Read Online Phoenix by Finley Aaron - Free Book Online Page B

sneak away while I was sleeping? You thought you could run away with her?”
    “I wasn’t running away with her!” I’m about to point out that she’d have escaped us both if I hadn’t stayed awake and gone after her, but Ram is shouting, not listening.
    “Kidnapping her, then? You thought you could steal the woman away from me?”
    “I didn’t steal her!”
    “Did you go with him willingly?” Ram asks Nia.
    “No!” She looks appalled.
    Ram drops her hand and tackles me, changing into a dragon as he pins me to the ground.
    I’d like to stay in human form so I can explain what happened. There’s no explaining anything in dragon form, but Ram gives me no choice. Vulnerability is insufficient armor when my brother’s in a jealous rage, as now. He thinks I kidnapped Nia away from him? Does he not trust me at all? I know we’re competing for the same woman’s affections, but we were brothers first.
    I use the momentum of my dragon change to shove him back, off of me. At the same time, I’m worried that Nia will use this as an opportunity to get away.
    For one stunned instant she’s standing there, still human, looking torn and guilty (she’s got to know it’s her fault Ram turned on me, besides which she knows we’re only fighting at all because she sneaked away in the first place). But then she lifts her face to the sky in a mournful, tragic sort of way, and changes into a dragon again, leaping away in the direction of her previous escape.
    Ram’s got his head down, horns pointed at my chest (our underbelly armor is slightly softer than the rest of our scales. It’s still bulletproof, but it can be pierced by dragon horns, talons, or tail spikes). I roll to the side, spring into the air, and take off past him, flying after Nia as quickly as I can.
    And Ram is after me, nearly upon me, when he sees that Nia has escaped again.
    Now we’re both flying after her, and she’s diving down the mountainside to the north but mostly west, where the sun is low in the sky, a blinding haze of gold that strikes her scales as though igniting them.
    And beyond, filling the valley, streaming toward us in uncountable numbers, black like an oil spill and every bit as devastating, their stink rising up to choke us, the yagi.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Panic grips my heart. Nia is going to dive into their midst and I cannot let her. But she’s got so much of a head start! She’s twice as close to the yagi as she is to me, and if I barrel into her with too much speed, low in the sky as she is now, I’ll only push us both into the swarm.
    Nia is flying low, nearly to the head of the swarm, when her speed slows.
    Is she hesitating?
    Maybe my arguments have gotten to her. Maybe she wishes she could say goodbye, though I doubt I’m about to finally get a longing look like the one she gave Ram.
    It doesn’t matter why she’s hesitating. Her slowing down gives me and Ram just enough of a split-second advantage to swoop alongside her, one on each side, and grasp her upraised arms by the wrists. We tug her up, high in the sky, circling wide, and away.
    She doesn’t really fight us. If anything, she simply wilts between us, deflating like a noiseless, tearless sob. Her wings are extended but not moving, so that I’m not sure if she’s cooperating or if it’s simply the push of the wind keeping them open.
    Either way, it helps us make it back to our campsite in a hurry. The fire is still going and a few of our things, including the bearskin, lie scattered about.
    Ram gives me a look that says he wants me to put the fire out (we dragons try to be ecologically responsible as much as we can—I, for one, have no desire to burn down Siberia, not even by accident). So I let go of Nia’s wrist (Ram still has secure hold on her other arm) and I swoop over to the stream, filling my large dragon mouth with water and spewing it onto the fire. Steam rises and fills the valley.
    I spit a couple more mouthfuls of water on the fire before