The dragons shifted as seamlessly as the wyverns, so they said.
“Yes, I’m going to touch you. Don’t make any sudden moves, or I’ll break a leg charging up those stairs. Okay?”
The chamber pulsed with conflicting energy, scattered threads of fear from others who’d stumbled upon this beast and believed it to be real. Fear tempered or perhaps made bold by the avarice of those who came here to plunder the glittering scales.
Is this where the looted scale in her pack came from? Would it anger the beast if she took it out and held it to the light to see if it shimmered blue, as well as yellow, to match his scales?
She took a step, feeling the air with the palms of her hands outstretched. Fear, greed, it was all around. Nearer to the statue sadness mingled with frustration. She took another step and, as she approached, the frustration dissolved and reformed into something she recognised without doubt.
Anger. Rage so searing she stumbled backwards, her hands covering her face.
Claudia peeked through her fingers. The dragon lay exactly as it was, in its deceptively peaceful repose. The anger remained, somehow locked inside that stone. Anger pushing at the boundaries of that shell until the day it shattered and the creature inside burst free seeking vengeance.
When it got out, it wanted to rain the fires of hell on this entire moon.
The knowing flashed in and out on a single breath, leaving her gasping for air. She hadn’t only found her fire, she’d found the apocalypse, itself.
“Don’t be angry,” she said, and wondered at her calm in the face of this formidable beast. Like turning down a dial on a thermostat, the angry energy dimmed, and moved quietly to the background.
“That’s right,” she said, and resisted the urge to pet its massive head. “Stay calm, and I’ll set you free. Speak to me. I should touch you, right? Like I do with my healing?”
No answer, only a stunned silence. The kind of silence you got from someone who was looking at the last thing they expected to see.
Inside her, the tiniest spark of dragon DNA smiled.
Chapter Five
So this is why the gods bid him study softness?
Though the female took in his stone form with a wary suspicion, he discerned none of the usual fear that shrouded his visitors.
Such a small, fragile thing. What was she?
He had hoped for Ekala, his mate. Prayed that one female dragon had survived. A futile yearning, it seemed.
No, one must have survived, otherwise why did this female heed his call? Why this connection, binding them like taut twine joining his essence to hers?
He’d been so sure his savour was a female dragon that his thoughts, his carefully rehearsed restraint, dived into freefall when the pale-haired female crept down the steps. She sensed his anger and frustration, his stunned surprise.
And something that did not belong to her race, something deep inside, revelled in it.
Interesting.
But she might still turn tail and flee, screaming, from him like all the others.
Don’t go.
Surprisingly, the strange female did none of these things. She merely sat on the step, chin on her hands, watching him with far-seeing eyes.
Pale hair atop her head, pleasing, even features arranged in humanoid style. A flowing cloak and simple gown, pinned, not sewn with intricate seams by some craftsman.
An unfamiliar signature to her aura, one he rarely encountered. Her kind came much later into his dreaming. Few of them ventured in here, and none bearing the markers of dragon and fire.
Inhaling her essence, Tharius swore his dormant heart beat out a tattoo. Why did he scent an ember smouldering in this female? The ember carried by everything dragon from the moment of conception?
No being could fake such a thing.
That made her part alien, part dragon. Impossible.
Why did his lips not slaver and his mouth water with the urge to devour her? Two hundred years a prisoner made a dragon hungry. Coupled with his growing anger at this unfair incarceration, he vowed many times over to gorge himself on the invaders, no matter what form they took.
No, she called to another part of him entirely. A basic need left simmering for over two hundred years.
That was the male, not the dragon in him, reacting to the female markers charging the air between them and making it sing. By Dramis himself, all this time trapped in this stone cage, brooding and pondering his plight, channelling his anger and plotting his revenge, and the first thing he wanted to do when released was to rut with this female?
The smile turned into a stifled laugh, the energy remaining inside him, as always.
Then why did the woman pause and look closer, listen harder, almost as if she heard? The look of horrified pity on her face sobered his thoughts. Coupling could wait. First, he must achieve his release.
You will touch me. I am a general of the Draegon army. You will not walk away. By Dramis and all his minions, don’t walk away.
Again, the female flinched, her pale hair swinging over her shoulders a contrast to the dark, homespun cloak. A smudge of green gleamed in her eyes, like the green of the Clan Dra’Kinsa, the clan of his doomed mate.
May she walk in eternal peace in the Otherworld.
The prayer for the dead came naturally to him, along with the terrible remembering of such needless death. They might have lived in peace with the invaders, shared this moon given proper tribute. But no, those who came showed no respect and wanted it all. And for that, the dragons had to die.
But not without a fight.
If he truly was the only legacy of his race, if his brother died like they said, then responsibility fell hard on his broad shoulders. It fell to him to wreak vengeance for all his dead kin, even at the risk of dying all over again.
This is why the gods held him back and bid him study softness. His gruff voice of command would naturally terrify such a fragile being. He must temper that voice, entice her to help him.
Approach. I mean you no harm. Need only the touch of your warmth, the dragon life force contained in that ember flowing into what remains of mine.
Dragon life force? How did this alien female come bearing dragon life force?
If only he could give her a sign that inside this shell, he still lived. That her energy called to his and made the spark inside of him flare and glow brighter and hotter. If she turned and left him, it would die again.
And it was so close to going out.
She took a step, then another, reverently, slow and measured. Not of the race who’d revered them as moon-bound gods, yet this female moved with the proper caution required when approaching his dragon’s majesty
Sent by destiny? Once, he’d believed that things were pre-ordained. Set in the stars long before a dragon’s birth. He accepted the mate chosen by their two clans, bonding them in their seventh year of age. Mere babes who had no idea what it all meant. Though the Elitra, the erotic charge that sometimes flared between a male and a female dragon, did not rise when he gazed upon her at later family meetings, he honoured the choosing and would have defended Ekala unto death.
He tried and failed. That shame sat heavy in his heart.
This female, though? His first thoughts had been of lust and taking, and not only brought forth by long abstinence. Lust did not usually rise without attraction.
It rarely happened between those not of the dragon.
Ha. He’d become a philosopher, indeed, in his long years trapped in this stone cage. But yet, he would own that this female felt strangely familiar to him in ways he could not explain. No, that was the wrong word. Not familiar, but right.
And powerful. Though she seemed unaware, this female aura shone around her like a glowing moon. She would not be easily commanded.
Hope rose and bloomed inside of him. Had the gods finally sent him the means to retread the path of that last charge? The blast from the invaders’ weapons proved too fierce even for a mighty dragon in flight. That jolting charge
caught and felled him so close to his goal.
Thoughts ran riot. When others came, he remembered fleeting words, images, coming and going. This woman’s presence had unlocked an avalanche in his head.
He’d waited too long for a being of this power to come close. She must not be allowed to escape. But roar as he might, no sound passed through his stone shell.
The female put out her hands, palms forward, and Tharius almost felt himself jolt backwards with the energy pouring from her skin. Closer. He willed her on. Closer, and keep on doing that, whatever it is. By all the holy gods, see through my grim visage.
So close now, she might reach out and touch him for real, if she so chose. No need. A warm, soft melting rippled over his stone skin from her nearness alone. She had seemed so small, sitting on the step, but now, close up, she was tiny enough to sit comfortably atop his foot and still have room to lie down.
A surge of protectiveness invaded his every living cell, making him yearn to gather her in and hold her close. To stretch out his wings as a barrier against the horrors outside.
A female, not of his race, but brave enough to approach a dragon. Brave enough to touch a dragon, for her posture, her energy said she would touch him, and that made her a precious thing he must protect and keep safe for both their sakes.
The female looked down, tilting her head to take in his shattered front foot, the hand crushed in the jaws of a traitorous wyvern who caught him alone in male shift and attacked without warning. It maimed his hand, but he took its worthless life.
“You poor thing, what happened to you?”
Sound came from the female’s mouth. Words in her tongue that he understood only by the expression of pity and sorrow on her face as she gazed at his broken foot, and then at the missing wing tip.
Flying absent the sensitive wing tip required a shift of weight and a tighter curve to the wing shape. But lesser dragons than he had managed the disability with relative ease.
Disability. The word sparked a surge of anger deep inside. He had yet to determine the extent of his hand injury when in male form. The first shift, would reveal if he still retained use of fingers and claws.
“Are you in there?” The female gave a small, nervous laugh. “Listen to me. I’m talking to a statue. But I feel you. Feel a spark inside of this thing. How do I reach you?”
She had yet to touch him, though energy flowed freely from the female to him, seeping slowly through the stone.
“Can I touch you? Heal your hurt?” It sounded like a question, but not one aimed at him. She asked it of herself.
Yes, put your hands on me. If you have the power to heal, then do it now. The voice of command boomed, even in his thoughts. A general in the great Draegon army did not ask, they demanded. And his troop never disappointed. They’d have followed their general to the far reaches of the universe itself, in defence of their beloved Dra’Theria.
The touch was an unexpected pleasure. Draegon mystics sometimes worked miracles, but always at the expense of great pain and suffering. They wrenched the pain from a body, where this female teased at his hurt with light, questing fingers moving in strange patterns on his stone skin. Almost like someone playing the goathu - a carved, wooden instrument of stretched strings, played by the female Draegon in time of heat to lure and entice their mate.
This female had no idea of the thoughts her pattering fingers sent rioting through his mind.
“It’s Beethoven,” she said, moving her fingers over his shattered foot, creeping upward to his calf muscle in a slow, sensual rhythm. “I don’t suppose that means anything to you. He’s one of my home planet’s greatest composers. Do dragons love music? This is his Moonlight Sonata.”
She glanced briefly around at the weak shafts of moonlight reflecting from the tarnished light-shields. “Rather fitting, since we met by moonlight. There’s healing in music and song. I wish I had my grand piano to play for you. I miss it so much.”
He, too, had known music before life hardened him. Her love for whatever instrument this female ghosted on his skin shone so brightly, he needed no interpreter.
“Are you really still in there? I wish you could speak to me.” She moved to his thigh, shaping each sculpted muscle, sliding gentle fingers over his back, the rough texture exposed by lost scales that loosened and fell as his skin petrified.
She made a whole tour of his body, returning to his head to lay hands on the cheek resting next to his feet. If her touch felt this good in life… Tharius strained to crack the shell.
“Are you my fire, stone dragon? Before I even stepped foot on this world, I had such a strong premonition to find a fire. I thought you might save me.”
The female lowered herself to sit with her back against his muzzle, and Tharius pondered the melancholy in her plea. An in-comer to his world, but not, it seemed, one of the invaders. Pressed this close, he used his sixth sense to read the conflict of emotion raging inside her small frame.
Sadness and fear. A steadfast reserve of courage and determination her displaced life had failed to extinguish. And a deep regret for something he couldn’t divine.
As if she read his mind, the female patted his thigh, like one consoling a youngling. “I’m sorry. But I’ve very likely led the Corporation right here to your hiding place. I broke their rules, and it won’t take long for the cameras to find me. And when they do, they’ll give me back to the warlord.”
On a long sigh, the female relaxed into sleep. “My name’s Claudia, by the way. And I’m very tired now, but when I’m rested, if I’m still here, I’ll use my superpowers to find out yours.”
A strange tongue, and without benefit of seeing her face, Tharius had no clue of what she spoke. In his purgatory of limbo, the question why had been his constant companion. And now the gods gave answer, praise their names, in this alien female with the power to raise a sleeping dragon. Because everything was now clear.
For the last two hundred years, he’d been waiting for her.
Chapter Six
Claudia awoke smiling and scratching absently at a rash of itchy bites on her calf.
Don’t scratch, or they’ll go septic. How many times had she said that to the beings who came to her, covered in welts and sores, bites and disgusting boils, begging for healing? Desperate beings, who often paid the warlord more than they could afford for her talents.
Through the women in the camp, she learned which herbs and roots cured, and which killed. No sense in wasting her powers on ailments that could be eased by natural means. Rolling her stiff shoulders, Claudia gazed up at the towering statue at her back and remembered her dream.
Dragons.
What else would she dream of? She’d fallen asleep on a giant dragon face, and when she touched her cheek, the pleated dragon skin, so carefully rendered by the sculptor where the beast’s chin pressed into the chamber floor, had left indents on her own.
Lighter in the chamber now, the ancient light wells made by the reflecting shields shone brighter with what must be sunlight. She picked out rows of etched detail on the high walls. How long had she slept? Hard to tell, without climbing those stairs to the courtyard to read the position of the sun.
“You don’t happen to have an en suite bathroom I can use?” Claudia pushed off the thick, hide skin that felt warm where she laid her head.
Skin? She stared at her palm, then at the place where she slept. Stone, surely. She touched it again, pressing lightly with her fingertips. The skin gave slightly.
No longer rough and unyielding, now the dragon’s chin felt more like the rigid leather of a sturdy walking boot. She took a step back, listening with her inner eye.
Did she do this? The dragon’s chin quivered under her touch, as if readying to open the mouth and snap it closed with her inside. That thought had her backing up to the steps. Was that a slight lift and fall of its chest, or only the strange, half-light making her see things that weren’t really there? If she ran up the stairs, through the narrow opening to the top, it could
n’t follow.
Could she outrun a dragon?
Did she want to outrun it? Last night, the vague connection, the thought that life pulsed inside of that stone shell, intrigued her. She felt no threat then, and she was good at sniffing out evil. Today, the life force hummed in that awakening shell. The ghostly voice urging her—no, commanding her—to stay, spoke with a growing urgency. As if someone had started a clock, and now, they were racing time.
“All right,” she said, gathering her cloak around her like armour. “I’ll come back, but you have to promise not to eat me for breakfast, all right?”
She tried it again in Italian, and the smattering of alien words she’d learned in the camps. Given the translation modules, no one here bothered to learn other languages. The sleeping dragon still looked like a statue, giving no indication it heard her.
Had this meeting had been ordained on some other plane, by beings who wanted this dragon alive? Did a dragon shifter really mate with a human so thousands of years later, and millions of miles apart, she could awaken its sleeping kin?
A nice theory, but so crazy she laughed. Claudia took in three long breaths and visualised a protective cloak of white light. She mastered the wyvern, but this dragon had a will that punched through stone. He wouldn’t be so easily tamed.
Though she couldn’t see any relevant parts with him sleeping and his underbelly tucked away, the energy was definitely male, and coming through strongly, now. Whatever she unleashed here, there was no stopping it.
Oh Dio, was she really thinking about dragon appendages, when she should be running for her life? She’d been too long without a man, too good at convincing the warlord that sex sucked her supernatural powers dry. If not for his greed for using her powers, she’d have spent the year on her back, servicing as well as healing his customers.
No more thoughts of dragon dicks, it was a he—leave it at that. And he needed her.
“I’m going to touch you again. I think you want that, am I right?”
The faint whisper might have been the sound of water percolating through the walls, the wind pushing in through cracks, or sound from the outside world funnelled in through the openings leading down.
STONE DRAGON: A Prison Moon Series Romance Novel Page 6
