Fury of Fire (Dragonfury Series #1)

the table, shitkickers swinging in midair, he eyed his friend—resident computer genius cum occasional medic—as he approached with one of those carts. Rikar watched the right front wheel flap, the wobble laying down an audio track of flutter-flutter-squeak-squeak as though the thing had a bad case of performance anxiety.
    Well, all right. At least something in the place wasn’t perfect. For some reason, the idea made Rikar ease up and unclench the fist attached to his uninjured arm…even though he knew what was coming.
    “What the hell are you grinning about?” Shaved chrome dome and mocha-colored skin gleaming under the fluorescents, Sloan slowed his roll, bringing the supplies alongside the examination table. The cart was loaded with gauze at one end; medical instruments that looked more like torture tools were laid out with surgical precision on the other. The collection of stainless steel flashed on the blue cloth. “You think it’s funny I gotta reattach your arm?”
    Rikar glanced at the gash bisecting his forearm. Blood welled, his heart providing a steady pump of plasma. Okay, so the rogue had gone Freddy Krueger on his ass and spilt him wide open, but a full-on reattach? “A little over the top, don’t ya think?”
    Sloan shrugged. “I watched The Terminator tonight.”
    “The first one?” He hoped so…Arnold rocked in that one.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “That explains the overkill.”
    Picking up something pointy and sharp, Sloan asked, “Ready?”
    “Go for—ow! Jesus, Sloan…” Rikar jerked as his friend went postal on his arm, prodding deep into the wound. “Watch what you’re—fuck!”
    “Stop being such a pansy.” Done torturing him with tweezers, Sloan got busy with saline solution. As the cold spray washed into the cut, barbs of pain spiraled up his arm, and Rikar gave his colorful vocabulary another workout.
    Goddamn it, the brother was a straight-up masochist.
    Unfazed, Sloan shook his head, but didn’t let up. “Man up, my brother.”
    “Man up, my dick.” Grinding his back molars, Rikar tried not to twitch as the saline made another pass, but…Jesus, that hurt. And the blood…goddamn, he was bleeding all over the place now. He could feel it, dripping over the side of his arm, falling from the tip of his middle finger to go splat on the floor.
    “Shit, Rikar.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    And he did know that he was in trouble. No way he should still be leaking like a sieve. His kind didn’t bleed out from a wound like his. Their dragon DNA went to work too quickly for that, closing the wound fast and neat.
    Yeah, so the nasty gash cut through muscle to reach bone. But that was nothing new. Injuries happened. Arteries sometimes got sliced. All of the warriors came home dinged up from time to time; the slice and dice with the Razorbacks the rule, not the exception.
    Current plasma loss aside, however, tonight was unusual in another way. Rikar frequently got within range of rogue claws, but he always took care of himself in the icy cold of his suite. The drill went something like…clean it up, throw some stitches along with Polysporin at it, and, voilá, problem solved.
    This one, though, was a bitch. With a crazy kick.
    Rikar grabbed for the edge of the table as his vision tunneled. “Sloan…”
    “Lie down.” One big mitt planted on Rikar’s shoulder, Sloan helped him shift his legs up onto the table. Rikar wanted to protest, but with his head gone topsy-turvy, pain nailed him with a great, big body slam. As his back touched down on crinkly paper, his friend murmured, “Breathe through it…and give me a sec. I’ll get it ready.”
    “No…problem.” Rikar closed his eyes.
    Holy shit, he thought the mental mind spin was bad enough, but now his stomach was sloshing around, making all kinds of noise. And…where the hell were his legs? He couldn’t feel them anymore.
    A faucet got cranked across the room. Water started running, and a second later, he heard a door open and close. Plastic rustled and then God, yes…something hard fell, bouncing like marbles against steel. The sound was music to Rikar’s ears. Hurry, he wanted to say, hurry . He needed it…needed—
    Sloan came back, leaning into his visual field. “Come on, buddy. Up and at ’em.”
    With a groan, Rikar rolled, helping his friend get his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound, six-foot-six frame vertical. The trip across the room wasn’t a picnic. Yeah, not a red-and-white-checkered cloth in sight, just