by Lucas, Naomi
Nodding, I can only hope Shyn’s aware of Aida’s unhappiness as well. But my friend is good at masking her emotions. Silence falls between us.
When I finish my breakfast, I turn to leave.
“Issa!” Shyn stops me. “If you or Shell Rock need anything, please just let us know. We have always been allies to you, and we owe you a great debt.”
My smile is genuine this time. “We owed you one first.”
A short time later, I’m loosening the rope pulleys on the lift with the help of one of the scouts below. When I make it to my raft, I pull out my supplies and check them over. After I’m done, I scan the coastline and crystalline waters.
Where are the mermaids?
I begin humming and singing their names when they fail to emerge, but my voice stinks like rotting fish. You’re going to scare them off, Issa!
But I continue anyway. I’m in for a day of teasing, I pout.
Minutes go by—they don’t show.
Frowning, and pulling out a spear in the raft, I walk down the beach, singing louder. If they’re playing with me… they’ll just have to suffer my voice.
The sun steadily rises, and nothing. No glittering tail, no giggles. I’m wasting time. Hoping they’ll show when I return to the raft, turning back, but when I place my spear within it a few minutes later, nothing moves in the ocean waves.
Odd.
But I push the raft out into the ocean and jump in anyway, lifting the oars and turning southward, thinking they’ll make their appearance at any minute. As time goes by, and Sand’s Hunters becomes a distant dot behind me, they still don’t show.
They’ll join me later, I hope.
I’ve made this journey alone before. It’s okay. Unlike the day before, I stay close to the coast, just in case. But as the hours slip by, more oddities come to my attention.
There are no crocodiles lounging, no fish swimming beneath my raft—not even the occasional curious dolphin. The swing monkeys are absent, their howling missing from my ears. Now and then I see a bird, but even still, nowhere near the number there were yesterday.
Twisting around, I scrutinize everything, searching for the culprit. I’ve never seen anything like it, and with the mermaids absent as well…
My stomach hollows and tightens, and the sweat on my brow builds a little faster. Maybe it’ll be better closer to home.
Hours later and it’s all the same. I see the waters clout below and know I’m close to the estuary and the mouth of the jungle river. Once I get to the isles, I can take a break and rest—
Before I can finish the thought, a shrieking scream-like pitch blasts my ears, so close now my eyes rush to the trees. The crack and split of trunks—like fire consuming dry wood—accompanies it. Only several birds fill the air, the rest long gone.
And unlike the last two shrieks, this one goes longer, with screaming yelps—as if it’s trying to communicate something specific to another far, far away.
Dragons.
Mating calls.
Aida’s words. ‘I’m going to find myself one.’
I repeat it. ‘Find myself one.’ Again.
My gaze stays fixed in the direction of the sounds. Back stiffening, my hold on the oars falters—just for a second. The yelps come to an end, and when no enormous monster with long teeth appears on the shore, nor in the sky above, I release a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.
Around the short bend ahead, the jungle river mouth is revealed.
I quickly check my supplies, my food stores, my weapons.
I have everything I need for several days. The coast remains devoid of all life, and I can only assume the jungle is just as quiet.
My heart pounds. It’s the safest it will ever be for going into the jungle.
I can scarcely believe I’m entertaining these thoughts.
No one expects me home for a while. I don’t have the mermaids to worry about.
I don’t have Leith. I am free to make my own decisions.
I’ll check, I’ll search, and if I find a slumbering dragon...
I row toward the river mouth, holding my breath.
5
Kaos Awakens
Startling cries rouse me from my sleep. Mating calls of a femdragon. Far off at first, I ignored them, despite the twitching of my shaft—it has a mind of its own. There’s nothing like a femdragon in heat to wake a dragon up.
The mud is cool and thick around my scales, and I settle back within the deepest parts of the river water where I am undisturbed. Where I have been undisturbed for… ages.
The call comes again later, and I am awake now, still as stone so as not to frighten the creatures above. They’re frightened off anyway from the desperate mating screech. My shaft pushes out from my back legs, hardening, digging into the silt below. Heat builds in my chest and slides through my body toward it.
I discern the call—the femdragon is closer now—and she is not of my breed. The pitch too high, the length too long-winded… Either a poison or swamp, perhaps a cross of both. A storm? I am an earth and water dragon, ancient and strong, born of two powerful elemental breeds with an affinity for both. A jungle dragon.
I claimed this jungle terrain long ago.
Males, especially powerful ones such as me, stay to their own territories. I sense the other alpha dragons when they move, when they hunt, but this affinity only concerns them.
If I felt anything else—if anything weaker sought to disturb me, especially a beta dragon, a wyvern, a drake—it would be the last thing they did before death.
Those lesser dragons wander; they have no territory and pose no threat.
But femdragons nest with whoever mated with her last.
The call makes me achy and restless, but I force myself to settle again.
Another will respond.
If two alphas answer the call, then a battle is assured. Once we let a femdragon’s heat enter our nostrils, our shafts remain taut until our seed is gone—or death. Living endlessly hard is worse than death, my sire once warned. Still, I wait.
And not all winners mercifully kill their opponent.
If I were challenged…
The tendril of heat builds inside me. I will not be merciful.
And there are several tribes of humans nearby, I recall. Mating rage isn’t the only thing to worry about. Last time I rose, humans were little more than a distant nuisance. When I chose to sleep long ago, the humans’ numbers were dwindling enough that they no longer posed a threat to my kind.
I would not be surprised if they had long since passed from this land.
Sometime later, the mating call sounds again. Closer still. My shaft emerges, fully hard, and the heat it exhumes warms the mud and water around it. Seed leaks from my tip. If I raise my head out of the water now, smelling the femdragon’s pheromones is assured.
She nears.
I can feel her, combing my jungle, waiting for a worthy mate to respond. Others might have answered by now—maybe even tried to mount her—but only betas. She will not take one unless there is no other option.
Pheromones erupt from my body in answer. I sense another alpha dragon male stir, somewhere far off, beginning to respond as I have. There is an alpha water dragon to the north, and two other jungle dragons to the south and west.
The heat building inside urges my unrest. It flushes through my limbs, unstiffening them from their rest. My tail moves first, my legs second. Claws extending, they pierce the soft, moist ground below them, so deep they find the dry dirt beneath the mud. They push down into it, bracing for the movement of my body.
Every limb loosens, except for my shaft—which is hard and ready.
It takes time, and sensing the other alpha stir, I know he is going through the same process.
But the femdragon is in my territory. I will claim her before he rises.
Forcing the heat through the rest of my body, my urgency to breed rises dangerously despite the torturously long process.
6
&
nbsp; A Fatal Touch
“Issa, relax,” I mumble under my breath. I’ve long since lost sight of the ocean, and the jungle river has narrowed into an ongoing, curvy waterway with webbed trees sprouting from the depths and small plants mask much of the shores on either side. The sun passed its zenith some time ago, and I can glimpse it through the tangle of tree branches above. Ropes of vines fall from high-up branches above.
Everything has darkened with an eerie verdant glow, with an occasional streak of gold sunlight piercing through. It’s stunning. The river water is murky with wild water plants and bright flowers that sway. Moss and large-leaf plants grow on every available surface.
Sounds have resumed.
Not the ones I’m used to, but those of countless critters far too small or far too unaware of large predators to worry. Fuzzy flies with large emerald-green wings, brightly-colored rainbow frogs, and the occasional snake.
I’m thankful that the crocodiles are hiding, that the howls of monkeys and grunts of apes are missing. Even so, relaxing is the last thing on my mind. I’ve hunted in the jungle many times before—never this deep though—and I know what to watch for and how to defend myself.
The risk is worth it. If Aida thinks it’s worth it, then it is. I trust her with my life—with Leith’s life. Our skills are matched. I’ve fought off serpents and swarming sharks. I’ve tested my strength against roaming, rabid jungle cats and long-legged raptors. I once saved Leith from a giant crab, three times my size, that decided to make its home on one of Shell Rock’s smaller isles.
The water stirs ahead of me and I slow my paddling. Bubbles ripple the surface, small in some areas but large in others. The raft drifts as I study them.
A potently rich, mossy, musky scent fills my nose—it’s unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before. I inhale, unable to get enough of it.
Rising slowly to my feet as I take the aroma in, I peer into the water, but it’s murky, eclipsed with more flowers than I’ve ever encountered. Far beyond, the river opens back up and the water is clear, but this section—with its deep shadows and heavy forecast of tree-limbs stretches for a time.
Foreboding clogs my throat and I look for a way around, finding none unless I anchor and leave the raft behind to continue on foot. That won’t do. It’s either take a chance paddling through it or turn around and go back.
A sudden red glow casts through the trees, muting the verdant greens to dark yellows and orange. I flick my eyes upward through a shaft expecting to see the comet, but no, it’s the moon beginning to ascend. My breath hitches.
The sun is already falling. It has to be.
I had lost track of time within the jungle’s shade, and I dip my eyes down to my supplies. I expected that if I wanted to truly search for a dragon—to give it a good effort—that I’d have to spend a night or two in the jungle.
But I thought I had more time to find a place to fortify for the night. It’ll take a good hour to do such a thing.
My gaze trails back to the moon and scans the red glow around me. One hour, maybe two, before the sunlight is gone, depending on how dark the jungle shadows grow at dusk…
A popping sound brings my eyes back to the river. There are more bubbles now. They are bigger too, so large they’re making the flowers jump and move.
Something slides against the underside of my raft, and I drop back down, grabbing my spear. Checking the water on each side, nothing appears. I lower still, bracing my body for another hit.
One of my oars begins to slide into the water. Holding my breath, I grab it and wait, keeping it and myself as still as possible. Nothing but the sound of bubbles attacks me. Pop, pop, pop-pop-pop.
I set my spear down quietly and slowly lift the oar from the water.
Pop-pop-pop-pop—
Something long, enormously thick, and covered in algae emerges from the water, right where my oar had been. Glittering green and black scales catch the light where the algae falls away. There’s no end, no beginning of the appendage before it falls back into the dark waters below.
Titanoboa? Frozen, I stare at the spot where the serpentine thing vanished. It can’t be a crocodile—they don’t have scales.
POP!
Startling back, the scaley appendage appears again, higher and longer this time.
My heart beats wildly, pounding against my ribcage. The saliva in my mouth dries up, and my back grows so stiff I’m afraid it’ll never move again.
The tail—it’s a tail, it has to be—leads to a body so huge that the entirety of the river is displaced as it rises up. Dozens of giant black spikes break the water’s surface first, like sharkfins. My raft catches in the roiling water and surges toward the shoreline, forcing my eyes away from the beast.
My raft strikes the side of a tree trunk, knocking me off balance, and I turn to catch myself and anchor against the trunk, gasping, holding onto several thick vines. Twisting back to the monster, there’s nothing.
It’s back below the water.
I can barely hear the popping over the drum of my heart.
What have I gotten myself into?
I wait, tense all over, for it to resurface—but it doesn’t. Only the bubbles remain.
After a while, my courage returns and I survey my surroundings. The red glow is heavier now, I realize, the shadows thicker and deeper.
The mating call’s ear-splitting screech assails the air, gut-punching me.
The bubbles return.
Go! Now. My hands drop from the vines. You’re not safe!
Quickly, I take up my oars and slide them into the water. Pushing off from the tree as the shriek echoes through the trees, I work on spinning my raft around. Keeping my raft from where the tail first appeared, I row with all my might.
The tail bursts back above the water, forcing my raft back to the tree I just escaped. The vessel floods with water. An oar slips from my grip and it’s lost to the river.
Then the monstrous body reappears—the razor-sharp black spikes reappear.
The boat rocks. I hear a crack.
The beast keeps rising, revealing a body so big, so deeply green and black, that I can’t tell shadow from limb. I hold in a scream. Long black strips of skin, like snake-like cords moving around, sprout from behind four thick horns way ahead that emerge.
Cast in bright red, that head rises from the river, up into the deepening jungle gloom. It releases a roar that makes me scream at the top of my lungs. Its teeth—as it lifts its head skyward—are as long and thick as my legs.
A dragon.
The tail, near a dozen lengths of me, surges into the air and slaps back down, silencing my screams.
Falling from my broken raft, my body submerges. Grasping as waves threaten to sink me, pulling me in and out, I search for something, anything to hold on to.
Fingers outstretched, they slip across something slick and thick. Kicking toward it—it must be the tree—I grip it.
Then the tree moves, and I realize, as it pulls me completely from the river, I’ve clung to the dragon I’m trying to escape from.
The one I came here to find.
7
Kaos Mate Bonds
Raising my head to the sky, a long-awaited, tumultuous roar explodes from me. The heat that has been building over the past days ruptures from deep within my chest and fills the air. A strange noise follows. The forest screams its reply?
But the noise disappears before I investigate.
Then the femdragon’s call responds to my own, so, so close. The leaves rustle; the ground trembles. So close I can taste her. My tongue shoots out to do just that, penetrating the smoke from my roar.
My wings pull from my body to slash and break the trees on either side as I shake the centuries of algae off me. Tonight, I mate. Tonight, a femdragon is mine to breed, protect, and take care of. Her pheromones flood my nostrils, and my eyes slide open to look around.
A red glow is all about me. The comet. It has returned again.
The destruction of anci
ents, I growl. The twister of life and land.
My body tightens as my wings shake off mud and water. No matter—steam pours from my mouth. The comet’s magic already has me. The priming has already begun.
I’ll destroy anything and everything, even the comet itself, if it gets in my way.
Something annoying still hangs off my tail and I flick it again. The forest’s strange scream returns to my ears, and this time it hurts my head. The annoyance remains. I flap my wings to take to the sky, knowing it will dislodge soon, but when I push up, nothing happens.
Growling, I try again. Nothing.
Again.
My wings can’t take my weight. How long have I been asleep?
Fury fills me, but try as I might, my wings cannot support my body. Hundreds of years of existence, and I have never been plagued with such weakness.
I turn my rage to the annoying thing on my tail, twisting toward it, preparing to bite the obstruction off. Poising it before my eyes, I find it is not part of the jungle growth at all, but a creature wrapped around my limb, clutching tightly, hazy in the evening shadows.
Pulling back my lips, baring my teeth, I snap at it. All it does is open its mouth and—
That scream!
It tears through me, rocking me to my senses, dispersing the femdragon’s pheromones from my nostrils. Weakness floods me, everywhere.
It is not just my wings anymore, which begin to droop, but my internal heat—my entire body. My claws lose their grip on the ground. My mouth drops open and I try to release smoke, but little comes out.
The femdragon’s mating call fills my ears again, and this time, it rocks my head with sharp pain. I will not impress her this way.
My tail falls toward the water, and the thing moves on me, catching my gaze, focusing it.
Two legs, two arms, bipedal. My nostrils flare. Fury builds like never before as I come to realize what is holding me so tightly.
A wretched, weak human!
Its skin is pressed against mine. Its hands touch my ancient and powerful hide. Its puny, glinting eyes stare back at me in fear. Horror and rage crash through me.
