Fleur closed her eyes and thought of Steele. The way he’d pursued her relentlessly, the way he kissed her and loved her, the way he’d given his soul into her care, and the way she gave hers to him.

“What are you doing, witch? Your magic can’t save you.”

She ignored the disdain and disgust in the black dragon’s words. Her love was more powerful than his hatred.

She pushed every bit of that love toward the teeny-tiny root and urged it to grow. Cracks and crunches of the rock breaking echoed all through the cavern and the scent of newly turned earth and fresh growth overtook the stench of sulfer.

“A tree root is not going to save you from the agonizing burn of the lava.”

Fleur opened her eyes and smiled at the asshat. He was wrong. The roots stretched down, creating first a wall of tangled wood between them and the creepy crone woman, and then a mass weaving covering the lava closest to her.

The shard at her neck glowed brightly, changing the color of the air around them from red to green.

The crone rattled the cage of branches and shouted through them. “Boy, see its power. Get the shard from her. Claim what is rightfully yours.”

The man snarled and black scales rippled across his body. His hands transformed into dark claws, the color of dirty oil. They swiped across her chest, shredding her shirt and cutting deep, leaving gashes that oozed black sludge.

She swallowed the scream, not wanting him to see her give into any pain he could inflict. She held fast to the knowledge that try as he might, his torture hadn’t sliced through the cord of the shard.

He roared, trying to grasp the crystal. “Give it to me, whore.”

“Get off.” Fleur twisted and slapped at his claws. She pushed her power far beyond where she’d gone before forcing the tree roots to twice, three, four times its normal size. A chunk of the ceiling fell, breaking away and landing in great pieces all around them.

One narrowly missed the half-dragon half asshole’s head. That pissed him off even more. She’d hoped that she could injure him and get him to let her go, even run away.

Nope.

He seized her by the throat with one giant clawed fist and grabbed for the shard with the other. Fleur clutched his arms attempting to save both her life and the shard.

“Never. You’ll never get it.”

He growled and flames licked at the edges of his mouth. “I will.”

The fire burst out at her and this time she did scream, turning her head away. But, the flames never touched her, didn’t burn her skin.

“What the fuck, what are you?” The man shook her and shot his fiery breath at her again.

It licked across her skin, but didn’t hurt any more than incredibly bad breath.

Fleur blinked. There was something different about her eyelids. Or was it her eyes? The world around her turned technicolor, sharper. The heat that the shard had protected her from lessened even more and the wounds on her chest hurt less. A change was rising in her from the inside.

She glared at her captor. Thorny vines wrapped around his claws and fist, drawing blood and crushing the scales. “Hells bells, why does everyone have to ask what I am?”

She’d been asked that her entire life. Those that didn’t care to ask, simply shunned her. Now she was being tortured, and she still couldn’t answer the question. She didn’t know herself.

She’d clung to her unknown destiny her whole life, hiding behind it. She would know who she was when her fate showed up to tell her.

Screw that.

A renewed power built inside.

“You want to know what I am?” She released her grip on him as more vines and branches wrapped around them both. “You can talk to the hand, no, talk to the finger, because I’m not taking any more questions today.”

Fleur raised her middle finger to the asshat’s face, holding it steady and strong.

Smoke curled out of the snarl-puss face. He glanced at the shard and to face. “There are plenty of other ways to get what I want, hundreds of dragons who don’t know how precious the gift is.”

He released her, breaking through the vines, and dropped her to the ground. She landed incredibly close to the lava, protected only by the thin layer of roots that were burning up by the second. Still she didn’t feel the heat.

“If you won’t give me the soul shard, you can die, and your dragon with you.”

He kicked at her, sending her careening toward the lava. She raised her arms into the air, calling the plants to her. A branch stretched down, wrapping around each arm and pulling her up and away from the danger.

The man transformed fully into a black beast of a dragon and crashed through the wooden barrier. He took flight and torpedoed across the lava, following its flow deeper into the ground.

The crone screeched after him and disappeared into a puff of black smoke.

A great roar bubbled up from the direction the black dragon had flown and the earth shook below her. More of the ceiling caved in and the floor below her cracked right on cue like the set of an action adventure disaster movie.

Crapping crappity crap crap. Fleur had been ready to release a sigh of relief, but they hadn’t let her escape at all. They were going to trap her underground in the cavern of death and despair.

Where was a dragon warrior when she needed one?

“He’s waiting for you.” The whisper of a soft feminine voice slid into her head.

“What? Hello? Who’s there?”

“Go, Fleur. Quickly.”

“Where? I don’t see a way out.” The floor shook again and she fell. “Oh, god. I’m going to die in here, aren’t I? This is my destiny coming to bite me in the ass.”

That would teach her to think she could ignore what the universe had predetermined her life would be.

The image of a gorgeous mother-nature diva, white flowing robes, dark hair, and plump soft curves formed before her.

For the briefest moment, she saw a reflection in the woman’s eyes, of herself, but instead of her own olive skin, she saw white scales.

The woman pointed toward the tunnel in the rock Fleur had come through before. The roots had opened a new path that angled up to the surface. “Dammit, girl. Screw destiny. Run.”

She had said it. Now she was truly going to do it.

Screw. Stupid. Destiny.

She wanted to live.

The floor shook again, but this time the falling rock uncovered more roots. The tree she’d coaxed into helping her had continued to swell and fill the cavern with its roots. The leafy part of the tree must be huge above the ground.

She scrambled onto the nearest root and encouraged more growth, jumping across from sprout to sprout across the cracks in the ground and the bubbling lava.

Her muscles were on fire and she vowed to start doing squats if her legs would get her out of here in one piece. The room was collapsing before her eyes.

She put on one final burst of speed. The white-robed woman drifted alongside of her, waving her hands and whispering foreign words.

A tremor grabbed Fleur’s heart, pushing out, shimmering over her entire body. One second she was running and the next, she flew into the tunnel, the earth falling in a tidal wave of dirt and rock behind her.

Flying. Holy smokes, literally flying. She clawed at the rock to make room for her and her big ole white wings. A ginormous crack in the earth opened before her and she jumped into the air, dodging falling rocks and hot water spilling from above.

“Steele? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“Fleur? We found your dragon tree. I’m coming.”

She didn’t know what a dragon tree was, but she could feel Steele, he was close.

“I’m flying up through a crack in the ground.”

He was silent for a moment. “Did you say flying?”

“Yeah, thanks to the woman in white with me.” Or, she was. The woman wasn’t beside her anymore. There wasn’t a whole lot of room though, so maybe she’d fallen behind.

The night sky with the moon and stars were visible above. Almost there. Almost back to Steele.

A great roar came from behind her and the crack widened. Fleur looked over her shoulder and saw the Black Dragon hot on her tail.

Between them was the woman in white.

“Go, little daughter. Hurry. I’ve muddled the dragon’s sight. Kur-jara can not see this part of you. Get to the surface and shift into your human form.”

Go, go, go. Hopefully Steele would know how to help her shift, because she didn’t have a clue.

She burst out of the ground and into the sky. Several dragons were circling the biggest tree in the forest. It towered above all the others, and its branches stretched out like the wings of dragon.

She’d made a great big green dragon tree.

It was beautiful and amazing. But, not as incredible as the sight of her own big green dragon pacing beneath it. “Steele.”

She swooped down and skidded across the ground. Her body shimmered and her feet transformed, then her legs, and torso, and arms, which she wrapped around Steele and held him tight.

He shifted instantly into his human form and held her tight against his chest with one arm. “Thank the first dragon. I failed you, my love. Forgive me.”

First, she would kiss him, making sure his lips and tongue, teeth and tonsils, knew how much she missed them. Then she’d set him straight on the whole fail forgive thing.

His kissy face plans matched hers. He pressed her against the tree trunk and mashed his lips against hers, taking her in a soul-deep kiss. The moment they touched a sense of overwhelming joy and rightness to her world flowed through, in and around them both.

She could kiss him forever, except she knew danger was on its way. If they were going to fight itas off together, she needed him to know everything that was in her heart, and heal his. He thought he’d failed her, when in reality he’d saved her, helped her save herself from living a small life.

As much as she didn’t want to, she broke the kiss and pressed her finger against his lips before he could say a word. “The black dragon is coming, so let me say this before the battle.” He sucked the end of her finger into his mouth, but waited for her to speak.

When this was over they were going to spend a long damn time staring into each other’s eyes. In bed.

The thunder and heat of dragon fire filled the air. She had only seconds before the black dragon and his special brand of destruction arrived.

The great tree shuddered and the ground moved beneath their feet. Steele steadied them against the trunk, keeping them both from falling.

Crap. She had a whole speech prepared, about how he was a warrior that has to protect the whole world from the evil she didn’t even know existed until yesterday. That would have to wait. Short, sweet, and to the point. They had a beast to battle.

“Love of my life, you’re badass. But, you don’t have to protect me. I think it’s actually my job to keep you and your soul safe, so you can keep on saving the world.”

Steele shook his head and clenched his jaw. “I am never leaving you exposed to a draft of cold air, much less demon dragons. I can’t, will not, lose you again. It almost killed me to think about those things even touching you.”

The black dragon surged out of the ground, taking half a ton of earth and trees with him and raining it down along with fireballs of rock and lava.

Dragons and wolves scattered to avoid the debris. Oh, no. The Wolfe pack was here. Her friends, the closest thing she had to a family were in danger too.

She and Steele had to stop the black dragon before it hurt any of them.

Fleur grabbed Steele’s arms and saw the wounds that weren’t healing. They matched the ones across her chest.

Both were filled with a black taint, something evil and not of the earth.

White scales rippled across her arms. What was inside of her, the part that she’d never been able to recognize or understand, pushed to get out.

“Trust me, Steele. Together we are stronger, together, we can save Blue Creek from the black dragon.”

It wasn’t only the dragon that Steele had awakened in her, but love.

The antidote for evil.