Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 27

She’s Not Supposed to Matter.

My dragon’s growl wouldn’t quiet. It pressed against my ribs, hot and sharp, and the longer Cage smirked, the harder it became to hold it down. Kael was still grumbling at him, but the words blurred. All I saw was Cage’s grin, smug and vicious, like he’d gotten away with something. And then I was moving. One second, he was standing there brushing dirt off his sleeve. The next he was flat on his back, my hand fisted in the front of his shirt, my knees pinning him to the dirt. My dragon roared through me, the sound spilling out of my throat as a snarl that silenced the field.

“What the fuck did you do?” I snarled, hot breath fanning his face.

Every head turned. Every voice died. The other students froze, wide–eyed, staring.

The coach’s whistle blasted, shrill and furious. “Break it up! Drayke! Off him, now!”

But Cage didn’t flinch. Didn’t struggle. His grin just stretched wider, golden eyes glittering with malice.

“Temper, temper,” he drawled, unbothered. “Careful, dragon. People might start to think you care.”

Before I could slam him into the dirt again, his body shimmered, magic snapping like static. A blink later, he was gone, leaving my fists clutching at air.

The coach stormed toward me, but a voice piped up first, thin but sharp enough to cut through the silence.

“I–I saw him!”

Everyone turned. It was a boy, scrawny, no older than sixteen, sparks of elemental fire still clinging faintly to his fingertips. He looked nervous as hell, but he forced the words out anyway.

“She wasn’t far behind me. On the beam. He…he kicked it. I saw him push her off.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the canopy of the woods. My dragon roared against my chest, demanding blood. Cage had tried to kill her. And now, everyone knew it.

The coach froze mid–step, the whistle still clutched in his hand. The boy’s words sank like stones into the silence. A gorge. Evening pressing in. A student is

missing. This wasn’t some training mishap. This was survival.

His gaze snapped to me, then to Kael. “You two, Drayke, Pierce, you’re our best trackers. Get in there and find her. Now.”

Kael didn’t waste a heartbeat. His skin rippled, bones snapping, black smoke curling around him. In a blink, the lean, cocky boy was gone, replaced by the hulking, fire–eyed shadow of a hellhound, fur bristling, teeth flashing white. I was already moving. My boots tore up the grass as I broke into a sprint, the

shift rising like fire under my skin. Heat rolled through me, scales breaking through flesh, wings cracking free from my spine. My vision split, gold bleeding

into everything, sharper, hungrier. By the time I hit the edge of the woods, my body was no longer human.

The forest swallowed me whole. Wind whipped past as I took to the air, wings shredding the branches above, my dragon’s fury roaring through the trees.

The scent of her, faint, muddied by river–water and blood, hit me like a knife to the gut. My chest tightened, my instincts snapping taut. She’s hurt.

I pushed harder, banking toward the river, senses stretched wide, Kael’s hellhound form tearing through the undergrowth below me like smoke and flame.

Her scent clung to the water, thin at first, then thicker, darker the further downstream I followed, Blood–too much of it. I landed hard, claws gouging the mud as my wings folded tight against my sides. The trees were hushed, the river a low hiss beside me. But the copper tang of blood was everywhere, choking

the air. And then I saw it. The wraith–beast. Its body lay sprawled across the bank, half in the water, half out. Grey flesh split open, steaming where it

touched the river, jagged antlers cracked like brittle wood. The stink of rot burned my nose, but worse than that, worse than the corpse itself, was how it had been killed. It looked as though it had taken on a whole army of magicals. It had burns, tears, and part of it was buried in stone, and part of it was

1 She’s Not Supposed to Matter.

soaked. The beast’s insides looked hollowed, drained, like its own essence had been ripped straight out of it. I frowned, lowering my head to sniff closer. Magic still clung to it, faint, sharp, like a storm breaking. But it wasn’t shifter magic. It wasn’t anything I knew.

“Fuck,” I muttered, teeth bared. My dragon hissed in my chest, uneasy.

She’d been here, the scent of her blood evidence enough that she’d fought this thing. But what in the hell had she used to do this? I straightened, eyes sweeping the trees. The silence pressed in again, heavy, wrong. For the first time, a thought cut clean through the storm in my chest: If she didn’t do this

alone… then what else is still out here with her?

Kael’s howl split the trees like thunder. Not a call of triumph. Not a warning. A sound that made every scale on my body bristle. My dragon didn’t hesitate. Wings snapped open, beating the air as I launched myself toward it, cutting through the canopy in a storm of branches and leaves. I didn’t want to see what waited. I landed hard, dirt spraying under my boots as I shifted mid–step, human skin taking over as I sprinted the last stretch. And then I saw her. Kael’s hound form lay low to the ground, his dark fur gleaming in the dying light. He wasn’t touching her, just close, radiating heat, keeping her from freezing completely. His great head rested near her arm, and a low whimper bled from his throat. A sound I’d never once heard from him in all the years we’d bled

and fought side by side. My stomach clenched, my chest tight.

“Allison.”

Her name scraped raw from my throat as I dropped to my knees in the mud. She was a wreck, soaked through, skin pale beneath streaks of dirt, mud smeared across her limbs. The stink of blood was so intense I could almost taste it, bitter on my tongue. My hands shook as I turned her gently, cradling her weight. Her back stole the breath from my lungs. Long, savage gashes tore across her skin, the wounds deep enough that I saw flashes of muscle. They looked half–healed, half–fresh, like they’d been ripped open again and again. The kind of marks you didn’t walk away from. My heart hammered as I pressed

kind of m trembling fingers against her throat. For a breath, there was nothing. Just cold skin and silence. Then, faint. Weak. But there. A pulse. I exhaled, relief ripping through me so sharp it almost hurt.

“She’s alive,” I rasped, voice breaking more than I wanted it to.

Kael’s massive head lifted, his amber eyes meeting mine. Relief flickered there, but so did something else, something fierce and dark that mirrored the storm inside me. No one was supposed to matter this much. Not her. Not yet. And yet here she was, broken and bleeding in my arms, and my dragon wanted to

burn the whole world down for it.