by Lily Graison
She held one to the light, turning it and saw reflections shine off the stone walls. The sun was casting small prisms of light through them and flashing in streamers of rainbow colors. She smiled when she realized what she was holding. “Dragon scales.” She was so entranced by her new find that she didn’t see the dragon until he was right in front of the opening. The wind picked up, the swoosh his giant wings made as they cut through the air loud in the enclosed cavern. She screamed and ran to the back wall, the light blotted out as he came inside.
Sara pressed her back flat to the rough jagged stone, her heart racing as she stared at the dragon coming toward her. His body fit inside the cavern, but just barely. His neck was angled down to keep from banging his head on the ceiling at the entrance and he filled the space from one side to the other.
He shifted and lowered his head enough the light flooded back in moments before he dropped something near her feet. It made a sickening wet slosh of noise and the smell hit her soon after. “Ugh, what is that?” She buried her nose in the crook of her arm and stared at the thing at her feet as the dragon took a few steps back.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving, and judging the smell, she assumed it was dead. It was covered in dirty gray fur that looked thick and natty. She realized a moment later it was the same type of creature the dragon had by the river. Whatever these things were called, he apparently liked them. She peeked up at the dragon. He was staring out the entrance. Sara relaxed, her shoulders lowering as she flicked her gaze from him to the dead animal. As revolting as it was, her stomach growled. She’d not eaten since she woke and had only had a few of the roots and berries Toren had found her.
The instant she thought of him, her heart ached and those tears she hated were burning the back of her eyes again.
The dragon looked back over at her and made a rumbly sort of noise deep in his chest before once again jumping out of the cavern into the sky. She was left alone with the carcass of an animal she had no idea what to do with. Was it even for her? Maybe it was the dragon’s lunch and she was just assuming he’d brought it for her. But—he’d dumped it at her feet. Surely he’d meant it for her. Or he was just putting his fresh kill next to the meal he hadn’t killed yet.
She groaned at the thought. “Stop being so glum, Sara. If that dragon wanted you dead, he would have killed you by now.”
Toren swept low over the trees, looking for the cliff the wyvern had knocked him off.
Spotting the teshen when he’d gone to retrieve the baskets had been a stroke of luck. It was large enough to feed them for days but spotting one of the flying orbs had sent him racing back to the lair with his kill without grabbing their other things. He’d not taken the time to explain to Sarra why he was leaving again so soon after dropping the animal near her feet and he wished he had. She’d still looked terrified.
He circled low after seeing the cliff, their baskets of belongings still where they’d set them. He landed on the cliff’s edge, looking near the tree line for stray limbs large enough for a fire, then scooped them up, along with the baskets, and soared over the treetops before banking right and heading back to the mountain his lair was hidden. He scanned the sky for wyvern, breathing a bit easier when he didn’t see any. If he were lucky, he’d go undetected by those who would kill him on sight.
Of course, luck had never been in his favor. Toren climbed higher into the air as he neared his mountain. Something to the left caught his eye as he started to climb. It was one of the flying orbs that roamed the skies but this one was much larger than the ones he usually saw. The sun reflected off its surface and glistened in every color known. It took only seconds to realize it saw him.
What he thought was one large orb suddenly broke off into many, speeding across the sky and closing in on him. They made no sound and moved fast, circled his head and darted at great speeds. He dipped his wing and plummeted toward the forest to draw them away from the lair. As he hoped, they followed.
Toren spent unknown amounts of time climbing into the air and dipping down again in order to lose them. A few flew so close to his face he could hear a slight buzzing noise as if something inside of it was moving. He inhaled deeply, let the heat in his chest build, then blew fire at the ones closest to him. They sizzled and fell but more flew back into his line of sight a few moments later. He circled around, the mountains now in the distance as he let the things chase him until he had a trail of them following close to both of his wings.
He barrel rolled in midair and turned to face them, waiting until they were all within range and scorched them, burning them to the point they started falling from the sky in clumps of black char. The largest of them was still in the distance. No other pieces broke off from it and he needed to keep it from his home.
Winging into the air, he sped across the sky, the oddly shaped, shining cluster of pieces still hovering. He didn’t give it time to break apart again. He blew fire on the entire thing, watching as the individual pieces turned black and fell one by one. They were nothing but smoking trails of falling debris when he turned back toward the mountain. He swooped low enough to avoid being seen again and headed back to Sarra.
Thoughts of her being safe now eased a bit of his tension. Nothing would sneak up on her in his lair. They could stay there until it was safe to go on to Dra’lera. He wasn’t sure how she’d react to being there, though. She was trapped and even though she was his, he didn’t want her to feel as if he were forcing her to be with him. Not that he’d let her go. If she decided to leave, he’d just follow. She was his. Once he built her a fire and fed her, he’d take her to the healing pools deep within the mountain and let her know. He’d claim her until her body craved his in return, until the very sight of him made her want him.
Sarra was sitting on his hoard when he ducked inside the cavern and scuttled in. She scrambled off the mound of coins he’d spent a few centuries collecting and flattened her back against the wall as he drew near her. She was still afraid of him. He could smell her fear and hear her heart as it pounded in her chest. He kept his distance as he set the baskets down. She stared at them for long minutes, her brow scrunched in what he assumed was confusion before looking up at him. She started talking again, her arms raising to gesture wildly to him, then the basket and teshen. This game she played was confusing most of the time. Today was no exception.
Sara had heard the dragon before she ever saw him. The harsh whooshing sound his massive wings made as he cut through the air had been loud inside the cavern. The sun had lowered in the sky, so when he perched on the edge of the cave and came inside, his massive form blocked all the light.
He carried something in both hands. Sara hoped it wasn’t another dead animal. The last one was still stinking the place up. When he dropped whatever it was by her feet, she stared at it in confusion for long moments. It was the baskets with the supplies Toren had packed, along with a pile of dry tree limbs she assumed were for a fire. The dragon hadn’t moved since coming inside and as Sara looked up at it, something about the way it studied her made her uneasy. Is this the part where he finally eats her?
She ran for the dragon’s hoard and scrambled onto it best she could. Trying to get away from him was pointless but that didn’t stop her from trying.
She crawled all the way to the back wall, pressing against it. The dragon didn’t seem phased at her running and spread his right wing, holding it in front of her and blocking her view. Her pulse leaped a moment before she heard him inhale as he raised his head, his wing pushing her back to the hoard bed she was sitting on, and the darkness in the cavern lit up as he belched fire. She gasped as heat filled the cave, light shining through the membranous wing to highlight every vein and as scared as she was, the wing was oddly beautiful to look at.
When he moved his wing, her eyes widened. He’d made her a fire? She looked up at him, his massive head near the ceiling and just sat there staring. It was hard not to. She was in a cave on the side of a mountain with a fire-breathing dragon and so
far, he wasn’t trying to eat her. Unless that’s why he’d made the fire.
As ill-timed as it was, the moment she thought of eating, her stomach growled. The dragon looked her way, then turned toward the opening of the cavern. Was it leaving again? It sat there staring out into the darkening sky beyond the mountain and didn’t do anything else. Maybe he wasn’t leaving.
Sara watched him for long minutes before sliding down the hoard pile, wincing when things started shifting, the noise loud as she slid closer to the fire. Maybe if she could get her hands on one of those burning limbs, she might be able to fend the thing off if he decided to eat her.
The dragon never moved as she slid the rest of the way down to the floor and crawled to her feet. She made it to the fire and was kneeling to grab one of the smaller burning sticks when movement in her peripheral caught her attention. She froze and turned to look at the dragon. His head was down, his back bowed and his hide—Sara squinted. He looked as if he were—rippling.
She lowered her hand and straightened, her eyes widening when the dragon’s entire body seemed to convulse, his head swaying back and forth a few times before the dragon hissed out a breath as it seemed to shrink in on itself. Sara blinked, then stared wide-eyed as the blue scales shrank, changing from blue to pink before giving away to flesh, the dragon’s limbs shortening to arms and legs until nothing remained but a man crouching where the dragon had been only moments ago. When he stood to his full height and looked her way, the world went out of focus, her legs turned to jelly and she released a pent-up breath as she sank to her knees. “Toren?”
Sara blinked repeatedly, trying to clear her vision and wondered if she’d finally lost her mind. Her heart started racing as he walked toward her. When he stepped into the ring of light cast by the fire and kneeled down to where she sat, her racing heart slammed against her ribcage. “Toren, what—I don’t—“
“Sarra? What is wrong?”
The concern in his voice and the slight fear in his eyes was ignored as she ran her gaze over him from his broad, muscled chest to the tightness of his abdomen, his narrow waist and lean hips to long legs, then back up again. He was whole and unhurt and—
“What—“ She shook her head. “Toren, you’re a fucking dragon!” No wonder the damn thing always seemed to be where she was.
“What is wrong, my Sarra?”
She laughed, then tears filled her eyes. If one more crazy thing happened today, she was going to lose it. She lunged for him, wrapping her arms around his neck and held on as if he’d get away if she let go. She squeezed her eyes shut when he pulled her close, that delicious scent of his skin filling the air. “I thought I lost you.” She saw him fall over the cliff’s edge again, then plummet into the ravine. The trees racing by below her as the wyvern carried her off, then the dragon as he came after her. Her blue dragon. Toren.
Pulling back to look at him, she was awed. How was this even possible? “You’re a dragon.” She inspected him again. He looked exactly as he had the last time she saw him. When she looked closely at the skin on his shoulders and saw that faint blue skin and small, scale-like design, she laughed. “You’re a shape-shifter. Shit like this isn’t supposed to happen in real life.” How does at massive dragon shrink down into a man? It was—unfathomable.
So were aliens and spaceships and creatures hellbent on capturing you a month ago, she reminded herself.
She closed her eyes and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“You need not fear me, Sarra. I still smell the scent of it in the air.”
“You smell fear?” She lifted her head, her eyes scanning his face. She was afraid. Even looking at him, knowing this was the same guy who’d protected her since the moment he’d rescued her, the fact he wasn’t what he seemed scared the hell out of her. What else didn’t she know about him?
She pointed at him then held her arms out to the side and made as if she was flying.
“The dragon?” She nodded. “You’ve no reason to fear the dragon. I’d never hurt you. You know this, right?”
It took several deep breaths, and Toren’s fingers brushing through her hair, to bring her racing heart back to a normal pace. As they sat there in the silence, every moment since the dragon—Toren—had swooped off the cliff by the jungle ruins and snatched her from the air played back in her mind’s eye and she wondered had he always been with her?
The ruins she and Marcy had hidden in had held the same spicy sweet scent that clung to Toren’s skin. Had he been there as well? The moment she asked herself the question, something he’d said to her days ago clicked.
“I caught your scent on the breeze, heard the sound of your voice echoing off the walls of the temple lair.”
Yes. He’d been there. The ruins were a temple. It explained all the dragon drawings on the walls and the huge statue. The sound she’d heard while standing in the doorway to the lower chamber in those old ruins came back to her then. She’d thought it had sounded like a sigh when she’d heard it. If Toren had been there, that sigh could have very well been him. It would explain why nothing came near those ruins. The other aliens knew something was in there.
It was still too fantastic to believe. So was being abducted by aliens but she’d finally accepted that. She let the last bit of fear go and smiled to reassure him she was okay. “So, you’re a dragon, huh?” The words hung in the air long moments before she laughed. “I gotta say, as outlandish as my life has been the past few weeks, I never saw this one coming. I guess maybe now I really am one of those romance heroines. I’ve been saved by the hunky shape-shifting dragon hero. That automatically qualifies me, right?”
“I still have no idea what you say but I no longer smell your fear. You’ve no reason to ever fear me, Sarra. I would never harm you.” He leaned in and kissed her, his lips brushing across her own. “You are mine. You have been since the moment I saw you.”
As many times as he’d said, you are mine, she’d never given the words much thought. Now she did. Now, she really understood exactly what he’d meant by them and the lengths he’d gone to prove it.
When she’d left the ruins and fallen off that cliff, he’d saved her.
When she ran away from the dragon and was chased by the others, he’d saved her.
When the tree-monster attacked and tossed her as if she were a twig, he’d saved her.
When the lone alien came into the cave and attacked, he’d saved her.
When the wyvern took her, the dragon had ripped out its throat and saved her.
Toren had always been there for her. In his eyes, she was his. She belonged to him. She realized now as she looked at him that even if she wanted to leave, he’d never let her go and—she was okay with that. His use of the word, mate, held a much different meaning than it had an hour ago. In his eyes, they were a pair. Mated—the human equivalent of spouses. So not only had she been abducted by aliens, dropped on a prison moon, and forced to survive, but she managed to get hitched to a shape-shifting dragon man. Only her life would be so bizarre.
Toren looked around the cavern. “I’ve not been here in centuries. It will take time to clean it of all the dirt.”
Centuries? “Just how old are you?”
Toren smiled and gave her a quick kiss then stood, his naked flesh lit in firelight. She eyed all that bare skin as he crossed to where she now noticed the basket with all their supplies. That, along with the wood for the fire, must have been what he’d carried in.
He dug inside and pulled out a pair of pants and slipped them on, much to her disappointment. When he bent down and picked something else up from the basket and stood, the knife in his hand, he turned toward the shaggy beast he’d dropped earlier, and she realized why.
He dragged the animal toward the opening and spent the next hour hacking away at it. It smelled worse now than it had whole and if it hadn’t been for the water she kept gulping and sitting with her back to him as she inhaled the smoke from the fire,
she would have puked.
The sun had gone down completely by the time he came back to the fire, a hunk of meat in one hand. The flat cooking rock they’d used in the other cave had been packed into one of the baskets, along with the sticks they used to skewer meat. Another half hour and the scent of cooking goat-cow beast filled the cavern.
Toren rolled the offal from the goat-cow inside its hide and gave it a toss out the cave entrance. Something would eat it. She was just glad Toren hadn’t. Now she knew why he had no aversion to eating things raw.
He washed his hands and joined her at the fire. “Teshen hides makes thick blankets. I’ve nothing to prepare them with here though. Once we make it to Dra’lera, we’ll be able to save and use them.”
As they ate, he told her of Dra’lera, home of the Draegon. It was under the mountain and was where dragons were born. His people had lived there for centuries, hidden from even the people who had worshipped his kind and with luck, others had survived.
When the last of the cooked meat was gone, her belly was full, her fingers greasy. She was staring at her hands when Toren took her left in his own and brought it to his mouth. When he started sucking on her fingers, cleaning the grease from each one, the sensation of his tongue swirling around each digit, she grew wet in an instant. That tiny grumbling growl rumbled in his chest as he cleaned her other hand, his gaze locked on hers, and the last time he’d sucked her fingers flashed in her mind’s eye. He’d been licking her own juices off of them. Remembering that night, and all the things he’d done to her, made her womb clench tight, that throb between her legs growing by the second.
His nostrils flared, and he inhaled a breath, those odd slitted irises of his growing a bit larger as he stared at her. He looked down the length of her body. With his sense of smell, she had no doubt he knew how turned on she was.