Damon’s dragon was filled with rage at this new threat to his mate, aching to shift and destroy their enemy once and for all. At the same time, the human side of him was torn as he’d never been before.

Had he done the right thing? He’d just abandoned his mate with their prisoner.

But the prison was the safest place in the mountain. They’d constructed it so that even a powerful shifter wouldn’t be able to break out.

Which also meant that no one should be able to break in.

Still, even now a part of Damon ached with the need to race back and fly his mate to safety.

But Ginny was right, he couldn’t abandon the chimera. Gareth might be powerful—but an attack, right here at the heart of the council’s power, was unheard of.

They’d have to meet this threat. If the fire dragons managed to wound the chimera—or worse, kill him—all shifters would be severely weakened. If the fire dragons proved strong enough to strike a severe blow to the council of elements itself, it would weaken morale enough that they might be unable to keep the peace.

And without all shifters peacefully united against this terrible threat, the resulting war would claim too many innocent lives...

No, there was no choice. Autumn was as safe as she could possibly be, and the best thing he could do in her defense right now was to join forces with the chimera and drive out this threat.

Damon hurtled up the stairs, then raced along a narrow corridor. It was too small for a dragon—deliberately so. This way, an escaping prisoner would be unable to shift, unless his animal was smaller than a human, and so less dangerous.

But right now, this meant that Damon couldn’t shift either.

He used his dragon’s senses again, sending his thoughts deep into the stone that had always obeyed his command since the day he’d been born.

Danger, the stone now whispered. Fire. Smoke. Shadow. Shadow...

Damon cursed, unable to see through the darkness that blocked his dragon’s sight, even here at the heart of a mountain where his dragon’s element should be at its most powerful. He’d never experienced that sensation before. It made him uneasy.

No fire dragon should be strong enough to stand up to his power like this. Not unless there was a dragon born with the power over the element of fire itself...

But there had never been a true master of fire. The council of elements had never held a plinth of fire. Perhaps, long ago, before dragons had begun to keep recordings, a master of fire had existed as well—but the fire element had been wiped out once and for all in the Middle Ages, when knights hunted them down like wild beasts.

Skidding around a corner, Damon finally reached the part of the large system of caves and tunnels that had been made for dragon size. Within a heartbeat, he shifted, his wings stretching until they brushed the walls of the large tunnel leading upwards.

His senses were stronger this way. Furious, he clawed at the stone as he raced upwards, sending his thoughts deep into the earth—but still something resisted.

Fire. Smoke. Shadow.

He bit back a roar. Perhaps they weren’t expecting him. Perhaps he could surprise them...

Maybe whatever was blocking his own power was blocking theirs as well. If the strange shadow was of their making, they might not be able to see through it either.

There was a noise in front of him now. It was a dim roar which made the stone around him vibrate faintly.

Damon knew that sound. It was the roar of a dragon—no, of several dragons. And by the way the sound echoed through the rock all around him, he knew exactly where they were, even without being able to tap into the stone’s sight.

They were at the heart of where the strange shadow was concentrated.

They were directly in the giant council chamber—and they weren’t alone.

With his dragon’s anger at this new threat to his mate burning like a furnace deep in his own chest, Damon at last rushed out of a tunnel into the large council chamber. He spread his wings, shooting up to hover beneath the roof of the cave. His neck twisted back and forth as his dragon’s roar filled the cave—and there, at the back of the cave, he could at last make out the source of the shadow.

Smoke filled that part of the cave. It was so thick he could barely make out what was happening—but he could see just enough to immediately understand what was going on.

Right at the center of that cloud of smoke, a large shadow was rearing up—a shadow that seemed to constantly shift between forms so quickly that Damon felt sickened by it.

The chimera.

And around Gareth, smaller shapes were flitting through the smoke. Every now and then, he could make out the shape of a wing or a flexing tail.

The fire dragons.

It was hard to make out exactly how many there were. Three, he thought—and then the smoke shifted, and the dragons were not where they’d been before.

No... five?

Even where he was hovering high above them, the acrid smoke stung his eyes. But he’d seen enough.

Damon drew in a deep breath, releasing it in a roar that made the mountain tremble. The smoke might block his vision, but he was still the dragon of earth.

At the command of his voice, stalagmites grew out of the ground so quickly that one pierced the wing of a fire dragon. The dragon screeched in helpless anger, fluttering for a long moment before he tore free.

He tried to rise in the air—but now Damon came down with fury, his jaw closing around the injured dragon’s throat.

Angrily, Damon shook him, then discarded him by throwing him towards the cave’s wall to his left.

The fire dragon hit the wall with a loud thud, sliding downward until he at last crashed down onto the ground.

For a long moment, he didn’t move. At last, he gathered himself up with an agonized groan, creeping towards the cave’s exit.

Damon would have stopped him, but already his attention was focused on the other dragons.

The smoke was still thick, burning in his nostrils, but it had lifted enough that he could make out what was going on.

The stalagmites had not only pierced the wing of one fire dragon, but a second dragon seemed to have been knocked unconscious by the sudden appearance of the stone formation.

He was resting on the ground, wings akimbo. As Damon watched, he seemed to return to consciousness, his head thrashing back and forth in obvious pain as he blew thin, ineffectual streams of fire from his jaw.

Three fire dragons left. Damon beat his wings to shoot up to the top of the cave once more, so that no dragon could surprise him from above.

Three... and the chimera had made a good showing against them so far, for all that his powers were weakened by the agonizing transformations he went through every few seconds.

Even as Damon hovered above, he saw a serpent’s tail strike out from the shadow. No—it was a scorpion’s tail, Damon realized, a second before the scorpion’s poisonous stinger sank right into the neck of a fire dragon.

The dragon howled in shocked pain. His body shimmered for a moment, and then shifted back into his human form.

Without his wings, he dropped like a stone. A moment before hitting the ground, he managed to shift back into his dragon, breaking his fall just in time. But already the scorpion’s poison seemed to be doing its work. A dark tint had begun to make its way up the dragon’s neck, the red scales that covered his body turning dull and dark.

When the dragon opened his jaw, only a puff of smoke escaped instead of a stream of flame.

Then, with an agonized roar, the dragon began to convulse, coughing desperately as the black continued to leech color from his scales. In an uncertain motion, his wings fluttering weakly, this dragon as well began to crawl towards the cave’s exit.

Two dragons left.

Only two dragons before his mate would be safe...

But just when Damon spread his wings, inhaling deeply for a final attack, a rush of terror came flooding his senses through the mate bond.

A trap! It’s a trap! They’ve come for us—help!

Together with Autumn’s desperate cry for help, a vision of a wall shaking and a crack forming in the stone appeared in his mind. For a moment, he couldn’t think, the instinctive need to protect his mate so strong that it overwhelmed everything else.

Power was building inside him along with his fear and his rage. Without thinking, he released it, flinging it straight at the two remaining dragons.

With a loud rumble, large rocks began to fall from the roof of the cave. One of them hit the wing of a fire dragon, who groaned in agony as he began to tumble towards the ground. The second came to his rescue, stabilizing him at the last moment with a wing he thrust beneath the other dragon’s wounded wing.

No, Damon realized even through his shock. He wasn’t stabilizing him—he was helping him to escape.

Both dragons had begun to make their way to the exit of the cave, retreating along with the other wounded dragons. At any other time, Damon would have rushed after them—but there was no time left. His mate was in mortal danger.

With one final outburst of his power, Damon called upon his element—and the stone answered.

With a loud groan, stone burst forth from the walls of the cave. A heartbeat later, the fire dragons were gone from their sight, a heavy wall of rock sealing off the cave’s exit, with the fire dragons free to make their escape—and the chimera safe from further attack.

Damon didn’t even stop to see whether the chimera had been wounded.

Terrified for Autumn, he hurled himself straight back into the system of caves he’d come from. Even as he beat his wings to shoot down the large corridor that led into the heart of the mountain, he sent out his dragon’s senses.

And there, right where the mate bond vibrated with his mate’s love and fear, a new shadow had appeared.

Smoke. Fire. Shadow.

The same shadow that had blocked his sight of the council chamber earlier was now blocking him from reaching out to the stone of the prisoner’s caves.

Roaring with helpless fury, Damon rushed along the path on his feet when it grew too small for flight, his claws striking sparks on the rock.

He ran as he’d never run before, his heart pounding in his chest—and then he came to a sudden, shocking stop.

Instead of the opening leading to the stairs that lead down to the cells, a heap of fallen rocks was in his way.

The stone was hot, smoke rising from it here and there.

Fire.

The stairs had collapsed. His way was blocked. And in the cells beyond, his mate was trapped with the fire dragons...