by Lucas, Naomi
She is not telling me something. Has she discovered something I do not know?
She is concerned for me.
I part my lips. “Not safe,” I say. I am concerned for her too.
“Not safe?” she asks.
Yes! I groan in agreement.
Her head drops. “You can understand me,” her voice lowers. “I’ll protect us until you’re well. It seems this cave is deserted.”
Deserted? Frustration spikes.
“Why can’t you move?” she asks. “Did I… cause this when I fell on you?”
Fell on me? I hmph. No human would pass up the opportunity to steal a dragon. But then I remember her presence, how she’d explored me before I transformed, how she did not bind me at the first opportunity.
The naga did not attack me either.
Has Venys changed so much? Have the creatures gone mad?
Her gaze steadies on me. She is waiting for me to answer. What should I tell her? I do not want to share my shame. That I was struck by a lesser dragon, that I was brought down? That I allowed a human to touch me without putting up a fight…
For some reason I am not as bothered by that, not as I should be… not as I was before it happened. I am waiting for her to touch me again, I realize. And if she falls this time, I will catch her.
If I could just get up!
“Poison,” I answer.
She stares at me before nodding. “What bit you? Do you know? Or where?” She scans my body.
I tense, wanting her to like what she sees.
Am I pleasing? I know horns and tails are not human traits, nor are scales and claws—my dark jewel—but could she overlook them?
If she recoils from me…
She bites down on her lip and turns away. My chest constricts. She finds me repugnant. I close my eyes in embarrassment.
Something thuds, and I hear a rip of cloth. I reopen my eyes to discover what she is doing and find the scraps of her bag hanging in her hands. She drops it over my jutting shaft with a squeak and threads it under my hips. Confused, I try to lift them to help her. Her warm skin is on me again and my embarrassment fades long enough to enjoy the pleasure of having her near. Then her hands find the base of my tails.
I moan.
She stops what she is doing but her hands and the bunched cloth remains.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, shaking her head. Her cheeks have gone red.
I do not respond. Her hands move to tie the cloth into place. I peer down.
She has covered my root, I realize. And not in the way I would have preferred.
She shifts, and our eyes meet. “I should have covered you sooner,” she says.
I part my mouth to argue—
“I’ll look for that bite now,” she mutters, beginning to circle back down me, wandering out of my line of sight.
“No bite.” I stop her. “Wounds healed long ago.” My voice is clipped.
“No bite?”
“No.”
She returns. Her dark eyes capture mine again. Skies, is she lovely. I may not be to her liking but she is to mine.
“Is it something you ate?” she asks.
“No.”
“Something that touched you, something you absorbed?”
“No.”
She sits back. “How can I help you then? What can I do?”
Stay here with me. Do not leave my side. Make sure I can see you at all times so I do not worry. But I do not tell her this. “Rest,” I respond. Though this is not what I need, it is what she needs.
Knowing there is a naga lurking somewhere in the dark unnerves me. She needs to rest, to regain her strength, and I… I need to get the skies up!
“Rest… Okay, rest it is.” She nods.
She goes quiet as we stare at each other. Her mouth opens and closes several times as if she has more she wants to say, but she remains silent. Her hand lifts to the back of her head, and she winces. It comes away with blood.
Her wound. My face tightens.
“Rest,” I order.
She straightens and drops her hand. “No. I’ll keep watch.”
I will not have it. My eyes narrow. “You rest. I do not… need it…”
“And if something attacks?” Exhaustion etches her face. She cannot hide it from me. She needs sleep more than I.
“I will… wake you. Rest,” I order again. I will not have my orders disobeyed, not by a human. Not by my human. “I have… good hearing. I will wake you.”
She sucks her lower lip into her mouth but nods. “All right, I will rest.”
Another wave of pleasure floods me. She knows to trust me. This, I can do for her.
She lies down beside me, just shy of touching me. I shift my hand, managing to press it to her arm. She does not remove it. I drop my head to the side. She is gazing back at me, her eyelids half-closed.
“Drazak,” I tell her. “My name is Drazak.”
She will fall asleep with my name in her mind.
She smiles softly, and my heart seizes.
“Drazak,” she breathes, saying my name back to me. “I’m Milaye.”
“Milaye.” I like it. It is sweet on the tongue. “Sleep now, Milaye. I will listen.”
Her eyes close, but her smile remains. And as her breathing softens, I take her in, wondering how much my life has changed in such a short amount of time. I lose myself in her nearness. Her sun-kissed skin. Her inviting lips. The way the firelight flickers across her face. It gives me the strength to keep working at my body.
Her lips become my goal.
And I listen and listen intently, knowing despite this quiet moment, we are surrounded by danger.
10
Receding Darkness
Something tugs at my hair, pinching it away from my skin, and I moan. Ticklish prickles shoot from my scalp, through my body. I long to bask in it, but the haze of sleep clears from my head. The pain returns.
Gone is the pleasure, and I groan, batting my hand at whatever’s in my hair. If Haime thinks waking me is… That’s not Haime’s hand. My eyes shoot open. There’s a strange and wicked male in front of me.
A male! In my cot?
My lips part to scream but then recognition hits. Drazak.
The cave. The dragon.
His eyes catch mine as he traps my hand, clenching my fingers between his. Heat surges, and my sex clenches. My legs twitch. I try not to show how much his touch does to me. How much I want him. How inappropriate the timing is for all of this.
Don’t glance at his groin. Don’t.
It’s so hard not to. I have a feeling his shaft is as hard as ever. And with mortification, I hope I’m right.
“I did not mean to… wake you.” His voice is rich and deep, no longer raspy. His words are clearer. His voice coils around me.
“How long have I been asleep?” My fingers flex against his, and his hold on my hand tightens.
“A while.”
He brings our hands between us, resting them on the ground. His engulfs mine, and even in the flickering shadows between our bodies, I’m dazzled by the purple twinkle of his scales. Even as my eyes lock on his short black claws.
“I’m glad you woke me.” I swallow thinking what those claws could do to me. I itch to stroke them and see if they’re as sharp as they appear. My gaze flicks back to meet his when he squeezes my hand.
“I am not. You are weak. I should have kept my hand to myself.”
“I’m not weak.” Indignation wipes away any lingering traces of sleep. I rise.
“Stay,” he pleads, keeping my hand hostage. “I do not mean it as an insult… I smell your blood.”
After a moment, I drop back down. At being mentioned, my head throbs and I wince. “You can smell it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just a gash,” I reassure him because there’s concern on his face. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“I caused it,” he rumbles.
“I fell. I lost my grip.”
&nbs
p; “When running for safety when I transformed.” There’s accusation in his voice.
True, but I don’t tell him that. The way he’s gazing at me, the way his brow furrows, it makes me think he’s profoundly unhappy about my wound. I don’t know how to take it. “I’ll be fine. And you’re—” my eyes widen “—you’re moving.” I sit up and check out his body.
He’s shifted. Now he is on his side with his arms reaching before him, the one that had taken my hand now placed palm down on the ground, holding his weight. And he is holding himself up, slightly, using his arm as a prop. His tails are behind him, and his other arm lies under his cheek.
I realize he’s been watching me. It would be easy to do so in this position. That he may have been watching for some time.
His eyes twinkle. “I am making progress.”
I scrape my teeth across my bottom lip.
“Your voice is clearer now too,” I say.
“It has not been used in many years. It is strange to speak again.”
I remember his unmoving dragon form. “How long?” I pull my legs under me and rummage through my scattered belongings for my rations of dried meat.
His dark eyes follow me. I know they do.
I can feel them like burning stabs.
“A long time,” he says.
“You were… When I found you, I thought you were dead.”
“I was sure I would die that way. Perhaps another hundred years or so, and I would have.”
A hundred years or so…
He continues, “But you came.”
I unwrap my dried meat and move back to Drazak’s side. “Hundreds of years is a long time. That isn’t close to being dead…”
“For a dragon it is.”
I shake my head. “So you’ve… been down here a long time?” I can’t even imagine it. “Hundreds of years?”
“Thousands, I believe.”
My lips part. My eyes go wide. “How? How is that possible?”
“Dragons are immortal unless something comes along and kills us. We will not die otherwise. But I have been starving, unmoving for so long… I was weakening.”
“From poison?”
His dark eyes glint again. “Yes.”
We stare at each other. I wait for him to tell me more. He doesn’t.
What could poison a dragon? If I struggle to wrap my head around his age, how could I understand the creature that could poison him? Drazak’s dragon was gigantic. Hundreds of me put together would’ve still been smaller than his body’s size. I’ve seen sea serpents off the coast and giant mountain eagles fly overhead, but nothing as large as he was.
What could possibly poison a massive creature like him?
I’m afraid to ask. Do I even want to know? Is having an answer worth the nightmares?
I hand him one of my rations. “I don’t want you to starve,” I whisper, changing the subject.
He looks at my offering.
“Wait!”
I set the meat aside and wrap my arms around him. He stiffens in my embrace.
He growls. “Let me do this. I will sit up on my own.”
“You can sit up all you want later.” I’m used to dealing with kids. “For now, I will help you while you heal.”
Positioning myself behind him, I haul him into a sitting position, but when I start to let go, he drops. Indignant growls and curses fill my ears but I ignore them. Looking around I find a boulder a few feet behind him. Getting a better grip, I brace and drag him to the rock.
A few minutes—and lots of grunting—later, he’s propped up against it.
Catching my breath and ignoring the renewed pressure in my head, I drop beside him and wipe the sweat off my brow. I’m strong, but he’s still large for a human and much bigger than I am. And he’s got those tails, and those horns, I moan. Horns I want to explore thoroughly.
Maybe even lick.
When I catch his eye, he’s angry.
“I will not get any stronger if I am not given the opportunity to challenge myself,” he snaps.
“You will not get better at all if you starve to death.” I grab the rations. “Dragons may not have to eat for long periods, but humans must eat every day. You’re human now. Mostly.” I put the dried meat in his hand. His fingers wrap around it.
“Thanks to you,” he grumbles.
There’s a surge of guilt. “I—”
“I am moving again, thanks to you. I have not yet decided if that is a good thing. Though I never thought I would be bonded, lose my immortality, or my power, now I am able to perish with a voice again.”
I can’t tell if he’s mad at me or not. “I am sorry, regardless.”
“You know of the dragon’s curse,” he states it more than asks.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you not claim me when you first came upon me?”
“First came—” my eyes flick to the jewel on his brow, and I watch the puffs of dark smoke coming from it “—upon you?”
“I heard you, felt the warmth of your fire stick. You were by my hindleg, then you were before me. Why did you not claim me?”
“It didn’t feel right.”
“Any human would bind a dragon if given half the chance. The bond does more than mate us for life, it also strips away our threat.”
“I thought you were dead,” I murmur.
His brows arch. “And you did not want to make sure?”
I shake my head, then wince. I rub the sore, swollen flesh at the back of my head. Drazak’s eyes narrow, and I see through the corner of my vision his hands shake and clench.
“You were beautiful,” I tell him, ignoring his reaction. “I’ve… searched for you for so long that I’d given up. I no longer had hope that I’d see a dragon one day, let alone bond with one… You were beautiful, and I—I didn’t want to change that. I couldn’t, not like that. Not so my hopes could come true. It felt wrong. It felt selfish.”
“A mistake, human.”
“Mistake?”
“For not taking the opportunity when it presented itself.”
“And you would have? If the roles were reversed?”
He glances at the meat in his hand. “Do you want to be bound to me?”
Taken aback, I stare at him. It’s a question I don’t know how to answer. Yes, I want to scream, but then the part of me that approaches with caution—with every possible outcome already played out in her head—hesitates. “I’d given up,” I repeat, as if that’s an answer.
His jaw ticks. “Why?”
“Because only the lucky among my tribe are given the honor to mate.”
“And you did not have that honor?”
His questions make me uncomfortable. No one else ever cared enough to ask these questions, and I don’t know what to do about it. As a protector of Sand’s Hunters, all my tribe cares about is that I perform my duties and that I remain healthy enough to continue doing so.
Perhaps that’s why I love our children so much. I gaze down at my hands, feeling my chest squeeze. The tribe’s children are so sweet and innocent and loving. You never had to wonder if you were loved by them. You knew it the moment they wrapped their little arms around you with laughter.
“No. I did not have that honor,” I say.
Drazak lifts his free hand, and I look up to see what he’s doing. Slowly, he brings it to my face and rubs the back of his finger up my cheek. Our eyes find each other again.
My chest squeezes harder.
“Milaye,” he says my name softly, and I don’t know why, but it makes the hurt worse. “Why?”
I shake my head.
“Why?” he demands, his voice getting rougher.
“My family… My mother only ever bore females, and her mother before that. When my sisters and I were born, the elders decided that they could not take any chances by pairing one of us to the last-born male of the coastal tribes. They chose a female from a lineage that had males in their recent ancestry. That, and she, being one of the youngest in th
e tribe, is closer in age to the male. The pairing made sense.” I see confusion etch across Drazak’s expression. “My sisters and I were raised knowing we would never mate.”
“I do not understand? There are no other males?”
Does he not know? Does he even know about the red comet? I can’t believe he would not know. “Male children are very rare. They’re rarer with every generation,” I tell him. “For nearly thirty years, my tribe and our neighbors at Shell Rock have only had one male child, Leith. Just one, in thirty years, the lowest birth rate our tribes have ever suffered, and the northern tribes are not faring any better. The chance of me being chosen for the honor of Leith’s mate was slim to none. His chosen mate is also six years younger than me. I had fewer childbearing years to give.”
“Why not have him take multiple mates? I have seen other species have multiple partners. Dragonkind only mate for a time, long enough to bring forth young. We do not mate for life… unless a human binds us,” he adds.
“Other tribes have their males take harems.” I swallow. I remember arguing that very point in the past, before I knew better. “I had asked the elders to allow me the opportunity to lay with Leith, even if he was to be mated to another, so I may have a child—”
Drazak growls.
“—but I was refused, like I knew I would be. They were right to refuse me. Pure bloodlines are imperative among the coastal tribes. They would not risk letting me be an exception, knowing other females of my tribe would want to do the same thing. If Delina—Leith’s mate—dies, then he may take another of his choosing, but until then he will remain Delina’s and Delina’s alone.”
“I would not like to share you,” Drazak’s voice lowers. “I am glad you were not chosen.”
His words sting as much as they give me pleasure.
“You are mine, human, mine. You may have not touched me willingly—if you are to be believed—but you have touched me nevertheless, and that makes you mine.”
“I did want to touch you,” I tell him. “Desperately. I was… I was also afraid.”
His lips twitch. “I instill fear in all,” he boasts. “But I will not have you be afraid of me, not anymore.”
