Praise for
the Novels of Deborah Cooke
Winging It
“[Cooke’s] clever ability to convey what it means to be going on sixteen while being faced with dark, world-altering dilemmas has created a unique and compelling young-adult series bursting with magic, mayhem, and danger.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Zoë is as kick-butt as ever… another fast-paced, well-thought-out novel in [Cooke’s] Dragonfire universe. Teen readers will love that Zoë and her friends get to be the stars.”
—Romantic Times
Flying Blind
“Whether you’re young or just young at heart, you will equally enjoy this brand-new series by Ms. Cooke.… It’s entertaining, it’s exciting, and it’s adventurous… a wonderful new series.”
—The Reading Frenzy
“The first of a new dragon series sure to become a classic.… Cooke has written a fantastic offshoot of her Pyr universe.… After turning the final page, I sat for a moment with a sense of excitement I haven’t felt since I finished my first of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books.”
—Fresh Fiction
“This story crosses the boundaries. It will appeal to both teens and adults across the board. The story is engaging and fun. It’s bringing to life a world of dragons and magic that appeals to all.”
—Night Owl Reviews (5 stars, top pick)
“The writing is swift and fun, just like I’d imagine flying on the back of a dragon.… If you’re looking for a break from vampires and werewolves or you’re a fan of Cooke’s adult Dragonfire series, you won’t be disappointed.”
—All Things Urban Fantasy
The Dragonfire Novels
Flashfire
“Deborah Cooke is a dragon master of a storyteller.… Lorenzo fills the pages with enigmatic glory only rivaled by his mate, Cassie, and I did not stop turning pages until the firestorm had ended.”
—The Reading Frenzy
“Thrilling and unpredictable… Flashfire is another great addition to one of my favorite paranormal romance series.”
—Paranormal Haven
Darkfire Kiss
“Over the course of her terrific Dragonfire series, Cooke has introduced numerous intriguing characters. In this book some plot threads are completed while new channels are opened. Cooke’s consistent excellence ensures a great read!”
—Romantic Times (4½ stars)
“Drew me in from the very first page. The premise makes for an interesting read and the sensual intensity between the lead characters could very easily singe the pages.”
—Fresh Fiction
Whisper Kiss
“Terrific.… The author has ‘Cooked’ another winner with the tattoo artist and the dragon shape-shifter.”
—The Best Reviews
“Cooke introduces her most unconventional and inspiring heroine to date.… The sparks are instantaneous.… Cooke aces another one!”
—Romantic Times (4½ stars)
Winter Kiss
“A beautiful and emotionally gripping fourth novel, Winter Kiss is compelling and will keep readers riveted in their seats… a must read!”
—Romance Junkies
“Another stellar addition to this dynamic paranormal saga with the promise of more to come.”
—Fresh Fiction
Kiss of Fate
“An intense ride. Ms. Cooke has a great talent.… If you love paranormal romance in any way, this is a series you should be following.”
—Night Owl Romance (reviewer top pick)
“Second chances are a key theme in this latest Dragonfire adventure. Cooke keeps the pace intense and the emotions raging in this powerful new read. She’s top-notch, as always.”
—Romantic Times
Kiss of Fury
“Entertaining and imaginative… a must read for paranormal fans.”
—BookLoons
“Combustible… extremely fascinating.… Deborah Cooke has only touched the surface about these wonderful men called the Pyr and their battle with the evil dragons.… I am dying for more.”
—Romance Junkies
Kiss of Fire
“Wow, what an innovative and dazzling world Ms. Cooke has built with this new Dragonfire series. Her smooth and precise writing quickly draws the reader in and has you believing it could almost be real.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Brimming with sexy heroes; evil villains threatening mayhem, death, and world domination; ancient prophesies; and an engaging love story… an intriguing mythology and various unanswered plot threads set the stage for plenty more adventure to come in future Dragonfire stories.”
—BookLoons
THE DRAGON DIARIES NOVELS
Flying Blind
Winging It
THE DRAGONFIRE NOVELS
Kiss of Fire
Kiss of Fury
Kiss of Fate
Winter Kiss
Whisper Kiss
Darkfire Kiss
Flashfire
Blazing the
Trail
DEBORAH COOKE
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, June 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Deborah A. Cooke, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Cooke, Deborah.
Blazing the trail/Deborah Cooke.
p. cm.—(The dragon diaries; 3)
ISBN: 978-1-101-58874-1
1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Dragons—Fiction. 3. Shapeshifting—Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. 5. Fantasy. I. Title.
PZ7.C774347B1 2012
[Fic]—dc23 2011052662
Set in Janson Text STD
Printed in the United States of America
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
Blazing the Trail
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About the Author
Flying Blind
Chapter 1
February 11, 2025
It was Tuesday, the day that stretches so long that you start to think the weekend will never, ever come—and I was actually hoping the weekend would never arrive. I’d avoided my locker all day, but when the last bell rang, I ran out of excuses.
For one thing, it was snowing like crazy outside. The second thing was that I needed my coat. Therefore, I had to go to my locker before I could go home.
And Derek would pounce on me, and Meagan would be there with Jessica, listening to the whole thing, and the day would end even more badly than a normal Tuesday.
I dragged my feet down the corridor, trying to delay the inevitable. Suzanne sailed past me with her cronies and snarled her favorite greeting—that would be “Freak!”—and they all laughed their mean girls’ laugh. My dread was enough that I didn’t even care about Ms. Popularity.
You would think that my outlook would be more positive. A bunch of great things had happened in the fall—some due to the efforts of yours truly—and it had been quiet in the realm of dragon shape shifters ever since. We’d kicked the proverbial butts of the Mages—that fun group of humans who were bent on wiping all shifters from the face of the earth—by destroying their hive memory; we’d formed alliances with the wolf shifters and the cat shifters against the Mages; and I’d been given the blessing of the previous Wyverns as the new Wyvern. Kohana, a Thunderbird shifter, had stolen the powerful NightBlade from the Mages, thereby rendering them pretty much impotent, and we had a plan to help him destroy it on the next solar eclipse, coming to a sky near you in April. All we had to do was wait for the time to be right to completely consolidate our victory—forever.
My best friend, Meagan, had discovered that she had spellsinger powers and was learning to use them. I’d also had the most awesome sixteenth-birthday party ever at the end of all that drama. Plus I’d gotten my driver’s license—a quest that my father insisted had cut at least a century off his life span—and had done so without fulfilling my dad’s expectation that the city of Chicago would become a scene of carnage.
Bonus: I got to use my mom’s car while they were on vacation together this week. I was staying at Meagan’s and we had wheels.
You’d think that after all that a dragon girl would be able to spy the glimmer of gold in her hoard of possibilities.
But no. All I could think about—and dread—was the Valentine’s Day dance this coming Friday night.
Derek had asked me to go with him. This wasn’t a huge surprise. We’d gone to a few movies and hung out together over the past couple of months. He wasn’t much of a talker, but it felt comfortable being with him. We’d kissed twice more and it had been sweet. I knew he wanted more than that, but I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted.
Inviting me to the Valentine’s Day dance was big.
And I’d been avoiding him. It was serious finkdom on my part, but I just didn’t know what to do.
The thing is, I like Derek. I even like him a lot. He’s sweet and thoughtful and occasionally very funny. He’s protective of me and pretty quiet, a bit intense. Plus he’s a wolf shifter, so he understands the challenge of having two lives and keeping one part of your life secret from the other. We have the shifter thing in common and that makes it easy to be with him. I think it’s wicked that he has the gift of foresight, that he can smell the future a couple of minutes before it happens. He calls it his early-warning system. I want some of that, but so far my Wyvern ability to see the future is nonexistent.
The problem is that I don’t think I like Derek as much as he likes me.
And that worries me.
Does it matter? I think it does.
Derek is probably the guy I should go for. He’s the one chance that could work.
Of course, I have this habit of falling hard for guys who don’t fall for me. I did it first with Nick, another dragon shifter, and I’m pretty sure I’ve done it again.
For Jared. Who is older, elusive, hot, a rebel, and a member of a rock band. He rides a motorcycle, is never around when I want to talk to him, and possibly knows more about dragons than I do. He challenges me and dares me and makes me tingle right down to my toes—and that happened even before I scored my very first kiss from him. He jumbles me up and confuses me—and just the mention of his name makes my dad breathe fire and lock the doors.
I think I could have forgotten Jared—or at least let go of the possibility of seeing him again—until he sent me the only copy in existence of a book about dragon shifters. At first he said he wouldn’t give it to me so I’d need to contact him regularly to see it. He’d called me “dragon girl” then, and his eyes were seventy million shades of green, his grip warm and tight on my hand. My heart did somersaults all over my chest.
Then he sent me the book last fall. What was I supposed to think? I thought he was done and gone and that was that.
I was still trying to reconcile myself to the idea of his being out of my life forever when he called out of the blue. Then he got the tattoo I wanted, the one my mom had forbidden me to get on my back, on his back for my birthday.
I didn’t sleep for three nights.
I’ve spent way too much time checking out the pictures he sent me of the finished tattoo on his gorgeous muscles.
Plus I still owe him a ride on my own personal Dragon Air.
So, should I hold on to the dream, as crazy and unlikely as it sounds? Or should I accept that Derek is the more practical choice and agree to go to the dance with him? I don’t want to be mean to Derek, and maybe love takes time to grow. Or maybe my instincts are right. Or maybe I’m just always going to yearn for guys that don’t want me. Maybe that’s part of what I like about them.
How twisted would that be? I like to think I’m more emotionally balanced than that.
Maybe Jared just likes the idea of having fan girls, of having me hanging on the line, waiting on him.
That really isn’t my style.
At least, it shouldn’t be.
I rounded the last corner and saw exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. Derek was leaning beside my locker, waiting for me and my answer. Meagan was at her locker, sorting her books, waiting for me and a ride home.
At least Jessica wasn’t there. She and Meagan are still tight, tighter than Jessica and me. (Apparently their both being math whizzes is a stronger force than Jessica and me both being shape shifters and the wildcards of our respective kinds. Go figure.)
Derek’s dark hair is straight and still a bit too long. It hangs over his eyes, but doesn’t disguise their pale blue hue. They are wolflike in color and intensity. I swear he has X-ray vision. He was wearing his usual dark clothes, a combo that the eye slides over easily and lets him blend into the shadows. He’s so quiet that he could be made of shadow.
Of course, he wasn’t surprised to see me and had even anticipated my direction. His gaze locked on me as soon as I turned the corner, his attention making my mouth go dry.
I’d have to give him an answer before I left today. But what would it be? Heart or mind? I had a feeling that there would be big consequences from my choice, but, of course, I couldn’t even guess what they might be. My Wyvern powers of seeing the future could have helped me out here, but no such luck.
I was on my own.
“Hey,” Derek said, a guy of few words, as always. His voice is low and rumbly, kind of like a growl. Sometimes it makes m
e shiver. “How was art class?”
“Best class of the day,” I said with a smile. “Makes the rest tolerable.”
As I got to my locker, Meagan laughed, tapping her messenger to pull up a new message. She was laughing a lot more than she used to and no wonder; she’d finally gotten her braces off. Her teeth looked awesome and she was attracting a lot more attention. People saw how cute she was instead of her mouthful of metal. I was happy for her.
In fact, I had an idea that I knew would make her happy if I could make it happen.
“It’s Jared again,” she said with excitement, scrolling through the new message.
“Again?” I asked as I opened my locker. I gave Derek a smile and tried to keep my tone neutral while referring to Mr. Incredibly Hot.
Derek didn’t smile back.
He watched me closely. I knew that the big moment had arrived.
I dodged it just a little bit longer.
I nudged Meagan. “You two have something going on?” I teased, acting as if I didn’t care.
Meagan laughed again. “He’s sending me all these tips about spellsinging. It’s amazing. I’m learning so much.”
“Oh, so you hear from him often.”
“Yeah! Like every second day. He’s in Des Moines this week.”
My heart stopped. Des Moines was comparatively close.
But he hadn’t called me.
In months.
Meagan held up her messenger to show the image of some club on its screen. “That’s where the band is playing tonight. They’re sold out!”
“Great,” I said, barely glancing at it. I felt a simmer begin deep in my heart.
She heard from him every other day?
And I hadn’t had one hello since November?
I was so out of his life that he hadn’t even told me that he’d gotten back with his band.
Even I know enough about guys to understand the implications of that. Jared had been messing with me. He hadn’t called me because he didn’t want to get in touch. Because he didn’t care.
Just thinking that made me wince, but there was no point in ducking the truth.
I shrugged into my coat and met Derek’s gaze. He was cautious, uncertain what I would do. “You still want to go to the dance Friday?” I asked him, my tone a little more challenging than necessary.