Shadowed Threads by Shannon Mayer

whip, I snapped it loose. “Hold off, Pam!”
    The shower of boulders on his head eased as I fought my way up to the juncture of his shoulders and wings. He turned his head, a shocked look rippling over his face, and then his eyes narrowed. I cracked the whip forward, the length of it wrapping around his neck, the handle giving me something to hang onto.
    I smiled at him. “Come on now, let’s see what you’ve got, you big mother fucker.”
    He snarled, a hiss of blood and spit splattering me. I didn’t even wipe it off, not caring anymore what happened as long as the others were safe. His blood was hot and stung the cuts in my face, making me grit my teeth against the sharp pain.
    With a powerful launch he shot himself into the air. I gripped the handle of my whip as the dragon rolled in the air and found myself hanging from his back, the ground hundreds of feet below us already. Eve was fast, agile and talented in the air, could have tossed me a hundred times with ease.
    She had nothing on this big boy.
    He flipped back around, slamming my body into his back. As much as I wanted to ram my sword through his spine and end this, part of me held back. One, we were so far up, the fall would kill me. Two, I just couldn’t explain it, maybe it was some ridiculous Tracker trait or maybe it was just me, but I just couldn’t do it. Not yet.

Chapter 11

    F ighting the dragon really wasn’t as scary as my brain was telling me it should be. And believe me, my brain was screaming at me that this thing below me was a big fucking monster and I should end it as fast as possible.
    But, if I was being honest with myself, as he spun and bucked in the air, scales sparkling when random beams of sunlight hit him, I was kinda having fun.
    Fun. Fighting with a dragon shouldn’t be fun. What the fuck was wrong with me?
    On a brief respite between rolls, I slid my sword back into my sheath. “This isn’t going to end well for either of us. I don’t suppose you want to call a truce?”
    Fuck off, Tracker.
    I leaned my head back and laughed into the wind. While the other dragon had been polite, reserved and exactly as I would have thought a dragon would sound and feel inside my head, this one sounded a bit more—gods help us—like me.
    He rolled again and I did everything I could to hang on, keeping my legs tucked in between his shoulder blades and wings. Power, there was so much power in him, and I could do nothing but hang on for the ride … .
    Hours, maybe minutes, passed—I don’t know. We flew through winds and lightning and thunder, clouds, and even hail. He took me so high black dots danced in my vision and my breath came in gasps, then he dropped to the earth skimming the edges of a lake at the last instant, rolling so that I was plunged into the water. But I hung on, my fingers wrapped around the handle of my whip. I refused to let him win this. But how the fuck I managed to stay on, I couldn’t tell you.
    Finally, after what felt like days, he flew back to the mock canyon, landing in a stumbling heap. I was still on his back and I wasn’t sure I wanted to get off. At least from my perch I was relatively safe.
    “You ready to call a truce?” I fought to keep my voice steady, to keep my body from shaking with exhaustion. Every muscle I had was starting to cramp from clinging to him.
    Get off my back.
    “Do you mean that literally or more in a figurative way?”
    His head spun around so he could stare at me, mouth dropping open, and I thought this was it, he was going to roast me.
    Instead he laughed, a deep boom of a laugh that rolled out of him in a wave of sound.
    Get off my back, you crazy ass Tracker. Now.
    “You don’t seem to get it, I’m pretty comfy up here. I kinda like it.” I smiled at him, gave him a wink. Shouldn’t I be stabbing his eyes out with my sword? Hell, he was close enough that I could do it.
    With a groan, he sunk to the ground.
    The other dragon, the one with the commanding, grown up voice,