attention to Aidan. I’d forgotten about his cousin. “You shouldn’t have stayed with me. Now I feel bad about Donar.”
“Don’t.” He took hold of my chin. “My cousin was already improving when I last checked on him. It was you I worried about.”
Trish and Danae came out of a house down the street, holding buckets. They noticed us and stopped to stare. Aidan saw them and dropped his hand. I was disappointed, but I understood. He’d told me after I’d awakened that morning that we needed to keep our distance from each other.
Our relationship had to be about getting rid of the pure dragons and nothing else. Aidan was right. Our worlds could never mesh well together. It would only end in heartache and resentment that we could have prevented. For us, we could never be intimate without our feelings becoming so strong they’d overrule our judgment on anything else. I felt that every time I was close to him and he did, too.
I took a deep breath. “So where do we go from here?”
“Meet me at the training site in one week. We’ll discuss it then.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He clasped my arm. I could see in his eyes he wanted to do more, but he held himself back. “Take care until then, Bailey.”
I nodded, forcing myself to keep my arms at my sides. It took everything I had not to grab him and hold him like he’d done to me just that morning. “I’ll try.”
Aidan hesitated for a moment before letting go and walking away. He’d only made it halfway across the lawn when the ground shook. It was a light tremor that wasn’t even enough to unbalance me.
Then the sky lit up in a brilliant array of colors much like the northern lights I’d seen the day the barrier between our worlds began to fall. Aidan stopped and lifted his head to watch. The shaking ended a moment later.
“What is it?” I asked.
He looked back at me with a smile playing at his lips. “It’s done. Our worlds are reunited once again.”
“How do you know?”
Aidan shrugged. “I can feel the balance has returned and there’s a sense of wholeness in the world I didn’t realize was missing.”
Now that he mentioned it, I understood what he meant. For the past few months, the world had felt fractured. It had given me a constant sense of doom, but now that was gone. Like it had disappeared in an instant and left me feeling lighter. Hopeful.
“This is a new beginning isn’t it?”
He stared at me for nearly a minute before replying. “Yes, yes it is.”
About Susan Illene
Instead of making the traditional post high school move and attending college, Susan joined the U.S. Army. She spent her eighteenth birthday in the gas chamber — an experience she is sure is best left for criminals. For eleven years she served first as a human resources specialist and later as an Arabic linguist (mostly in Airborne units). Though all her duty assignments were stateside, she did make two deployments to Iraq where her language skills were put to regular use.
After leaving the service in 2009, Susan returned to school to study history with a focus on the Middle East at the University of Oklahoma. She no longer finds many opportunities to test her fighting abilities in real life, unless her husband is demanding she cook him a real meal (macaroni and cheese apparently doesn’t count), but she’s found a new outlet in writing urban fantasy heroines who can.
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Acknowledgments
I’ve got a lot of people to thank this time around. First, to Mary and Angela for working so hard while editing the novel. God knows I don’t make it easy on them, but they always do their best for me. Also, to the eight beta readers who were generous enough to volunteer their time and critique some of the early chapters. I’m certain this book is better for all their feedback.
I also appreciate my cover design team helpers (Sarah, Rachel, and Kristy) for their contributions to my book covers. They help in so many ways to ensure the artwork will be appealing to fans.
Thanks to my family for their support. Especially my father who read over many of the chapters to give his feedback and didn’t complain that I ran a fictitious tornado near his house. Sorry Dad! It was a big help that he could make sure I was getting local details right and not missing something. I also have to thank my grandfather and husband for helping me brainstorm ideas for the book when I was stuck on various plot holes. Mary, my editor, also helped enormously with that.
A huge thanks to my cover artists. Claudia at Phat Puppy art always makes my covers look amazing and gets them back to me fast, along with Catie (the Font Diva) who handled the typography for this book. Teresa Yeh, who conducted the model photo shoot, is absolutely amazing to work with and always does a fantastic job. Thanks also to Isabella Capri for all her hard work prepping and posing for the shoot. I was blown away and grateful you were willing to spend your birthday getting cover shots done since that was the only opening in everyone’s schedules. It meant a lot to me.
To Jeff Brown as well, for doing a fantastic job custom designing the dragon background. I still look at it amazed at how well he brought out the look I wanted from scratch. And to Alison Esposito at Wild Wolf Leatherwork for custom designing the leg harness the model is wearing in the cover photo. If only I was a bit smaller so I could wear it myself!
For research on the book I have to thank Sarah Robbins at the University of Oklahoma Bizzell Memorial Library for taking the time to answer my hypothetical questions on what it might be like living in the library during an apocalypse. Her tips on the whereabouts of food, blankets, and glow sticks were especially helpful. As well as procedures for what to do during a tornado.
In addition to that, thanks to Chris Mattingly at the Norman water treatment facilities for not hanging up on me when I posed my hypothetical questions to him about how the water situation would work if dragons attacked the city. He went so far as to discuss various scenarios of how things might play out between weather, earthquakes, and dragons. I truly appreciated his time and for him taking me seriously.
The list goes on and I can’t possibly thank (or remember) everyone who has contributed in some way. There are so many of you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your help. And last but not least, thanks to all my readers. Your motivation and love for my books are what helps keep me going.
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