by Ruby Dixon
It didn’t take long to realize he was on the verge of losing his shit, either, and so I had to think of what to do to calm him. The only thing that sprang to mind was singing, and so I started to hum the first thing that sprang to mind—Ring Around the Rosie. A song about ashes and death seemed appropriate enough.
The song worked, or maybe it was just the tone of my voice. Either way, the smoke has stopped and his eyes have gone from that awful, empty black to the whirling gold on gold again. I stroke his scales, doing my best to calm him. “You doing okay, dragon? Do we need to talk about the attack?”
His gaze fixes on me with uncanny awareness, and my skin prickles.
“Is it something I said?” I whisper, doing my best not to glance over at the nearly decapitated red dragon a few feet away. I don’t want to call his attention back to it, just in case his mind snaps and his eyes go black again.
But the dragon very gently, very carefully sets me down on the ground. I gaze up at him uneasily, wondering if this is a bad sign. A moment later, he’s human again.
Naked, but human.
He puts a hand to his chest, gazing at me with those odd, golden eyes. “Dakh.”
Oh my goodness. “Is…is that your name? Dakh?” I move forward and tap his chest, deciding to pointedly ignore the fact that he’s naked. “Dakh?”
He makes a gesture with his head that might be a nod. “Dakh,” he says again, and the way he pronounces it is fascinating. There’s so much more flavor to it when it comes from his mouth than from mine. It sounds a bit resonant, deeper, more vibrant. Having a name to put to things makes him more human.
“Hi, Dakh,” I say softly. “I’m Sasha.”
“Eyhm-sa-cha,” he mimics.
“Er, not quite.” I tap my chest again. “Sasha.” I want to say just Sasha, but I suspect this will derail into my name becoming “JustSasha,” and I don’t want to confuse him more.
“Sa-cha.”
I shiver, because he says my name in that deep, sonorous way he says his own. “That’s right. Sasha and Dakh.” I point at myself, then at him. “Do you know any other words? Can you speak anything else?”
“Dakh,” he murmurs, and then reaches to touch my chest. “Sa-cha.”
“Okay then, baby steps. We’re doing good with names.” I give him a bright smile. For some reason, I feel ridiculously pleased that we’re communicating, even if we’re not going beyond names. I study him, noting that his human form is just as spattered with blood as his dragon one was. “Are you…are you okay? Are you hurt?” I realize he won’t understand what I’m saying, so I point at my black eye and my bad arm. “Ow.” Then, I gesture at him. “Dakh ow?”
His heavy golden brows go down, and he moves forward, reaching for my bad arm. I have it splinted and wrapped, but everything’s kind of soggy and turned to crap since my dunk in the tub. “Ow?” he asks, a dark look on his face. “Sa-cha ow Dakh?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.” I bite my lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Sa-cha ow?”
Oh dear. I’m afraid we’re getting stuck on the wrong things. I don’t want him to fixate on my wounds, not while he’s covered in blood and potential injuries of his own. I shake my head and take him by the hand, leading him to the tub of water. “Come on.”
There’s not much water left in the tub, and what is left is pretty filthy, thanks to my full-body dunk, but with a discarded scrap of my jeans and a bit of water, I start to wash the dragon. Dakh remains still so I can clean him off enough to see that the blood covering him isn’t his. He’s got a few small scratches, but other than that, it’s all gore from the other.
I force myself to keep smiling, though I’m a little disturbed as I hand the makeshift towel over to him and indicate that he should finish washing himself. He swipes at his chest absently, his gaze focused on me. All that blood. He killed the other dragon. I don’t know if it was necessary or if he just enjoys killing. I wish I could ask. Actually, there’s a lot I wish I could ask, but there’s too much of a barrier between us.
Mostly, I want to know why he’s picked me for his captive and if he’s ever going to let me go.
But there’s no sense in stressing, I guess. I’ll have to take things one day at a time, and today, at least for now, his eyes have calmed back down to the gold on gold. As long as they’re not black, I can relax.
And since he’s human and in a good mood, I feel like I need to ensure it stays that way. So I keep a bright smile on my face and gesture at the stewpot full of cold, leftover stew. “Should we eat?” Eating’s actually the furthest thing from my mind, with a gigantic dead dragon on the other side of the room, but I don’t know what else to do.
Stew it is.
DAKH
Night falls, and as it does, my human struggles to keep her eyes open.
It has been a long day for both of us. Despite her soft touches and pleasing voice, I have remained on alert, worried another dragon—male or female—will come by and view my unclaimed mate as a threat or a prize to be won. Either one will spur an attack, and my mate’s hair still smells of char from the last dragon. She cannot be safe until I claim her and give her my fires.
But she will not let me claim her. I am at a loss as to what to do.
So I return to my battle form and pace about my nest. My human tries to mend her rough, strange skins and put them back on her lower body, and then eats a few more bites of the food I have brought her. It is gone soon enough, and I am afraid to leave her side to hunt her more human things to eat.
But I cannot let her starve. Something must be done. What, I do not know. But she is my only concern.
I watch as she sags against the wall, asleep. She has been uneasy since the other dragon appeared, and only seemed to relax when I took the corpse and dumped it over the ledge and out of sight. There is still a large bloodstain and the smell of the invader everywhere I turn, and it makes me unhappy.
I do not want reminders that someone tried to murder my mate, to take her from me before I could even claim her.
I move to her side, feeling the need to hold her close once more. She does not wake, and I gently pick her up in my talons, cradling her against my scaled chest. She turns instinctively toward me, seeking my warmth, and my heart fills with pride. For once, the ravens and vultures seem very far away. It is…pleasant. Not half as pleasant as touching her, but a pleasant all its own.
I study her as she sleeps against me. She is so small and fragile, my human. The arm she has covered in strange wrappings—the “ow”—concerns me. It is clear she is injured, and I worry I have done this to her. I must be more careful than ever before, because the thought of harming her makes me sick. Her face is discolored on one side, and as I brush her hair off her face with a talon, I gaze down on her small features.
Will she ever look at me with encouragement, I wonder. Will she ever take her battle form? Or are humans too weak for such things? How can I possibly mate her if she does not invite me?
Returning her to the human hive is out of the question. Sa-cha is mine now. I say her name again, tasting it on my tongue. Sa-cha. Sa-cha. It even sounds delicate and fragile, like my mate.
Carefully, I run one claw along her good arm, caressing her. She sighs and snuggles closer against me, and I want to rumble with pleasure, except that will wake her.
It takes everything I have to remain silent. I stroke my claw down her soft skin again, petting her over and over. Touching her comforts me. It makes me feel peaceful inside my head.
And when she makes a little noise of pleasure in her sleep at my touch?
I vow that she will be mine. Whatever it takes, she will be mine, and she will make that very noise with my cock buried deep inside her as I am mounted on top of her, claiming her.
One thing is certain, though. My nest is not safe. It is too close to too many other dragons. The human hive is a magnet for our kind, and I must take my Sa-cha away from here. I will take her someplace where her scent will not carry to
others.
Otherwise, she will never be safe.
7
SASHA
The next morning, I eye the nearly scraped clean stewpot and wonder if I’m hungry enough to scrounge for dried-on scraps. Dakh hasn’t shown any indication of leaving this morning like he did yesterday, so I wonder if I need to make the best of what food I’ve got. The little water I have left is cloudy and gross, and I strain it through my T-shirt before drinking a handful (not that my T-shirt is much better). I splash a little on my face, too, just because I feel kind of wrung out and grimy at the moment. I never thought I’d miss sleeping in our old, broken-down schoolbus back in Fort Dallas, but there I had blankets and an old mattress. Here, the only thing I’ve got is dusty floor and a dragon.
Thinking about the schoolbus makes me sad. I worry about Claudia. Did she find Amy? Did she live after the attack on Fort Dallas went south? Or did they both get re-captured by the mayor? Or…did my friends die? The thought makes me queasy. I don’t want to think about that. If I was a real friend, I’d be doing my best to try to save Claudia like she tried to save me…except I feel like I can’t even save myself.
If Dakh doesn’t remember to feed me and bring me more water, I’m in danger of dying. I’m trapped up here, and it makes me more and more nervous with every passing hour that I don’t have an escape route if something happens.
“Sa-cha.”
I turn around, surprised. It seems Dakh spends more time in his dragon form than his human one, but he’s changed on me again and is walking up to my side. It’s a little unnerving because he’s awfully naked. He moves beautifully, though, as graceful as a cat and twice as lethal as a tiger. I suspect I could watch him all day…if he wore pants. As it is right now, I avert my eyes every time his dick comes into view, because I don’t want to be caught inspecting it.
I don’t want him to get any ideas.
So I pretend to be really interested in my grubby, waterlogged sneakers that still haven’t dried out after yesterday’s dunking. “What is it?”
He moves closer—so close that his junk comes into view anyhow, eep—and leans over, trying to meet my eyes. “Sa-cha?”
I smother an awkward laugh. I suppose I deserved that. I look him in the eye. “Yes?”
He points at the windy ledge.
Immediately I panic, scuttling behind him. “Oh my God. Is it another dragon?” I’m afraid to look out from behind his shoulders, and I put my hands on his sides as if I can hold him in place like a shield.
Dakh rumbles low in his chest, and I don’t know if he’s laughing or pleased, but the sound is a happy one. He turns around and takes my hand in his, just like I did to him yesterday. Then he leads me toward the ledge.
Oh, it must be safe. I think I’m panicking because of yesterday’s unexpected visitor. “What is it, Dakh? What do you want me to see?”
He moves to the ledge and just stares out at the empty expanse of sky. I hold tightly to his hand—ignoring the fact that his fingers are tipped with claws—and gaze out, too. I see nothing but the ruins of Old Dallas in front of us, and it looks the same as it ever did. The streets are littered with wrecks of old cars, trash, and grass that has sprung up between cracks in the asphalt. Vines crawl up the buildings, and all of the skyscrapers are nothing more than shattered glass as far as the eye can see. Somewhere down below, I see a herd of cattle moving through one of the streets. It’s all familiar to me, so I scan the skies. I see nothing. It’s a clear day, the weather lovely and warm, without a cloud to be seen. The greenish-gray pulse of the Rift is in the same place it’s ever been, a jagged wound in the otherwise blue sky. “What am I looking for?” Not that I expect an answer, of course. It just feels better to say it aloud, like we’re having a real conversation. “Something specific?”
He doesn’t respond. But when I scan the skies again and still see nothing, I look over at him. Dakh’s gazing down at me with the most…intense, pleased look on his face. It’s like he’s just enjoying looking at me. It makes me blush and feel shy. When was the last time I felt that? Every time Tate looked at me, I felt ashamed. Every time one of the other soldiers looked at me, they’d jeer at me because they knew I sold myself to Tate. I was trash in their eyes because of what I did to survive. No one’s ever looked at me like I’m the best thing they’ve ever seen.
It feels strangely good.
“What am I looking for?” I prompt again, feeling embarrassed. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, wishing I deserved the intense look he’s giving me at the moment. I’m sure I’m a mess, my hair tangled and my face all bruised up. Of course, he’s a dragon, so I’m not sure why I should care, but I do.
All Dakh does is take my hand again, caressing it. He touches my other arm, the one in the sling. “Ow?”
Is he asking if it’s better today? “It’s fine,” I tell him. “A break takes a while to heal. Though I’m not sure why I’m telling you this other than the fact that I like my own voice. Just feels nice to talk, you know? Even if I do feel silly.”
He nods slowly, as if he understands all this. “Sa-cha…Dakh?” Then he gestures out at the open air again.
Not sure what he’s asking, but I shrug. “Yeah, sure. We can leave any time. I’m fine with that.”
Dakh touches my cheek, and before I can react to that gentle caress, he morphs into his dragon form. A second later, the big, black claws latch around my waist, and then I’m being whisked off the ledge and into the open air.
I’m too terrified to even scream.
Oh my God, how does Claudia do this? I dangle in Dakh’s claws, my hair whipping around my face as he beats his wings, flying higher. I feel completely unsafe. I feel like at any moment, he could drop me and I’d drop a hundred—no, a thousand—feet below and shatter into a million pieces. I cling to Dakh’s claws. “Please don’t drop me!”
In response, the dragon just pulls in his forelegs and cradles me closer to his big, burningly warm chest. That’s something, at least. I hold on to him as tightly as possible, my eyes squeezed shut. I don’t care that his skin’s so hot that it’s scorching my face, or that the wound in my hip is throbbing madly, or that clutching at his scales means that my broken arm is hurting—I’m not letting go for anything. They’ll have to pry me off first.
We seem to fly forever. At least, it feels like forever. Of course, it also feels like an eternity between each gasping breath I take, so I don’t know how long it’s been. Too long. I don’t like flying. Not in the slightest.
Eventually, though, I squeeze one eye open. The ground is still as terrifyingly far below as it was before, and I have to choke back a whimper of distress. But when Dakh wheels about, catching an updraft, I see the tall, broken skyscrapers of Old Dallas far behind us and getting even farther away. That makes me curious. Just where are we going?
Where is he taking me?
And how am I going to get back?
I look up at the big dragon that’s holding me in his claws, but it’s impossible to see much of anything except golden throat, golden wings, and golden scales. In fact, the scales I’m currently pressed against are so hot that it’s like hugging a frying pan. It’s scorching my skin, and I shift against his claws, trying to get comfortable.
He immediately loosens them slightly.
I shriek, holding on. “No! No! Don’t you dare let me go!”
I feel a low rumble move through his belly, and Dakh obligingly tightens his grip around me. The rumble continues, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s laughing at my hysterics.
“It’s not funny,” I retort up to him. I want to smack one of the claws gripping me, but I know not to bite the hand that feeds me. I’m not that comfortable with my dragon just yet.
Well, he’s not exactly my dragon, but he’s the dragon I know. I guess that makes him mine, in a way.
We continue to fly on, until the cluster of ruined buildings thin out, and then we’re flying along a highway, heading west with the morning sun at our backs. My musc
les start to ache from being clenched with fear, and my wounded arm and hip both throb in unison. It doesn’t look like there’s anywhere to stop, though.
Then I see it. Up ahead, tucked in the trees, there’s a recognizable flat gray roof of a long, enormous building with an equally impressive parking lot. I know what that building is, and we’re so far out of the city that it might be more intact than the stuff near Fort Dallas.
It’s a SuperMart. One of those enormous stores that sells everything from groceries to sporting goods to cookware to televisions to everything in between.
I make a weird little excited noise in my throat at the sight of it. Dakh’s claws tighten around me in an unspoken question, and so I point ahead. “That building. Can we stop there?”
My spirits drop when I remember I’m talking to a dragon that doesn’t understand English, but I’m both surprised and pleased when he lowers, spreading his wings to glide in toward the building. Maybe my excited pointing meant something to him. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m thrilled at all the possibilities that the store represents.
I’d never gone scavenging with Claudia, but she told me tons about it. How the stores are looted and trashed, everything useful stripped bare. How she would sift through piles of garbage for hours, looking for a can of tuna that might have been missed, or a package that was unopened. She talked about the stink of the animal corpses when a bird or a rat or a deer would wander into the building and die. Claudia had all kinds of disturbing stories about scavenging in the After.
But I remember shopping in the Before. And I loved it. I’ve been without so many things for so long that I’m practically dizzy at the thought of new clothes or shoes—or heck, a bowl for my food.
Dakh dives down and flaps his wings, landing gracefully in the parking lot. It’s overgrown, and there are still a few broken-down cars scattered in old parking spaces. Rusty shopping carts are scattered and flipped on their sides. Everything’s covered with weeds and dead leaves, but the doors of the SuperMart are intact. Dirty, but intact.