Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Help!
Air slammed against her body so hard it felt like hands—cold, merciless hands—shoving her downward.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster.
Her stomach climbed into her throat.
Her heartbeat became a frantic, shredding stutter.
There was no spell to cast.
No hope.
No slowing the plummet.
She was falling from a height no human could survive, and the ocean waited below to be her silver-blue grave.
The wind tore the breath from her lungs. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound ripped away instantly.
Stolen by velocity.
Swallowed by the storm.
Above, Pyrran’s laughter boomed through the clouds.
He was savoring this—her panic, her helpless flailing, the way her body twisted in freefall like a broken marionette.
Monster!
Her vision blurred as tears froze to her lashes. Her dark brown skin burned, and then went numb. Her bones thrummed with the speed of her descent.
The world became a smear of white, wind, and terror.
She tried to pull her arms in. Tried to fight the spin. But the sky had no mercy, and gravity had no bargains to offer.
So this is death.
Not quiet.
Not gentle.
A roar.
A rush.
A violent, endless surrender.
Then, another sound rose through the deafening wind tearing past her ears. A roar, but not Pyrran’s cruel delight.
This one cracked open the sky.
This one was different.
Anguished.
Desperate.
Broken.
Korin.
He roared again, and the sound tore a mournful wound through the sky.
Sol’s heart twisted.
Korin was screaming for her. Shifting, probably—bones cracking, scales erupting—racing upward to catch her before she shattered against the waves.
But he was too far.
Too slow.
She could feel it in her plummeting bones. The distance was too great. The fall too fast. By the time Korin reached her, she would already be dead.
I'm sorry.
She didn't know who she was apologizing to or why anymore. Perhaps, it was to Korin for thinking he was a monster the whole time and not accepting that he was her mate. Now there would be no time to explore the possibility.
Maybe the apology was to her parents, who had found her egg and raised her as their own. They would never know what happened to her. Never know that their strange, magical daughter had died falling from the sky, killed by a dragon who refused to believe she was real.
I'm sorry I couldn't. . .
PAIN exploded in her chest.
Sharp.
Burning.
Ripping.
Sol screamed.
Ahhhh!!!
Within her core, something woke.
Lurched.
Twisted.
What is this?!
The pain spread, gnawing at her senses.
Chewing away the very essence of who she was.
“Nooooo!!!” Agony detonated down her spine—molten metal poured into her marrow—forking through every nerve ending like lightning seeking ground.
Her bones didn't just ache.
They screamed.
They shattered.
They rebuilt themselves from the inside out.
This wasn't pain—pain was a human concept, small and manageable. This was primordial rebirth, the violent awakening of something savagely colossal and ancient that had slumbered in her DNA since before her first breath, now clawing its way free through flesh that was never meant to contain it.
Shattering.
Ripping.
Splintering.
No! No! What is happening to me?!
Her screams began to sound wrong.
They sounded. . .monstrous.
Deeper.
Rougher.
More wild animal than human.
And then her body began to violently transform.
The shift ravaged her hands first.
Her fingers bulged—widths and lengths that shouldn't exist, that couldn't exist—and yet she felt every agonizing inch of their becoming.
Skin stretching.
Veins elongating.
Joints popping.
Bones reshaping with sounds like cracking ice.
Her nails shot out, darkened to sapphire blue, thickened, and then curved into wicked points that gleamed.
Claws?!
Blue as winter twilight.
Sharp as frozen daggers.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
Entirely inhuman.
The transformation surged up her arms. Her skin ballooned to epic proportions, rippled, then split—but there was no blood.
Instead, scales emerged from beneath!
Oh gods!!!!!!
Shimmering scales. Some white as bone. Others blue as the deepest ice. They erupted across her flesh in waves, layering over enlarging muscle and expanding sinew.
Sol tried to scream again, but what emerged was not a scream.
It was a roar.
The sound erupted from her throat and shattered the air around her. And it was the explosive sound of mountains collapsing and glaciers calving.
Her spine snapped backward with a sickening crack—then erupted into a grotesque elongation of vertebra multiplying, splitting, doubling, and punching outward through her flesh.
A massive tail burst from her newly large tailbone, whipping violently through the air with enough force to slice clouds apart. Razor-edged spines erupted along its length, crystallizing into lethal blue-white glittering daggers that dripped with frost.
Her face—oh gods—her face.
The bones beneath her skin cracked and splintered, reconstructing themselves with the sound of a thousand icicles shattering at once.
Her jaw didn't just push forward—it erupted, tearing through flesh as it elongated into a savage, predatory snout.
Her human teeth ripped free from bleeding gums, each one a small death as fangs slammed in place, growing with such violent speed they scraped against each other, crystalline daggers that could shred steel.
Her skull fractured with the sound of thunder, brain pulsing exposed for a horrific instant before new bone encased it, horns drilling out from her temples in spirals of pale blue crystal that sang like glass being tortured.
And through it all. . .
falling,
falling,
always falling.