Extraits

Warm blood stuck my fingers together, but there was no point in cleaning my hands. I twisted the blade, a quick snap of my wrist growing smoother with practice, and the bone popped out of its joint.

An unmistakable trill of interest rose over my shoulder, and I wasted no time flinging the chicken thigh in the air, feathers and all.

A slender bolt of white scales shot past my ear, crimson eyes fixed on her target, and I clapped when Phoebe caught the snack between her needlelike teeth. Dragon young, I was learning, didn’t waste time with pointless activities like chewing their food. They gulped it down whole and came back for more.

“You’re spoiling her,” Cole rumbled from behind me. “She can hunt for herself.”

An incredulous squawk rang out overhead as Phoebe flattened her round ears against her skull and dove at her father. She pulled up at the last second, kicking out to scratch his shoulder through the fabric of his White Horse polo before landing on my lap, as light as a feather. She cuddled me, already sucking up to get out of the trouble she was in.

“You hurt him,” I scolded, hardening my heart against the pitiful expression widening her liquid eyes. “Look.” I brought her attention to the dark stain spreading beneath the ruined fabric. “He’s bleeding.”

A whining noise made for the weakest apology in the history of children apologizing to their parents.

Phoebe was lucky she was so stinking cute. And we were doomed because she knew she was too.

The scratch itself was hardly life-threatening. Cole probably viewed it as being on par with a mosquito bite. That wasn’t the issue. The problem was behaviors we found cute and mostly harmless coming from a baby would turn lethal as she matured into a full-fledged dragon. We had to correct her behavior now or suffer the consequences later.

First things first, though. Phoebe had to learn she couldn’t play her parents against each other, and that she couldn’t lash out in a fit of pique when her dad schooled me on how best to raise her.