Will POV

My heart beat to the rhythm of my crimson wings as I soared through the blue skies, towards the cliff face in the distance.

Waves beat on the rough rock below me, strong and fierce, and I channelled the oceans anger into my own.

I was angry at myself.

I was angry at myself for trusting the seemingly kind man that had caused all of this.

I was livid.

She was missing because of me.

But I knew where she would go. When they took Cade, he assumed that I was a prisoner of the slayers as well, and trusted me completely. I had laughed at the time, thinking how stupid he was. He had resented the hunters, and I had admired them. He had spilled everything to me, how his mother was about to give birth, about his sister, his father, their country cottage, the lambs in the field across the road. The birthday he shared with his twin.

He talked most about his sister. Her. How she loved the long grass in the meadow, and sneaking up on their tabby cat and grabbing it before the feral thing could disappear into the woods. He told me how she loved to draw. How she loved to read. how she loved the wild beaches of Ireland, exploring the immense caves that lined the cliffs. He described what she looked like, even though I had already memorized her face.

Her gleaming red hair, wild and untamed. The freckles sprinkled across her nose, random and plentiful. Her baby blue eyes, contrasting her ginger locks. Her laugh, clear and bell-like. Her weird snore snorting and grunting and shifting in the bed, throwing her duvet to the ground and let out a heavy breaths as she slept.

I had fallen in love with her. I had fallen in love with a girl I hadn't even talked to, a girl who I had help track down, a girl I had helped to be lured away from the safety of her country home, a home she thought she was safe in. She had been isolated in the middle of the Irish countryside, because of what she was. Because of what their family was.

I came and left the slayers, bringing information from the castle, when Mariella, Aurelia and Samira were there.

My visits were brief, as to not arouse suspicion.

Over time, Cade had come to admire them as well and we had worked closely together, and we became close friends.

Unknowingly, he had led us closer to eliminating the Edencorn family.

But we had failed.

We had attacked them on Caden's birthday. Her birthday. He didn't know that. He didn't know that he was attacking his family. His own flesh and blood.

So he was kept behind the scenes.

Kept out of sight of his family. And his family kept out of sight from him.

He had hidden in the forest, unable to see anything, but hear everything. He had listened to the screams of his mother and twin, the screams of the sister he had never met, and later, the roars of a threatened male dragon.

The hunters had nearly succeeded, but the girl we were there for had escaped into the forest, turned at the left fork of the willow tree.

I had returned to the castle by the wild coast at that point, not wanting to be suspected by arriving at the same time of an exhausted, most probably injured female that hadn't shifted yet, when she was supposed to years before.

So I had returned, patiently waiting for the girl I had been instructed to kill.

I had returned to the castle, returned to my own twin, Samantha.

Sam. She would be disgusted with me.

When the girl did come, everything changed and turned topsy-turvy.

My sister had become friends with her.

And I had discovered something that couldn't be reversed.

I had discovered that the girl I had hunted down, tracked and planned to kill, was my mate.

It was my fault.

As I drew closer to the cliff face, guilt still gnawing at me, I heard the deafening roar of an ancient silver dragon. And I froze. Cicero. I almost fell out of the sky.

I beat my wings faster, my breath becoming laboured.

I had to get there before he ripped Ashlyn to pieces.

I nearly slammed into the rock face, not paying attention, I was only intent on finding Cicero's cave and save Ashlyn.

Her scent and another's fill my nose, pulling me towards a large crevice in the rock close by.

I bolt towards it.

As I reach the entrance, I see red.

All I needed was a glimpse of a large silver dragon looming over a small golden hatchling the same size as me.

A pillar of fire erupted from my mouth, dancing across my scales, lighting up the cave and causing the archaic silver male to rear its head at me in shock and anger, before its own pillar erupted from his fire glands to compete with my own.