Kurt didn’t know which way was up anymore. He’d run back into the forest only to watch a pillar of flame reach down from the heavens and streak across his path. He flung his hands up to shield his face, turning as fast as he could to run in another direction, and tripped over an upraised tree root. He landed hard on his belly, biting his tongue on impact and his mouth filled with the taste of blood. Somewhere to the right another wall of flame appeared and seconds later again to the left. He scrambled to his feet, wheeling around, searching for somewhere to run. He realized with horror that he was walled in, the only opening the break in the treeline leading out in the open.

No! He might have shouted the word. It was hard to tell what with the roar of flames, and the sudden burst of wind that sent flame, smoke, and debris flying towards him. He turned and ran, unable to see in the thick smoke, gasping for air that wasn’t hot and putrid in his lungs.

Beneath his feet the earth seemed to be shaking, tripping him up as he tried to escape the walls of flame rushing toward him. Had he been able to see he would have seen something very odd indeed. The trees, they were moving. Lifting roots and bending trunks to make a way through the walls of flame, providing escape from the trap the dragon had set. But the smoke was too thick, Kurt’s terror and the answering need to escape the forest too great. He didn’t see them, and so he did not wonder at all about why they had begun to move.

############

Blaine flew as hard and as fast as he could, desperate to reach Kurt before anything could happen to him.

The pendant against his neck glowed brightly hot against his scales and...something more. It seemed to know where to go, seemed to be leading him away from the place they had made camp and further back toward the road.

Blaine saw the other dragon before it saw him. He was coming from the sea, and the dragon was facing the road. Blaine recognized the particular dragon, Jeff to use his simple name. A young dragon, barely old enough to be trusted outside the nest and someone Blaine had always gotten along with. Truth be told he had followed Blaine around Dalkinley like a duckling, fascinated by the older dragons every move. Blaine was surprised that he was one of the dragons Wes had chosen to take on the hunt, but he wasn’t surprised at all to find him in the middle of burning the forest down.

Jeff was suspended above a burning patch of forest, just at the forests edge, and he was sweeping his wings back and forth, propelling flame and falling branches toward the break in the trees.

‘NO!’ Kurt’s scream reverberated through Blaine like he’d been shot with an arrow and he shuddered, stumbling in air for a moment as everything including his natural instinct to fly was shut out. For a split second every sense, every last instinct, honed in on Kurt to the point that nothing else mattered. And then the connection was gone, and he was struggling to right himself even as he searched for Kurt. There was no way to see him through the dense trees, never mind all the smoke and fire.

His pendant was glowing brighter now, letting off quick flashes of light and heat and Blaine felt his focus pulled towards the right, where a section of trees were twisting and bending strangely. It was strange because they were bending in a direction that the wind from Jeff’s wings did not push, and yet bend they did creating a hole in the trap that Jeff had set.

Blaine’s heart galloped in his chest, because it was no strange thing at all to see a Sidhe bend nature to his will but for Kurt, a demihuman to achieve something like this would require great power indeed. It was only when he felt another flash of heat against his scales where Igraine’s pendant rested that Blaine began to understand.

He didn’t have much time to think about it, because suddenly he was awash with Kurt’s terror and his pain, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he hadn’t taken the escape through the trees, that he was still trapped by an enclosing wall of flame.

Blaine didn’t think much beyond that. He opened his mouth and he roared, startling Jeff enough that he lost his focus and plummeted a few feet. The young dragon twisted in midair, but not in enough time to stop Blaine from latching onto his back.

‘Blaine. Wait it’s me don’t-’ The younger dragons thoughts inside his head were cut off by a louder, vocal cry of pain as Blaine sank his front talons into the tender flesh beneath Jeff’s red and bronze wings. He heard Jeff’s pleas, but as if from a distance. His pitiful cries were inconsequential and did nothing to halt Blaine’s instinct to protect the man running out of the forest and into the open where he would be completely vulnerable to attack.

‘Stop! Stop you don’t underst-’

He jerked the smaller dragon in his clutches backwards, raking his back legs across his scaled back. Jeff’s spiked tail lashed out at him in retaliation, violently striking at Blaine’s sides, but he ignored the pain. He arched his neck away from Jeff’s snapping jaws, fighting desperately to keep a hold of the writhing dragon in his clutches and drag him away from Kurt.

And then there was a hot burst of pain in his side as Jeff’s tail landed a hard blow, breaking scales and catching skin as it lashed across him. He screamed, a guttural and shrill sound, his grip on Jeff loosening as he twisted away.

There was a violent and sudden flash of lightning as the heavens opened up and poured down rain, but neither dragon was concerned with the strange and sudden turn of the weather.

‘Damn you!’ The younger dragon screeched at him.‘You really think it’s worth this? You’re going to kill me because you’re too much of a coward to-’

#############

Jeff had expected Blaine to stop and listen once he’d finally gotten free of him. It wasn’t a completely foolish idea. The Blaine he had grown up with in Dalkinley had never failed to stop and listen to him, no matter how persistent and annoying the younger dragons attention. The Blaine he knew even hated to hurt the game they caught during the hunt, let alone a fleet brother.

But the dragon roaring at him, coming at him with teeth and claws and all the ferocity of a nesting dragoness protecting her hatchlings, Jeff did not recognize that dragon.

Blaine was all over him again in a second, raking at him with teeth and claws. They wrestled each other, tangling their bodies in midair, beating wings desperately to stay in flight and out of reach of tooth or talon. Jeff fought with all the desperation of a man fighting for his life, but Blaine was bigger and stronger and the younger dragon quickly tired.

Blaine grabbed at his neck and wings with strong jaws when Jeff could not twist them fast enough out of his reach, tearing at them with such strength that Jeff’s whole body was wrenched back and forth.

For the first time in his life Jeff faced the prospect of death and found he wasn’t ready. He really didn’t want to die. There was so much he needed to live for. He saw mountains in his mind, stretching across vast blue sky. They were remnants of a hazy dream that had never had much substance but that he had always kept close to him like treasures. Towering mountains, a man on the back of a dragon soaring over their snowy tips. And then he pictured his parents waiting for him in Dalkinley, could see their faces crumpling, hear their anguished roars. Then they were fading and all he could see was Nicael locked in the tower, a dot on the horizon that looked like Avris coming closer and closer. God’s teeth, she’d kill him if Jeff didn’t pay his debt.

He wanted to live so so desperately.

‘Please please please please please...’

# # # # # # # # # # #

Kurt had never watched dragons battle before. He’d made it out of the forest, flames licking at his back, wholly expecting for the dragon to swoop down and either kill him in some gruesome way or snatch him up.

Rage had burst inside of him, so great it drove him to his knees and made white dots swim in front of his eyes. Tears had started to stream down his cheeks by the time he realized that the consuming anger rolling through his body wasn’t his but Blaine’s. He’d fallen over onto his back and stared up at him, watching in terrified awe as Blaine battled with the unknown dragon.

They did a dark and strangely beautiful dance in the sky, writhing in and out of each other with wings fanning in and out, scales flashing in the sunlight. Kurt lay pinned to the ground, intense emotions assaulting him one after the other, no way of knowing which were his and which were Blaine’s. And then even that ceased to matter. They were one in purpose, no separation between them. He felt the same sick terror he’d felt in the forest, running for his life, and Blaine felt it with him and Blaine’s rage-their rage- intensified.

Something sharp ripped into his side and his body seized as he clutched at it, only there was no wound. His ears filled with the chilling sound of a dragons scream, guttural and shrill and he knew it was Blaine who was bleeding, Blaine who was screaming, and so Kurt screamed.

He wept as well, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes and streaming off his cheeks, as above him the sky cracked with lightning and suddenly it poured down rain. The harder he cried the harder it seemed to rain, and the more that chilling scream echoed in his ears the more he seemed to want to cry.

He wanted wings and claws of his own, so that he could tear apart the thing that had dared touch Blaine, dared to pull that sound out of him. He was a storm of emotions and in the sky Blaine was a whirlwind of slashing claws and teeth and now it was glaringly apparent which of the dragons had the upper hand as what Blaine was doing to the smaller dragon could be called nothing less than mauling.

The animalistic display of fury was so far from anything Kurt had ever seen come out of Blaine that it churned his stomach, made him recoil. What truly made him repulsed was how even in this they were one. This furious creature was a part of him too.

‘Please please please please please....’

That voice reverberating through Blaine, through him, was the other dragon pleading for his life. He’s so young, thought Kurt, and he didn’t know why he thought that because like Blaine when he was in his natural shape his voice was deep and resonate. And yet somehow he still knew that this dragon was young, not quite a boy but not a man yet either; and he would die in a moment, strangled to death if Kurt couldn’t stop it.

“Stop. Please stop!” Kurt shouted, and over the roar of wind and rain and the fierce beating of wings there was no way that Blaine could have heard him, and yet Kurt knew the moment the black rage began to ease, the storm of malice breaking around him as clearly as the clouds were breaking overhead and the sun appearing between them.

# # # # # # # # # # #

Blaine set Jeff’s limp form on the ground as gently as he could, his heart feeling as if it were pounding in his throat.

‘Shite! I’m sorry Jeff. I’m so sorry’ he apologized to his young friend nuzzling his side with his serpentine head in a show of remorse.

Jeff’s limbs were longer than Blaine's, but he was thinner and far less compact. His wiry body curled in on itself as he let out thin high pitched whines in response to the agony Blaine knew he had to be in. God, what had he done?

How could he have... no no there wasn’t time to dwell on that he had to...gods above, how bad was he hurt anyway?

There were lacerations and punctures visible all over Jeff’s body, and he was bleeding profusely from the bite in his neck that had threatened to crush his windpipe. He’d had Jeff in a choke hold. He’d been shaking him trying to crush him. Jeff of all dragons.

When Blaine snarled this time it was at Kurt who had walked up, warning him away from his injured friend. He was terrified of everything right now, including himself, and the last person he trusted was Kurt who he had felt so keenly, who could leech him, whom he had been so consumed with protecting that he’d been blind to anything else.

‘Get away!’ He snapped, teeth bared and spiked tail poised to strike.

Kurt flinched, but contrary creature that he was he didn’t cower as any sane man ought. He looked like hell, soaked from head to toe and even paler than usual, an almost sallow look to him. Yet somehow he could stand before Blaine on shaking legs, hair plastered to his face and electric blue eyes as round as saucers and still be the most terrifyingly beautiful thing Blaine had ever seen.

“Let me help, Blaine.” Kurt entreated softly, and Blaine wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. Instead he just got furious.

“Help!” He couldn’t help but roar. “You hate dragons. You wanted him dead. I felt you! You don’t want to help him, so just leave us alone!”

“No I will not, and you will cease yelling at me!” Kurt yelled right back striding forward and only stopping when Blaine snapped at him again, just barely missing catching his arm as he swung it to point at the irate dragon. “Because while you’re snapping at me Blaine your friend there is dying, so if you give a shite about him you’ll let me help him change.”

Blaine remembered then that after their fall together a few days before, changing into his man shape had saved his life. Though it had been excruciating shifting tissue and bones that were already smashed, they had successfully rearranged in his new shape, none the worse for wear. Something about Kurt had anchored him though, urged his body to make the change and kept him grounded when the pain became so unbearable that he simply stopped wanting to continue existence.

A very real part of him almost feared that if he had attempted it without Kurt’s presence he would have simply let go, never to return.

‘Fine.’ He relented uncoiling his body from around Jeff’s and allowing Kurt access. ‘Don’t you let him go though! Do you hear me?! Don’t let him go.’

He’d meant to sound threatening but he could hear the desperation in his own voice, and he knew that Kurt heard it for the plea that it was.

‘Please I can’t- I can’t.’

Blaine just couldn’t. Not if Jeff died, not if he had to live the rest of his life knowing that he had murdered him as he’d begged for life.

Kurt laid a hand on Blaine’s scaled snout, and his clammy palm suddenly seemed the center or the universe, the one solid point in a thrashing sea. Blaine breathed in his scent, calming at the familiar smell of sage and he went still.

‘It’s not your fault.’ Kurt’s voice was soft and airy inside his head, sadness weighing down its melodic tones. ‘We did this together Blaine, and we’ll fix it together.’

It was strange that such a simple gesture as a hand touching him could make him feel such peace, absolved from the guilt that had been clawing him up inside like a furious beast. He could feel Kurt’s warmth through that palm, and it seemed to trickle through his whole body, connecting them, whispering comfort to him. Kurt didn’t blame him, he wasn’t alone in his guilt.

That in itself was a novelty. Blaine was quite used to going most things alone.

‘Hurry.’ Blaine nudged the palm still laying over him.‘Wes and the others will be on their way.’

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Kurt weaved on his feet, feeling as if his legs would go out from under him at any moment. He was weary and every muscle in his body too tightly drawn. He felt like water poured over a hard floor, thin and only getting thinner as he spread out his energy.

He remembered feeling pained and tired after the ordeal with Blaine back in Bale. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time considering he was somehow magically linked to a dragon that had not only fallen fifty feet out of the air but had just rearranged his entire physical makeup. But as bright light consumed the small dragon, even though he didn’t share in his pain the same way he did with Blaine, Kurt felt the same tiredness wash over him. His body flushed cold, as if all the heat was being drawn from it and he shuddered, but he didn’t pull away. He felt somehow that was important, that if he did something horrible would happen.

When the light faded and a very naked young man with oddly sheered flaxen hair was laying at his feet Kurt’s legs simply stopped holding him and he found himself landing hard on his knees. He shivered violently, teeth chattering against the icy chill pebbling his flesh, and bit back tears of misery.

He didn’t look up when he felt Blaine’s head nudge him, but only because he didn’t have the energy. Blaine’s warm breath washed over him, his giant serpentine body curling around him, a wing draping over him and cocooning him against his side.

Kurt closed his eyes and soaked in the dragons heat, almost able to imagine himself at home in front of the hearth with his family. He pressed his cheek against Blaine’s warm scales and breathed deeply, waiting for the world to right itself.

Not even a foot away the man with the flaxen hair stirred, groaning deeply as if just discovering the aches in his body. He would still be sore for a couple of days, if Blaine’s experience was anything to go by, but at least he was alive. At least they hadn’t killed him.

In this shape the other dragon wasn’t actually quite a man. He didn’t look like he’d seen more than fourteen seasons, his cheeks still slightly rounded and youthful despite his long coltish limbs. Kurt watched him roll over onto his side and peer at them with accusing brown eyes.

“Mac an donais! Blaine” the lad cursed in a language Kurt did not recognize, though it felt familiar somehow. “Do you have any idea of how stupid you are?!”

‘Good. You seem to be in fine health.’ Blaine responded with a weary little chuckle, to which the other dragon just glared.

“Yeah no thanks to you! I can’t believe...Blaine you tried to kill me.” The betrayal in the lads tone wasn’t even aimed at him and Kurt felt it like a blow. He knew it effected Blaine just as deeply; unconsciously he laid a palm against his side and rubbed as if his touch alone could rub away the dragons distress.

“I’m sorry Jeff. But you could have killed Kurt. And lets not forget you are hunting the both of us. You had to know it would come down to a fight.’ Blaine said, his forked tongue flicking angrily. ‘I’’m surprised you joined the hunting party. I thought out of everyone that you surely would understand.’

“And I would have” Jeff insisted. “I do. But you didn’t ask me to help you escape. Everyone treats me like a fool because I’m young but you’re the fool Blaine! How could you ask Nicael to help you when you knew what Avris would do if she found out?!”

Kurt didn’t know who Avris was but he felt a spike of conflicting emotions rise up in Blaine in response to the name. Fear, longing, hatred, love; it was all rather tangled inside of him.

‘He was caught?’

“Of course he was caught. Avris wouldn’t rest until she knew who helped you. Nicael gave himself up before...before things could get worse.” Jeff swallowed thickly and crawled into a sitting position, his shoulders slumping with weariness despite himself. “Blaine you have to come back. Please.”

“Who’s Nicael?” Kurt asked, because he could feel the struggle inside Blaine and he wanted to understand what could make him honestly consider giving everything up and slinking back home with his tail between his legs.

“A sidhe servant in my horde.” Jeff pinned him with this hard look, as if he was blaming Kurt for their rotten circumstances.

“A slave you mean?” Kurt asked, glaring right back.

“No! A faithful and trusted servant, a friend.” Jeff insisted heatedly. “My parents are proud dragons of the republic. We don’t keep slaves.”

“Oh aye, how could I forget,” Kurt scoffed, only keeping from spitting because he found it such a nasty habit. “Nice of your friend, devoting his whole life to waiting on you hand and foot.” He wanted to shake the young man blinking at him in confusion as if he’d never seen anything more confusing than Kurt in his life. What was so hard for these dragons to understand? Was he not speaking plainly? Was their grasp of the tongues of men that poor?

‘Kurt.’ Blaine sounded just as weary of the subject as Kurt was. ‘Regardless of how Nicael came to Jeff and his horde, I can assure you he has been happy there and that he is much loved by his family.’

‘Pets always are Blaine.’

“Your elf is confusing Blaine.” Jeff mumbled with a scratch of his head, “Nicael, serves us aye. It’s what servants do but he is one of the bravest best men I’ve ever met and Avris will take him away from Dalkinley unless someone pays the debt he owes her.”

Jeff’s eyes swiveled back to Blaine, hard and pleading.

‘Ah. I see. It makes sense now. I truly am sorry Jeff. More sorry than you can know.’ Blaine heaved a great sigh.

“Don’t be sorry! Do something,” Jeff demanded, frustration straining each word. “You know you have to come back. Never mind Nicael, if War finds out you’ve left Dalkinley he’ll never stop hunting you.”

‘That would have happened anyway.’ Blaine said, ‘Avris never planned for me to spend my entire life in Dalkinley. I’m just leaving early, on my own terms.’

“Aye but you were supposed to take a rider and learn how to fight” Jeff insisted, “as you are now you couldn’t fight off a tressol let alone a dragon like War.”

‘I seemed to do okay with you.’Blaine bristled. Kurt could actually feel his scales raising against his skin.

Jeff barked a laugh.

“Well I’m not War. And perhaps next time your elf won’t be in danger and you won’t have an excuse to lose your mind and go on the attack like a dragonness over hatchlings!”

“Stop saying that.” Kurt had to interrupt. That was the second time Jeff had referred to Kurt as Blaine’s and he didn’t care what twisted notions the boy had about his own servants, Kurt belonged to no one. Least of all Blaine. “I’m not his elf. I’m my own person and I’d thank you to remember it.”

“Fine” Jeff shrugged slumping back to the ground, apparently too tired to hold himself up anymore. “But you sure smell like you’re his.”

Kurt stiffened, gritting his teeth with annoyance even as he felt Blaine’s sudden spike of unease.

“What. What does he mean by that? What do you know?” He poked Blaine in the side, ineffectively as his scales were hard and glassy and definitely up to resisting the pressure of one little half humans finger.

‘Nothing. He can smell me on you. That’s all.’Blaine answered and beside them in the grass Jeff snorted.

“Wes and the others are coming, are you going to stay or make this hard?” He asked and Kurt rolled his eyes, trying to keep the anger simmering inside him at bay. He moved out from the shelter of Blaine’s wings, standing on still slightly wobbly legs and glared down at Jeff.

He was so angry he didn’t even care that the other man was completely naked. Well not much.

“Look I’m sorry about your friend,” he couldn’t help but sneer the word, “but Blaine would be an idiot to give himself up just so they can both serve others for the rest of their lives, and I sure as hell am not standing around here waiting to be carted off against my will to become another faithful family servant. That is what you planned to do with me isn’t it?”

The guilty flush on Jeff’s cheeks told Kurt everything he needed to know.

“Aye that’s what I thought.” He laughed without humor turning away from the young dragon. “Do whatever you think you have to Blaine but I’m done here.”

Kurt turned and began striding for the woods, only stumbling slightly on his tired legs, already thinking of retrieving his things from the place where he and Blaine had camped. He hadn’t walked very far at all when Blaine’s long tail whipped out and snagged on the back of his tunic.

He yelped in surprise as he was suddenly lifted off the ground, blushing furiously in embarrassment as Blaine dumped him unceremoniously on his back.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Kurt seethed, struggling to get into a position that didn’t make him feel as if he were about to slide off at any moment.

‘Getting ready to go.’ There was laughter in Blaine’s voice, laughter at a time like this! ‘Wes and the others are going to be right on our tail and you were right before. We have to fly.’

“But you don’t have to-” Kurt tried to tell him that he didn’t expect Blaine to fly them about, but it was useless and they both knew it.

‘Aye I do. It’s alright Kurt. It’s temporary.’ Blaine said, lifting his wings and Kurt couldn’t help but gasp because they were giant and beautiful and this was the first time he was on a dragons back without the immediate threat of death and it was a tad bit overwhelming.

Blaine’s body was hot beneath him, and strangely he could feel the thrum and pulse of his blood flow despite his covering of scales. He didn’t know if that was a dragon thing or a magic thing but Blaine almost felt like an extension of his own body.

He could taste his anticipation- their anticipation- feel the tension in his whole body as Blaine tensed his haunches and prepared to launch himself skyward.

‘Chase us. I hope you know that for Nicael’s sake...I almost hope you catch us.’ Blaine said to Jeff who watched them with mouth hanging open and wide eyes.

“Well I don-” Kurt had to swallow the rest of his sentence because suddenly they were streaming upwards and the wind was so strong that Kurt had to press himself as close to Blaine’s body as possible or risk being wrenched off his back.

He shut his eyes tight, his heart pounding like a jack rabbits as air raked over him and whipped through his hair and clothing.

‘I’m going to fly pretty hard now. We need to put as much distance between them and us as possible. Whatever you do just don’t let go.’ Blaine said, expanding his wings and leveling them out in a graceful swoop.

Graceful or not, all Kurt had to do was crack one eye open and catch sight of the trees below looking like play things and he was overcome with terror. He could fall! He could fall! His mind kept screaming and he couldn’t help but remember the one fall they’d already had, and that was a short stumble in comparison to this. He shuddered and closed his eyes again, trying desperately to shut everything out. The sights, the sounds, the fear, and especially Blaine.

He couldn’t sort out why he was feeling such strong disappointment coming from him, not right now. It was all he could do to keep from screaming like a fool and begging to be put down.

TBC