Free Furee Born: The Dragon Mage Series Book IV by Kelly Lucille Page B

that second Riva saw his arm for the first time.  The small slash
from the beast had not healed but festered and looked black.  Red veins of
sickness ran from the wound to flow up his arm and down his hands.  Seeing the
telltale signs of poison, Riva knew they were in trouble.  Her mouth dried up
and she could swear her fingers tingled from the oxygen that was leaving her
extremities and heading for her panicked brain.
    When she took another
careful step back, Furee grabbed her wrists and Riva cried out at the sear of
pain.  His touch burned her where it never had before, and rather than let go
and back away as Furee would have done, this feral creature that inhabited his
body pulled her closer and tightened his grip, causing the pain to go white
hot. 
    Riva felt as if she was
inside one of her own nightmares, back in the heat of the bonfire, and this
time she was going to die there, sucking in the stench of her own burning
flesh.  She screamed.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    Riva forced herself to stop
screaming and think.  Fighting her own panic and the pain in her hands, she
fought to concentrate.  Finding her center and concentrating through the living
nightmare she was enduring was the hardest thing she had ever done.  The only
thing that made it possible was the niggling idea that this time she would not
be the only one who paid the price for her weakness.  If she could not find the
strength to cure Furee she would die here, and he would follow, succumbing to
whatever poison he had been injected with.  Already she knew it was different
than the one that she had found in Aarion’s wound because it was not just
retarding his ability to heal, it was attacking his mind.  Fully pressed all
along Furee’s length, her clothes had long since burned to ashes and her body
red and blistering even as her powers tried to heal the damage.  Somewhere in
the last few moments, Furee had lost his own clothes and every inch of skin
that touched between them seared pain through her nerves.  His hands were a
brutal force moving over her skin, holding her against the pain of his
claiming.  The Furee she knew would never hurt her like this and if she wanted
to save them both she was going to have to let go of her own pain and take care
of her mate.
    It took longer than it should
have, but eventually she pushed it all away and like an anvil dropped into
Furee.  Normally, she would have used more finesse but she was less concerned
about scaring her patient and more with moving fast enough to stop the spread
of the poison.  When she finally made the leap and saw what she was up against,
she almost lost control all over again. 
    Unnatural worms of poison
saturated every part of Furee.  It was the ugliest blight she had ever seen. 
With one look she knew she could not be gentle.  She was fighting for both
their lives.  Then Furee bit her shoulder, passing his mating enzymes through
abused skin and making the nerves in her body twice as sensitive to every touch
and pain.  She screamed again, nearly blacking out and suddenly found herself back
in her own body.  Her skin bubbling up everywhere he touched her, the pain was worse
than anything she could imagine. 
    Knowing she was running
out of time, she pressed it all away again with a cry of anguish, sending every
scrap of healing power out of herself and into Furee in one blast of light that
hit him with so much force he flew back four feet and slammed into the stone
wall behind him.
    Riva dropped like a stone
to the edge of the hot spring and was more than willing to pass out.  Her last
thought was a prayer to the light that what she had given him would be enough
to save at least Furee.
    ***
    Furee came to his senses
with his head half way buried in the stone of one of the ancient caves. 
Blinking himself awake and pulling out from beneath the falling rocks and dust
that covered him, he looked around with no idea how he had come to be there. 
These caves had been made with dragon