A door opened. Then another. "Clear," someone said softly. The words were in English.

And then the door to the linen closet we were hiding in slid to the side. Tamin yelped. Before me was nothing but black, but I knew it much too well. Even lit from behind, I recognized this man!

"Ozias!" I gasped, my eyes landing on the gun he was pointing right at my chest.

The barrel dropped slightly. "Ayla?" he asked - just as Tamin moved.

I felt the child lean to peek around me. Ozias immediately lifted his gun, aiming it right at the kid. I lifted my bow with one hand, pointing at his chest. The other pushed the gun away on instinct.

"He's just a child!" I hissed, using English because it was the language this man would know.

"He's a lizard!" Ozias snapped, jerking the gun from my grip so he could aim again.

I could see it on his face. I knew what was going to happen. Fear made my ears ring as I saw the barrel of that gun slowly getting closer to where Tamin stood and I knew there was only one way to stop this.

My finger slammed down on the trigger. The weak little arrow shot from the end, ripping through the leather armor the hunter wore and deep into his chest. The gun tipped upwards, pointing to the sky and the man before me gasped. He staggered back. Then he collapsed.

"Ozias?" someone yelled.

Grabbing Tamin's hand, I pulled. "We can't stay here!" I whispered.

Tugging him behind me, I rushed up the hall, looking both ways and trying to figure out where the voice had come from. At the same time, I needed to reload the bow. I didn't have enough hands!

"Stay with me," I ordered, letting him go so I could reload the only weapon we had.

He did. Tamin grabbed the back of my dress as we rushed past the weapons closet and towards the kitchen. The men had gone out the back door. That meant it would be the safest place for us to go too. If the hunters were coming inside then -

"Ayla?"

I spun, yanking the string back hard enough to make it snap into place. "What?" I whimpered in Vestrian, putting my body between the sound and the child.

"Ayla Ross." A man chuckled as he moved closer. "Found a little pet, hm?"

My fingers were shaking as I pushed the tiny arrow they called a bolt into the channel. "What?" I asked again, but this time in English.

"The lizard," he said as he stormed into the kitchen. "Trying to buy your way back into the compound or something? Gonna take a lot more than that little bit of meat." Then he lifted his gun.

"He's a child!" I screamed, raising the bow with every intention of firing it.

"Ayla!" Tamin yelped.

But the hunter simply swung, slamming his fist into the side of my head hard enough to knock me off my feet. I crashed down to the ground, refusing to let go of the weapon, but it was too late. The hunter had his gun up.

I heard the pop as it went off. Tamin screamed in pain before crashing sideways into the kitchen cabinets. The hunter rushed forward another step, and I didn't stop to think. I didn't have the chance to aim. Jerking my arm up, I simply pulled the trigger and felt the bow jerk with the force of the release.

The man was almost directly over me. The bolt slammed into his throat and upwards, through the underside of his mouth and kept going into his head until only the brown feathers were left visible by his Adam's apple. Immediately, his body began to collapse onto itself.

I didn't stop to look because Tamin was still crying. Rolling that way, I scrambled to my feet, relieved to see blood only on the child's leg. Tamin was still standing. He was still alive!

But I couldn't handle a child and a weapon. Dropping the crossbow, I scooped the boy into my arms and raced for the back door. Behind me, the hunter was still making sounds. Sick and disgusting ones that made me not want to check on him.

"Please be okay, Tamin," I begged, hugging him against my chest as I pulled the door open and rushed into the coming darkness of dusk.

"I'm okay," he whimpered. "I'm okay."

Which meant I had to make sure he stayed that way - but we were running out of places to hide.

Forty-OneAyla

Outside was just as chaotic as inside. A few houses up, I saw men in black clothing with rifles held to their shoulders sweeping between the buildings. Moles. The popping was from gunshots! All around us were screams that came from Dragons.

But not Tamin. He whimpered but was doing his best to stay as silent as he could. Against my hand, I could feel the blood on his leg, and he cried, but the boy clung to my neck without question. I ran for the trees as fast as I could, carrying the most precious thing I could think of, and praying to God we would make it.

The hill wasn't easy, but fear gave me strength. At the top, the trees were thick and the brush beneath them was wild. Finding a cluster that looked big enough to shield us, I dropped to my knees and set the boy down. Desperately, I turned his leg to check his wound.

"How bad does it hurt?" I asked as I poked the edge to see if it was a grazing wound or if he'd been pierced by a bullet.

His tail whipped behind him at the pain. "Hurts!"

"I know, sweetie," I breathed.

And while I wished I had something to wrap the injury with, it didn't look fatal. It did, however, look like there might be a bullet still in there. Shallow, thank God, but it had to hurt a lot.

"Okay," I said. "Now we have to - "

Tamin's gaze jumped over my shoulder and his eyes went wide. A second later, I heard a foot crunch in the leaves a mere step behind me.

I spun.

"Elias?" I begged, surprised to see another face I knew.

His gun was aimed at my head. Recognition crossed his face. "You're alive?" The tip of the weapon wavered.

Then Tamin screamed, "You will not hit her!" in his own language.

The boy lurched forward. I barely had time to shove as well, my hands aiming for the gun. Elias was so shocked at the sudden rush from both of us that his hands slipped free, the rifle falling to the ground as Tamin sank his teeth into the man's leg. Next to me, the kid's tail lashed furiously, stabbing at the man's body over and over until he staggered.

The moment Elias' knees buckled, I was on him. "Okay!" I yelled at Tamin in Vestrian, aware his tail could strike me as well. "That's enough, Tamin. It's okay now!"

"Yeah?" he whimpered softly, crawling back into the bushes.

And Elias began to scream. I pressed both of my hands over his mouth, holding the sound in while my eyes searched the area around us for more hunters. If anyone heard that, they'd be on us next. Then again, it seemed this kid wasn't nearly as helpless as I'd feared!

But Zasen and Kanik were gone. Bodies were visible in the backyards of the houses besides ours. Even better, the gunshots had moved on. It sounded like they were now further up the street. Tamin and I were alone, but certainly not safe.

I grabbed Elias' rifle, flicked the safety on, and shoved my head through the strap before reaching for the kid. He grabbed my neck, letting me lift him again, and we hurried deeper into the woods. I needed someplace to hide him. I needed to make sure he stayed safe. The Moles were attacking, and their weapons were better, so I had to find somewhere Tamin would be okay.

"Ayla, Ayla, Ayla," Tamin said, pointing at a fallen tree. "Zasen says to get under things when the Moles come so they won't see us."