Freedom. It sounded so appealing now. This was what I’d always wanted, right? Living away from Talon, not having to follow anyone’s rules or laws or restrictions. Not becoming a Viper, an assassin who hunted her own kind, for wanting to be free.

But the thought of going rogue, much as I hated myself for admitting it, was terrifying as well. I would be hunted. I would be branded a traitor, a criminal, and the Vipers would come for me. I hated the rules, and I wished my trainer would jump off a cliff—in human form — but Talon was all I’d ever known.

And, there was also one other problem.

Dante. I didn’t think my straight-laced, perfect student brother would turn rogue, even if I did. And if I did manage to convince him to run away, he would be branded a traitor and hunted as well.

I wasn’t sure I could do that to him.

As if reading my thoughts, Riley paused, and then his near-golden eyes rose to mine, serious and intense. The dragon stared out at me, fierce and primal and beautiful, sending a lance of heat through my insides. “I could show you how to be free, Firebrand,” it whispered, a dangerous, alluring croon, “if you want me to.”

I stared at him. Riley held my gaze. His nearness was overwhelming; I could feel his dragon watching me, barely contained in its fragile human shell. I felt my own dragon rising to meet it, a surge of heat erupting from the pit of my stomach, spreading to all parts of my body.

“Come with me,” Riley urged, shifting closer on the couch. “You don’t have to live by their rules. You don’t have to become a Viper.

You can live your own life, away from Talon and the Vipers and everything they stand for. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He didn’t move any closer, but I could feel his presence, the dragon, sitting beside me as if he was really there, wings, scales, and all. “Wes and I are taking the hatchlings and leaving Crescent Beach tonight. I want you to come with us.”

“Leave? With you?” I blinked. “Where would we go? How would we live?”

“Don’t worry about that.” Riley gave me a careless grin, looking more like himself. “I’ve been doing this for a while. It’s not like we’ll be hobos on the street. I have places we can go, where we’ll be invisible, where the Vipers will never find us. Trust me.”

“I…I don’t know, Riley.”

“All right.” Abruptly, Riley stood, rising from the couch with easy grace, holding a hand to me. “If I can’t convince you, then maybe you should hear it from someone else. Get a different perspective on Talon, and what they’re really about. Come on.”

I put my hand in his, letting him pull me to my feet. My dragon buzzed at his touch, but I ignored it. “Where are we going?”

“Downstairs. I have some people I want you to meet.”

Garret

I rode in the back of the truck, pressed between two soldiers, feeling every bump and jolt through the metal bench welded to the sides.

This vehicle was not designed for human transport, and the interior was hot and uncomfortable, though not the worst I’d endured.

Around and across from me, fellow soldiers, my brothers-in-arms, waited with the same quiet anticipation. Some joked and laughed in low murmurs, some dozed with their arms crossed and their heads resting on their chest, some, like me, just waited, lost in their own thoughts.

Beside me, a fellow soldier nudged my arm. He was a few years my senior, with cropped black hair and a nose that had been broken repeatedly. I recognized him as Thomas Christopher, one of the few surviving soldiers of Alpha, the squad that was decimated in the South American raid a couple months back. “Hey, Sebastian, you’ve been here over a month, right?” he murmured, smiling like a wolf as he leaned in. “Where’s the action at? What do you do around here for fun?”

“I wasn’t here on vacation,” I replied simply.

“Oh, that’s right.” Christopher leaned back, smirking at me but speaking for the rest of the group. “Our Sebastian is the prodigy, the perfect soldier. Nothing ever enters his faultless little head but the mission. Give him a hooker and he’d use her for target practice.”

“Shut up, Christopher,” Tristan said, sitting across from me with his rifle against his shoulder. “At least he’d have a chance with a woman. She’d take one look at your ugly mug and wonder why there was a bulldog’s ass sewed to it.”

The other soldiers hooted and ribbed Christopher, who flushed angrily but laughed along with them. More taunts and good-natured insults were thrown back and forth, with Tristan never missing a beat, but I didn’t join in. Normally at this time I would be silencing my thoughts, mentally preparing myself for the battle ahead. Turn off your mind, turn off your emotions, become a blank vessel that acts solely on instinct with no fear to slow you down. That’s what I’d been taught. What I trained myself to do.

Today, that calm, empty silence eluded me. I was filled with a sense of foreboding, a nagging uncertainty that haunted my thoughts the closer we drew to our objective. I’d always been so certain of the Order; what we did, what we protected. Dragons were the enemy and we were meant to kill them. That’s what I’d believed, unwaveringly, my whole life.

Until her.

She might not be one of them. We hadn’t proven anything. There’d been suspicious happenstance; there’d been strong implications, but there’d been no real proof. Ember might not be a dragon. She could be a normal girl with a normal family, who loved surfing and arcade games and hanging out with her friends. She could be a perfectly ordinary human.