18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ68X2ShMBrxLeah woke instantly, as if an invisible hand had shoved her chest.
Her breath caught. She jerked upright on the narrow camp cot, peering into the dimness around her. Through the single dusty window, moonlight filtered in, laying a long pale rectangle across the floor.
It illuminated the bare walls of the abandoned forest ranger station, the empty fireplace, and her meager bundle of belongings. The air smelled of dust, dampness, and pine resin drifting from outside. This derelict cabin had been her base for the past three months, the only constant place in a year of wandering.
The moon hung high, huge and bright, flooding the sleeping forest with cold silver. The pines outside the window stood motionless no wind, no rustling. Somewhere far away a night bird cried, long and lonely.
Nothing unusual. An ordinary night in the Yunnan mountains.
But something was wrong.
Leah pressed her palm to her chest, feeling her pulse hammer beneath her ribs fast, desperate, as if trying to break free. Not from fear. Not from danger. From something else. From something she couldn't name, but that made every cell in her body vibrate with anticipation.
The pull.
As if someone had tugged an invisible thread stitched directly into her heart. A wordless call. That same one.
Leah froze, not believing it.
A year ago she'd felt it for the first time. The attraction that had led her to the dragon, bound and helpless. She'd saved him then, driven off the hunter, and when she returned, the dragon was gone. Only torn restraints remained and scales scattered across the stones.
After that, Leah had searched.
God, how she'd searched.
For a whole year she'd wandered these mountains. Moved from village to village, something inside refusing to let her settle, as if an invisible force pushed her onward, farther and farther. She'd climbed the highest peaks, descended into the deepest gorges. Slept in caves. Run in wolf form for days on end, sniffing, listening, hoping to catch even a hint of that ancient scent: ozone, rain, magic.
Nothing.
The imprint pulsed in her chest, alive but as if blocked. She felt the dragon was alive but couldn't determine direction. Like a compass spinning endlessly, pointing everywhere and nowhere at once.
She'd gone down to villages, tried to ask questions. Learned Chinese slowly and painfully, but stubbornly.
"Dragon? Seen? Here? In the mountains?"
Old men laughed good-naturedly.
"Tourist looking for legends? Of course, dragons! In every story."
Young people shrugged.
"Those are just myths, miss. For children."
When Leah insisted, told them she'd seen a dragon at dawn, bound and wounded, they laughed at her. Not cruelly, more condescendingly.
"That was pre-dawn haze, girl. Fog plays tricks on the eyes in the mountains. Or maybe too much baijiu?"
The tavern owner winked.
Leah didn't drink. And she could tell the difference between fog and a living, breathing creature.
But there was no proof. The scales she'd collected then had melted away after a week, literally dissolved into air, leaving only a faint smell of ozone. Magic, apparently, didn't tolerate storage.
Months of searching. Nothing.
Leah had begun to doubt. Maybe it really was a hallucination? Maybe she'd so desperately wanted to find something a goal, meaning, a reason to stay that her brain had conjured an illusion?
But wolf instincts didn't lie. They knew. The dragon was real.
Just... vanished. Hidden. Or died from his wounds.
Leah didn't want to believe the last option. Refused to. But with each passing day, hope faded.
And now, exactly a year later, that call again.
The same one. Exactly the same. An attraction, strong and inevitable, pulling her somewhere into the darkness, through the forest, down the slope.
Go. Now. Go.
Her chest tightened with hope.
He's alive.
The dragon was alive. And calling to her.
Or someone else needed help?
Didn't matter. Leah couldn't ignore the call. Not after a year of futile searching.
She jumped to her feet, grabbed her backpack. Her fingers trembled as she fastened the zipper. No time for neatness. Leah tore off the t-shirt she'd slept in, stuffed it in the backpack. Pants in after it. Barefoot, who cares.
She pulled out the harness, hands shaking too hard. She tightened the straps haphazardly, not checking. Backpack on, and she was already out the door, onto the clearing in front of the station.
The transformation was instantaneous.
Bones shifted. Muscles restructured. A second later, a huge gray wolf raced through the night forest. The harness, poorly secured in her haste, held the backpack unevenly it swung, hit her side, but Leah didn't stop.
Paws barely touched the ground. Trees flashed past in patches of shadow and moonlight. Branches whipped her muzzle, scratched her sides. Leah didn't notice. She flew.
The pull grew stronger.
More insistent. More desperate.
Not a voice, but a presence. Something pulled her forward with such force it seemed the thread would snap from the tension. Every cell in her body responded. Every instinct screamed: faster, faster, FASTER.
Leah didn't understand what was happening. She knew only one thing: someone needed her. Desperately.
The dragon?
Hope squeezed her throat.
Or someone else?
Didn't matter. She ran.
The forest ended abruptly. Leah burst onto a slope above an unfamiliar village she'd never been here before, the call had led her many kilometers from her last camp and stopped short.
The smell hit first.
Blood.
Thick, coppery, sickening smell of fresh blood. A lot of blood, mixed with dust, sweat, and fear. Sharp, acrid fear that dozens of people were giving off at once.
Then Leah heard the sounds.
Screams. Crying. Moans. The clang of metal on stone. Chaos.
Leah looked down and went cold.
Even from this distance, even in moonlight, the destruction was obvious. The entire eastern edge of the village, a good ten houses, was buried under a pile of rocks, mud, and uprooted trees. A landslide. Massive, destructive, sweeping down half the slope and crashing onto the sleeping village.
People were digging with bare hands, desperately and hopelessly. Darting shadows among the rubble. Torches and oil lamps cast trembling light on a nightmare scene.
That's why the call.
Not the dragon. Disaster. People buried alive, dying under tons of stone. Their desperation, their fear strong enough to break through the barrier between worlds, powerful enough to wake her from kilometers away.
Leah didn't hesitate.
She bolted down the slope, stones flying from under her paws. Halfway down she darted into bushes, transformed too quickly and painfully. Bones crunched wrong, but a second later she was already running on two legs.
Naked. Barefoot.
The backpack.
She stumbled, seeing it on the ground. The harness strap had snapped during transformation, unable to withstand the hasty fastening. She grabbed it, unzipped it on the run, pulled out the first thing her hand found. T-shirt. Pants. Pulled them on without stopping, fingers tangling in fabric.
No time for shoes. The cold of earth under bare feet, the price of haste.
Leah burst into the village and immediately plunged into hell.
"Help! There's someone here! I hear voices!"
"Where's the doctor?! Ai Lin! Someone, find Ai Lin!"
"Mama! MAMA! Mama, answer me!"
"Hold on, son, hold on, we're almost... almost..."
Voices mixed into a cacophony of horror and despair. Leah stopped for a second at the edge of the debris, forcing herself to assess the situation soberly.
Three houses completely destroyed, just piles of rubble. Two more half-buried, walls collapsed. A fifth tilted, about to collapse completely.
People were digging everywhere. Old men straining from effort. Young men working to exhaustion. Women, children, everyone who could hold a shovel or clear rubble by hand.
Not fast enough. Too slow.
Under the debris were living people. Leah could feel their weak heartbeats and labored breathing. But with each minute the signals grew weaker.
Had to act. Right now.
Leah saw a young woman in a torn nightgown. She was trying to move a beam. A huge, heavy roof beam lying across someone's leg. A foot in a house slipper stuck out from under the beam. Not moving.
The woman pulled, sobbing. Four strong men would barely manage such weight. She was alone. Her hands slipped. Blood flowed from scraped palms.
"Move aside." Leah didn't recognize her own voice, hoarse and commanding.
The woman didn't even hear, kept pulling, moaning.
Leah approached, grabbed the beam with both hands, and lifted.
Muscles swelled under her skin. Her back tensed. But the beam rose slowly, with a creak.
The woman gasped, stepped back, staring wide-eyed.
Under the beam lay a middle-aged man, face gray with pain. Leg at an unnatural angle. But alive.
"Pull him out!" Leah shouted.
Two men digging nearby rushed to help. Grabbed the injured man under his arms, dragged him away.
Leah threw the beam aside. It fell with a crash, raising a cloud of dust.
No time to listen to thanks, surprised exclamations. Leah was already running onward.
A stone. Huge, the size of a barrel, lay at the edge of the debris. Someone was clearly underneath-Leah heard a weak moan. Three men were trying to shift it, pushing with shoulders, legs, but couldn't.
Leah ran up, crouched, grabbed hold and rolled the stone with one jerk.
It rolled down. Under the stone was an old woman, face bloody but alive. Breathing.
"Here! Alive!" someone shouted.
Two guys picked up the old woman, carried her to where the injured were already lying.
Leah kept digging.
Debris. Mud mixed with furniture fragments, ceramic shards, rags. Leah worked with her hands quickly and fiercely, throwing everything aside. Fingers bled. Nails broke, bent, tore off. Pain was distant and unimportant.
Her hand found fabric. Leah grabbed it, pulled. A body. Small. Light.
A child.
A girl, five or six years old. Pale face, blue lips. Not breathing.
No.
"Doctor!" Leah screamed in broken Chinese, words tangling, accent terrible, but understandable. "Doctor! Child! Quickly!"
A woman covered in blood, probably the mother, rushed to her, snatched the girl from her hands, ran off wailing.
Leah worked on.
Time lost meaning. There was only debris. Stones. Mud. Blood. Bodies-alive, dead, or dying. Leah lifted what others couldn't. Dug with bare, bloody hands. Carried the wounded on her back.
Muscles burned. Lungs gasped convulsively for air. Sweat flooded her eyes. Mud caked on her skin, mixed with blood-her own and others'.
But she didn't stop.
Couldn't.
Each saved body, each living person pushed her onward.
Someone threw a blanket over her shoulders. Leah shook it off it interfered with work.
The sun began to rise. Slowly, agonizingly slowly. The sky turned dirty pink, then orange. Dawn over disaster.
Leah kept carrying, digging, and lifting.
One more. Just one more. Another.
It was an old man, pinned by a collapsed roof. Enormous, blackened with age. It lay across his chest, and Leah could hear him wheezing, trying to breathe.
Two men nearby were trying to shift the heavy structure. Useless. The nailed boards and beams didn't even budge.
Leah approached, crouched beside them.
"Move aside." It came out hoarse.
They looked at her the foreigner covered in mud and blood and stepped back.
Leah braced her shoulder against the most massive corner, found a fulcrum, and jerked upward.
The roof creaked. Groaned. Rose a centimeter, two, ten. Leah held it, feeling her arms tremble from inhuman weight.
"Hold it!" she breathed, and her voice cracked from strain.
The men rushed forward, catching the freed edge. Their faces went purple from exertion, but they held.
No time for gentleness. Leah carefully, gently pulled the old man from under the remaining corner of the roof. She bent lower, made her body a lever and rose, feeling every muscle in her back and shoulders stretch like strings. He hung in her arms, and she instinctively pressed him closer so she wouldn't drop him. The old man was too light. Skin cold. Breathing raspy, with gurgling blood in his lungs? Broken ribs for sure.
Alive. Still alive.
Leah carried him to where the other wounded lay. An improvised hospital under the open sky: blankets on the ground, moaning wounded, bloodied. An elderly woman with gray hair was bandaging someone's arm. A girl held a cup of water to a child's lips.
And her.
Leah saw her and forgot how to breathe.
A woman bent over the child, that same little girl who hadn't been breathing. Her back was turned to the others, her body hiding what she was doing. Hands lay on the child's chest, moving quickly, rhythmically.
One second. Two.
The girl suddenly gasped. Wheezed. Coughed.
Alive.
The woman quickly removed her hands, with an imperceptible gesture hiding them in the folds of her clothes. She exhaled, pushed a strand of hair from her forehead, a tired but relieved gesture and stood. Quickly moved to the next injured person, not losing a second.
Leah stopped a few paces away, unable to move farther.
Couldn't tear her gaze away.
The woman doctor must be that village doctor the locals had been shouting for.
Black hair gathered in a messy knot at the nape of her neck. Several strands had escaped, stuck to her sweaty forehead, cheeks. She wore simple traditional clothing: wide dark pants, a long light shirt. Now everything was stained with blood, mud, dust.
But even so. Even in the chaos of disaster, among the dying and dead, surrounded by horror...
She was beautiful.
Not just pretty. Beautiful in a way that made Leah's breath catch.
A face with fine, elegant features. Sharp chin. High cheekbones casting shadows in the dawn light. Lips pressed into a thin line from concentration full, but firm now. Straight, clear brows.
Elegant hands with long fingers. But strong, confident. They moved quickly, precisely, without hesitation. Hands that knew what they were doing. Hands that saved lives.
And something more.
Something Leah couldn't name but felt with her entire being.
Presence.
As if the air around the woman vibrated, filled with something powerful, barely contained. An aura, invisible to the eye but palpable at the level of instinct.
Leah would recognize this sensation anywhere. She herself was a supernatural creature. Knew how it felt when someone else nearby wasn't an ordinary human.
Inside, something trembled.
Is it her?
A crazy thought. Impossible.
Leah took a step forward, not understanding why. The old man in her arms moaned, reminding her of himself.
The woman heard and raised her head.
Their gazes met.
Time stopped.
The doctor's brown eyes. Almost black in the morning light, but not quite golden sparks danced in their depths. Deep. Bottomless. As if centuries lived in them, millennia, entire epochs.
Leah looked and couldn't look away.
She felt something inside her, deep in the very center of her chest, click into place. Like a puzzle she'd been unconsciously assembling for a whole year had finally found its last missing piece.
Her. It's her. Found.
The woman looked at Leah for one second. Two. Three.
Something flickered in those dark eyes: surprise? recognition? doubt? But it vanished so quickly Leah wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it.
Then the woman nodded curtly, sharply.
"Here." Her voice was low, slightly hoarse from fatigue. But firm and commanding. "Put him here."
The Chinese was soft, melodic, with a local accent. A beautiful voice.
She pointed to an empty spot next to the other wounded.
Leah approached as if in a dream. Carefully, gently lowered the old man to the ground, onto a folded blanket.
She wanted to say something. Ask her name. Ask... something.
But words stuck in her throat, refused to form sentences.
The woman was already bending over the old man, paying Leah no attention. Fingers quickly slid along his neck, checking his pulse. Then carefully, professionally felt his chest, ribs.
The old man groaned.
"Quiet, Grandpa Wei," the woman whispered softly. "Bear with it. I'll help now."
She turned so her back shielded her hands from the others. Laid her palms on the old man's chest, bent low as if simply examining wounds.
Leah saw.
There. Barely noticeable, but there.
Under the woman's palms flared a faint, golden light. Hidden by her body from others' eyes. But not from Leah, standing at the right angle.
Healing power.
The old man's breathing evened out. Became deeper. His face, gray and sweaty a minute ago, regained color. Pain receded Leah saw tension leave his body.
The gift of healing.
Leah's pulse quickened.
It's her. The dragon. Has to be her.
The woman opened her eyes, removed her hands. The golden light disappeared instantly. She straightened, and no one around, no one except Leah, noticed anything unusual.
"Thank you," she said, not raising her gaze to Leah. "For your help. You're..." A pause, almost imperceptible. "...very strong."
You. Not formal "you." The address was informal, though they were strangers.
Leah opened her mouth. Wanted to answer. Wanted to ask: Who are you? What are you? Was it you a year ago in the mountains?
But the world suddenly tilted.
What...?
The adrenaline that had kept her on her feet for the last hours suddenly drained away all at once.
And Leah felt everything.
Exhaustion. She'd run here for many hours without stopping as soon as she'd heard the call. Then several more hours hauling stones, pulling people out, working with the strength of three. At her limit. Beyond her limit.
The wounds on her hands flared with pain: scraped palms, broken nails, cuts. Muscles ached, burned. Her legs buckled.
"Hey!" The woman's voice, sharp, alarmed.
Leah took a step. Tried to. Her leg gave out. The world spun.
No. Not now. Not...
She was falling.
Strong arms caught her.
Too strong for such a fragile body.
"Foolish," a voice whispered above her. Irritated, but worried. "Working until you faint..."
Leah wanted to answer. Wanted to ask her name. Wanted to...
A scent enveloped her: ozone, rain, ancientness.
Found.
And then darkness.
Ai Lin lowered the stranger to the ground, placed a folded jacket under her head.
Looked around. No one watching. She laid her palms on the girl's wounded hands. Closed her eyes.
Cuts sealed. Bruises faded.
Ai Lin removed her hands and stood.
She'll sleep, come to her senses, leave. That's all.
She turned to the next wounded person.
The pearl in her chest hummed, but Ai Lin ignored it.
18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX5IDOCoFoF
18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkvxaR3f1Vp
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