by Amanda Milo
“Since what time?”
“Since I began watching you when we were hatchlings.”
“You watched me?” She peers at me from between my fingers before her gaze moves blindly over her clanswomen as if she’s seeking some understanding.
My tail whips back and forth, forcing her people to step back even farther from us, giving us the illusion of more privacy. I frown. “If you did not know I followed you then, why did you seek me out now?”
“You watched me? You know me?” She tries to sit up, so I raise my upper hand off of her. She stares up at me in disbelief. “I went looking for you because I wanted help saving my brother, and I want these raids to stop.”
My mate came to me for help. My drhema came to me, trusting me to protect her. There is no higher honor, no greater show of confidence among dragons. I begin walking quickly, moving on three legs and carrying her on one hand.
“When did you watch me? And where are you going?”
“I came upon you the first time when you were in a tunic skin that matched the color of your eyes. You wore a shieldmaiden corset so new that the straps squeaked when you kneeled down to pick berries. I was nine solars, you might have been near that. And we are going to your lodging.”
I follow her scent trail where it is thickest until we come to a longhouse that bears the heavy scents of several other females too. Former to my arrival (mere degrees of a sunspan, considering I just arrived), these women lived here with my mate. That’s over now. I push my nose past the doorway’s leather flap, and find wooden benches placed along the walls, with firepits set in the middle of the structure at various points, with cooking pots suspended over banked coals. Rushes from herbs and sweet-smelling grasses line the floor, and on each bench is a bedroll, with antler bone combs and other human-needs things spread over the surfaces, and I am pleased that this lodge will serve well as our love nest.
Reaching my neck in further, I snuff when I confirm which station belongs to my mate. Carefully setting her on her feet, I reach my hand inside the longbuilding and begin scratching with all efficiency, scraping everybody’s belongings out but hers.
Protests ring out behind us.
I draw my head out of the lodge and twist my neck, my scales glittering as they flex under the sunlight. I aim a glare that promises a painful fiery punishment to anyone who desires to submit further complaint.
When I’m met with wide eyes and no one speaks, I snort and turn back to emptying our dwelling.
When a particular item goes flying past her, my mate hollers, “Hey! That’s my rug!”
Carefully, with two claws, I pick up the item she indicated and flick it back into the lodge.
“Thanks,” she mutters.
“You are welcome.”
Once our human den is cleaned of possessions we won’t want and have no need of, I take up my mate once more, pleased because, for the first krevk’d time, she didn’t try to run from me. I tuck her close to my heart and I move to enter our longhouse. I hunch my shoulders and my back sinks low and I try to collect my body in a tight enough crouch to fit under the doorway—but my wings, even closed, are too wide to fit through. I grunt with defeat.
I change to a human. It’s getting easier every time I call on the shift; a welcome thing because I intend to be in human form as often as I need my mate, and I’m feeling very, very needful of her.
But then my stomach lets out a growl to rival any throat-originated sound that I’ve ever made—in this human form or my dragon state.
“Dragon, are you hungry?” my mate asks. She eyes me. “Didn’t you just scarf down half a flock of geese?”
Holding her in my arms, staring into her eyes, I ask, “What’s your name?”
She blinks. “Nalle. My name is Nalle.”
Purring, I repeat her name to myself, enjoying the way my heart reacts to learning it. “I’m Halki. And I do need to hunt.”
Several emotions chase across her face before she smiles up at me. “Hi, Halki.” She gently escapes my hold by pressing against my chest. I find myself releasing her simply because she indicated that she’d like me to do so. She makes a gesture to indicate the cookware. “In exchange for your help rescuing my brother, it’s only fair that I feed you. What do you like to eat?”
I eye the pots in this place. Piled full, they won’t do more than take the edge off of my hunger. I give her a polite nod. “I will have whatever you would prepare for yourself. I’ll also step out for the quickest of captured meals.”
Her eyes widen. “You can’t make dinner out of any of our animals—only certain ones are meant for food.”
“I understand. And don’t fret, I won’t eat any of the clan’s livestock.”
She sighs in relief. “Good.”
Reaching out, I wrap my hand around the back of her head and bring her face to mine. “I will return, my lovely Nalle.”
Her eyes drop to my human lips. “You think I’m… lovely?” she breathes.
Desire heats my skin. “You have no idea.” I step back from her before I ignore my need for food and devour her instead.
Just before I reach the door to exit our home, I twist my neck so I can send her one last look before I take my leave.
Her eyes are fixed on my hindquarters.
I stop walking and try to turn enough to properly see them too.
Behind me, she makes a choked noise. “What are you doing?”
I frown. “I saw you gazing at my flanks, and I thought it was with admiration.”
She sounds almost hoarse as she replies, “It… was.” She clears her throat. “You could bounce a silver five-piece off your rear end.”
I look to her. “I gather that a five-piece is money. I’m confused as to why you would throw coins at my back.” I glance back down at myself, feeling a strain cramping through the muscle that attaches my shoulder to my short human neck. “What an odd view. Without a good long tail, my lower half seems somewhat plain.”
“Your front half makes up for that in spades,” she mutters.
“What was that?”
“I said hunt fast or you’ll risk getting caught in the raids?” She clears her throat a second time, and her gaze skitters away from mine. “Good luck hunting!”
I smile at her, wondering at the way her eyes go straight to my mouth as I do. “Thank you for the well-wishes, my drhema.”
CHAPTER 8
Nalle
The goose feathers that the dragon collected are decorating my bench, looking like Otherworld flowers, all silky and frilly and pretty.
My gaze keeps getting drawn to them.
All my life, the best connection I could hope for with a man would be a fleeting encounter with a tribesman who I’d have to share between all the other women of my tribe. I would get occasional turns with him, and I couldn’t hope to be special.
I’d be just like everyone else to him. Worse, I’d essentially be a job. A duty-bedding.
Now I have a man who will protect all of my people just to see that I’m happy.
He treats me like I’m his focus, and it’s exciting in a way I never expected. It’s almost… arousing. It affects me in a way I wouldn’t have dreamed possible, couldn’t afford to consider, knowing that I’d never have a man whose body would belong only to me. Who must see me as unique, worthy of his sole attention.
The dragon better be prepared for what he’s stirring in me. Because the more time I have to consider the wild events that began the moment I hooked the dragon in his cave, the more I feel myself becoming persistently attached to the idea of having him all to myself. A fierce dragon who turns into a massive, muscled man. A man who looks like he wants to devour me, one who has pledged to help me.
He called me lovely. I bask in the dreamy feeling that hit me the moment he uttered the word… but I only bask for the moment and a half it takes for me to recall that I haven’t brushed my hair today and I fell in the muck of a goose pen.
Eyes popping wide, I sniff myself—and grima
ce. Is the dragon daft? How could he have stood to even hold me?
“Nalle, you better take the world’s quickest bath,” I mutter to myself as I begin stripping and kicking more sticks into the fire under the water pot.
***
Face washed, body scrubbed, hair dried and loose from my braid, my furry boots off and drying by the fire, a clean and herb-scented tunic dress on, I feel… feminine. Pretty, even. The dragon has been gone long enough that I start to wonder if him getting a whiff of me pre-bath made him decide not to come back at all.
While I bathed, our food cooked. Or reheated, rather, since the stew’s been here all morning, but I’m still claiming cooking-credit. I got it to bubbling, so it counts. I’m just spooning the last of my portion into my mouth when Halki’s head enters the lodge. He doesn’t change from his dragon’s form, and he stays with only his head in the doorway. “I have returned, drhema.”
Relief is sweet and jittery in my veins. He came back. He’s going to help! He thinks you’re pretty—even when you should be tossed in a pond with a gob of lye soap. “That’s great,” I say with a nervous smile. “Did you catch anything?” I tip my bowl a bit so that he can see into it. “I have stew warm and ready for you, if you’d like.”
“I would,” he confirms. “I’ll just be one moment.”
His head disappears, the door flap drops down, and then there’s a horrible retching sound.
Shoving my bowl to my bench seat, his saved feathers poofing into the air, I race for the doorway. “Halki?”
I emerge from the lodge to the sight of the colossal dragon’s back heaving as he sits on his haunches, shoulders hunched, long neck lowered, snout nearly touching the ground. His wings are closed tight to his sides—and his ribs stand out in a painful-looking way as he looses another awful, hacking cough.
This dragon will put fear into the hearts of all women who would try to come against us. He’ll protect us. He’ll rescue my brother. He’s our saving grace.
My tribe’s saving grace is vomiting.
And more worrying to me on a personal level, the man I just mentally planned an entire night-before-a-daring-rescue with in the hour he left me alone enough to think has fallen sick.
“Halki! What have you eaten? Was it poisonous?” I shout, worried.
From my vantage point, I watch in horror as something large and dark crests his tongue as he gags. His jaws open wide, and two thin flaps of nearly transparent tissue connect his lower jaw to his upper one at the creases of his lips. They stretch and flex and fold, following his mouth’s movements.
The thing on his tongue sucks back into his throat when he inhales, starting the painful gagging all over again.
Visions of my protective, lunatic devoted dragon that I’ve called mine for less than a day go up in smoke as I watch him work to heave his guts up. Why is my dragon dying?
I race around him, trying to get a better look at what’s wrong. He’s hacking like he’s caught a wishbone in the back of his throat, with that dark thing emerging further every time he retches, but not evacuating entirely.
“Are you choking?” I ask, panicked. I even hold my arm up, fingers splayed, like I might reach in and try to clear any obstruction from his throat.
But his rows of incredibly long pointed teeth gleam. It would be stupid to stick my hand anywhere between those jaws, and even that measure would only help if I could manage to reach far enough back to clear any obstruction.
Halki coughs again—and then he hurls up a massive oblong… thing.
It drops to the ground with a soft coosh rather than a plop. Instead of wet and glisteny like stomach contents or his very innards from the violence of his disgorging, whatever has emerged is compact and dry and… odd. “What… is that?”
Kulla, one of my tribeswomen, takes her hand away from her mouth so she can point at Halki’s… whatever it is. “Is that a bull’s nose ring?” she asks.
I can’t believe I’m getting closer, but I am. I peer down at it until my jaw drops in disbelief. Then I turn a look on our dragon. “What is this? Dragon, did you eat one of our bulls?”
“No.” Halki reaches out with his claws and takes hold of the lumpy thing he vomited up like it’s precious treasure and not his rejected stomach contents. “I flew until I came to some livestock penned near Ember Pass. I found food to hunt there.”
“Umm, Halki? It’s not ‘hunting’ if you found them in a pen,” I point out.
“Ember pass?” someone whispers. “He stole from the Giant Steppes tribe!”
Ignoring the chatter that flares up like water on boil, Halki stands, carefully lifts the cause of his near-death, and carries his cube of vomit to the lodgehouse.
“What are you doing with that?” I ask.
“Storing it with our things,” he replies.
I turn to stare into the sea of shocked faces around me.
“That’s his casting,” Yatanak says, leaning on his crooked carved walking stick.
“You,” I utter with blame. “Later, we’re going to have words.” I reach up and behind me and begin braiding my hair with deft, aggressive lashings, getting it out of the way in case I can’t help myself and I stomp over to his grinning self and give him a strikedown.
Everyone’s head swivels to look at our wise old tribesman—except for the dragon, who is very busy arranging his vomit chunk with ‘our things.’ He’s still in his dragon form so he can’t fit in the lodgehouse; rather, he’s nosing his dried upchuck next to my bedroll. I find myself leaning sideways to watch how meticulously he tucks it next to my wrapped-up blankets like he’s helping it snuggle with them.
I look back to my tribe. “I need a new bed,” I announce. Somewhere else.
Several of them shake their heads at me.
I roll the end of my braid back on itself so it doesn’t get loose without a thong to tie it back.
Halki comes up behind me, his massive head dropping to nuzzle along my shoulder, and my tribe eases back from us, clearly revolted that the recently puking dragon is touching my skin with his mouth.
“Ready to retire to our nest?” Halki murmurs to me silkily. He closes his teeth over the meat of my arm with only enough force to sting, not puncture. Then he noses the spot and does the same to my neck, nudging my head to the side to give him the access he wants.
Eyes wide as wagon wheels, I let him. I stare at my tribesisters in befuddled—shared—shock.
That is until Västra, who stands facing me with everybody else, boosts Ingrid the goose higher in her arms meaningfully. “He’s grooming you,” she says. “Like an imprinted goose.”
And Ingrid is at this exact moment nomming her bill along Västra’s hair, making whirring, buzzing noises as her bill clicks, wholly engrossed in her bonding task.
Meanwhile, my dragon’s teeth make a scissor-sharp snap every time he moves his mouth, and he’s making soft wuffling noises as he ‘grooms’ me.
Overwhelmed, skin singing everywhere Halki nibbles me, I look to Yatanak, who still stands with the others, watching avidly. “What is a casting?”
Yatanak’s wrinkled face turns even craggier with his smile. His eyes are on my dragon as he replies, “There are tales of castings being very important to Great Cresteds. They store them.”
“But what are they, exactly?”
Halki bumps my shoulder like he wants my attention. When I turn my head, I see he’s waiting for my eyes to meet his. “They’re the parts of meals that can’t be digested. Therefore, our system compacts those bits and regurgitates the bricks.” He glances over his long and many-spine-wedges back to gaze at where his puke brick is hanging out next to my bedroll like it's getting comfortable. “You wouldn’t believe the treasure one can find in their castings.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t believe it.”
As if he doesn’t hear me, he goes on. “I believe that the bovine’s nose ring is solid gold. Very pretty. A good gift for my new mate.”
“What?” I hear one of my tribeswo
men choke out before several of them rush to retrieve the suddenly-valuable brick.
Halki’s glimmering black tail slaps down to block the doorway. He glowers until everyone retreats. “This is Nalle’s and my nest. You will not enter it.”
“That’s our lodgehouse,” Vrylee complains.
Halki’s crest fans out, and the streaks that decorate it turn bright and dangerously red as his whole mantle begins to vibrate with warning. “You will not steal my mate’s nest.”
“She’s been ‘your mate’” Vrylee points out, putting extra emphasis on those two words, “for like a day. That’s been our damn lodgehouse for years.”
Halki’s tail curls around me—
Ahhh! A giant snake! I allow myself one shudder before I stomp down my instinctive bolt of panic.
—and drags me close until I bump into his foreleg. “Then you’ve had plenty of time to enjoy it. Embrace change as you part with it. And know this: Crested Merlins matebond in an instant.” His slitted eyes glow menacingly. “I adore my Nalle, so I will forgive your questioning me this one time because you are her beloved peoples.” He transfers his warning look to everybody else. “But Crested Merlins aren’t known for being patient. Don’t make the mistake of assuming I will continue to be lenient.”
He turns, his tail drawing me with him towards our ‘nest.’
CHAPTER 9
HALKI
Nalle is quiet as I join her inside our longhouse, me retaking human form and guiding her with my hand at the small of her back to replace my tail.
“Normally I wouldn’t be inside until chores are done,” Nalle shares faintly.
I move forward to collect our feathers that have fallen to the floor. To my delight, Nalle joins me, lowering herself beside me to help gather them all.
“What are your chores?” I ask.
“Everyone takes care of the crops and the animals. And when that’s done, there’s other work.” She indicates a rack set in the wall by her bench and her rolled up bedding and our casting. “I weave on the loom.”
