by Kayla Wolf
Flying was pretty incredible, honestly. There was an odd undulating rhythm to it as the dragon's serpentine body rippled with each powerful downstroke of his huge wings. He flew well above the clouds to avoid being seen from the ground, and the view up there was dazzling. Bright sun glinting off the puffy white cloudbanks – like bursting through cloud cover in an airplane, but fifty times more magical without a fuselage between her and the air.
From the air, they got a closer look at the neighborhood they'd stumbled into the night before (was it really only last night that everything had happened?) Not many houses – all of them set way back from the road on enormous rambling blocks. You could probably walk for hours without running into anybody. Perfect for their purposes.
Alexander dropped her at the house like some kind of extremely strange Uber, then took off again, this time winging low over the trees toward the deeper forest they'd flown over – no houses in that direction, but Lisa couldn't help feeling a pang of concern that he'd be seen. Realistically, though, what would the consequences be? Who did you report a huge scaled dragon to?
She headed into the cabin, wrinkling her nose at the smell of dust. It was the work of a few minutes to open all the windows and doors – a pleasant breeze began to move through the house. She found a ratty but functional old broom in the house's little laundry and gave it a thorough sweeping, which helped ease the sneezy feeling that being in the house gave her. A glance out the window showed no sign of Alexander, but she'd said she'd wait for him for lunch – stomach grumbling, she cast around for something to do. Well, there was always the bed...
She'd glanced at it that morning – a huge old thing that must have been built in the room that it stood in. King-sized or larger, if she was any judge – and though it and the mattress that sat on it were old and dusty, her careful scrutiny revealed that they were clean and in decent condition. Lisa wasn't particularly thrilled by the prospect of sleeping on the floor again – so she pulled the bedding from the bed and dragged it outside where she'd spotted an old tree with some very nicely positioned branches.
The bedding airing in the afternoon sun, Lisa's mind turned to thoughts of food. She'd grabbed a couple of fresh loaves of bread from the store, plus some cheeses and preserved meats to eat with them – nothing too fancy, but her stomach almost roared at the sight of it as she laid it out on the recently dusted table. If Alexander didn't get here in five minutes, she told herself, she was just going to eat without him. Whether there'd be any bread left for him was his problem, not hers.
As if on cue, she heard wingbeats on the afternoon air – and minutes later, Alexander stepped into the house. Stark naked, again. Averting her gaze a little less quickly than she strictly could have, Lisa dug the clothes he'd worn in town out of their rucksack and tossed them to him.
“You hungry?”
“I have eaten. Thank you.”
“What, when we were in town?”
“No.”
A couple of puzzle pieces fell into place, and Lisa's mouth dropped open. “Tell me you didn't just – hunt something.”
“An elk,” he said helpfully. “It was very satisfying.”
“You – you flew into the woods and ate an entire elk. Raw. Like —”
“Like what?” He tilted his gorgeous head at her as he buttoned his shirt up, and she stared back at him. How could someone who looked like the most successful underwear model in human history be so – deeply – weird? At least there was no blood on him. Really, Lisa? This is your reality now? Twenty-four hours ago the biggest problem you had was that your Friday afternoon was dragging a little.
“Never mind,” she said, throwing her hands up. “More bread for me, I guess.”
He sat at the table with her, politely, though she couldn't shake a persistent image of him lifting his face from a gutted deer carcass. Even that delightful imagining couldn't put her off the food, though, and she groaned in satisfaction when she'd eaten her fill and then some.
“I am sorry if it was rude of me to eat an elk instead of joining you for luncheon,” Alexander said into the slightly awkward silence that had fallen. And then, unexpectedly, he reached out and took her hand in his – clumsy and formal, just like him. Her skin seemed to vibrate slightly where he was touching it. “I wanted to leave plenty of food for you. You have been – very kind to me. More kindness than I have earned. I am very grateful to you, Lisa.”
Lisa sighed. There was something incredibly endearing about the solemn, almost reverent way he looked at her. A King of his people, he had said. Dragons had kings, it seemed. Well, hadn't she thought he looked like some kind of gorgeous European prince when she'd met him? She always had had good instincts. But if he was a king... well, it wasn't as though she was an expert in dragons or anything, but he didn't seem like a particularly experienced king. She wondered about what draconic succession was like – had a monarch died and left him the crown, or was it a retirement kind of deal? Did it pass from father to son?
They could talk about dragon politics later. For now, she had to stop putting off an uncomfortable conversation. It had been fun, frolicking around in town with him, soaring through the skies, even playing house as though they were moving in together like the world's weirdest odd couple movie, but she had to be a grown-up about this.
“We should talk about – what our relationship is,” she said, hating herself a little as she gently pulled her hand out of his grasp. Such a professional, Lisa, a small voice in her mind hissed – and it definitely wasn't a compliment. She hadn't been able to help thinking about what they might do with that enormous bed in the little bedroom, once the bedding was aired out and dust-free.
“Our relationship?”
“If we're going to work together. It's important that we talk about – well, we're obviously attracted to each other, right?”
That frustratingly blank expression in his golden eyes. This guy was more expressive when he was a gigantic lizard with no lips or nose.
“Right?” Lisa pressed, suddenly feeling a bit ridiculous. Of course, he was attracted to her. Why else would he have had sex with her? Was sex different for dragons? Less intimate, less to do with physical attraction and more to do with... something else? He certainly hadn't seemed any different in bed from a regular human man. Not that she was that experienced, but she'd been around the block with enough guys to know he'd been as into it as she was.
Alright. Time to stop thinking about what it had been like having sex with him. She had to keep this conversation professional.
“Yes,” he admitted, and what was that look in his eyes? Worry? Embarrassment? '”You are – an attractive human. I greatly enjoyed having... sexual congress... with you.”
“Alright, Alexander, I like you, and I've trusted you this far, but when you say things like that you sound like a serial killer, okay?”
“I do?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “Never say 'sexual congress' again, but – I enjoyed having sex with you too. Like a lot. I mean, look at you, you're absolutely gorgeous.”
He smiled a little at that, color rising in his cheeks, and she cursed the way her heart sped up. Get it together, woman, you're trying to do the Let's Keep This Professional talk.
“But it's your grand destiny to fall in love with some woman we have to track down, right?” she pressed on, and the smile faded from his face.
“Yes. My destiny. My soulmate. Of course. She is out there. And if we are – entangled...”
“Exactly. It gets messy if we find her, but you and I have this unresolved tension going on. So – let's leave all those sexual feelings in the past, yes?”
Alexander nodded solemnly. “Of course.”
Ignoring the dull feeling of disappointment in her chest as hard as she could, Lisa smiled and extended a hand for him to shake. “Friends?”
“Friends.”
“Right.” Lisa cracked her knuckles, then pulled her laptop out of her bag. “Now let's find you a soulmate.”
; Chapter 17 – Alexander
He had to admit, the various rectangles that Lisa extracted from the rucksack were a great deal more impressive than he'd given them credit for. He had watched her, in the apartment, pressing away at the buttons on the rectangles, frowning at their glowing screens – but as he'd never understood what it was that she was doing, it was difficult for him to care. Now, he sat beside her, patiently watching as she flicked through screen after screen of impossibly dense information. It made him feel slow and rather stupid, but he suppressed his urge to flee the entire situation and go back to his manual method of searching. It wasn't going to be easy to find his soulmate – he couldn't rely on simple luck to bring her to him. After all, he'd tried that already, and where had it gotten him? Nearly killed.
Well, it had also brought him Lisa, he reflected, glancing down at her intense expression, the curtain of hair that fell just so across her face. She was a pleasant upside to what had been a rather dangerous few days. He hoped that they could remain friends after he had returned to the mountains with his bride, once they found her.
There was an uncomfortable little thought that he'd been avoiding as much as possible. Technically, according to the ancient laws of his people, he'd committed more than a few very serious crimes by revealing his true nature to Lisa... and by shapeshifting in front of her... and by allowing her to ride on his neck when they flew back into town for supplies (that last one wasn't technically a rule, but he suspected it wouldn't be looked upon favorably.) But these were desperate times. Surely the prospect of saving his people meant that bending a rule or two would be okay? His mother had always been such a traditionalist... but she was gone now, he thought with a pang of grief. It was just him. He wished he could talk to his father, but he had been lost in such a storm of grief since the loss of his soulmate that Alexander hadn't wanted to bother him any more than absolutely necessary.
“Alexander? Are you even looking?”
He shook himself. Lisa was tapping impatiently on the screen, her bright eyes fixed on him and clearly requiring some kind of response. There was an image on the glowing screen of a human woman. He perused the image with his brow furrowed, not sure what he was searching for.
“Well?”
“A woman.”
“Is it her?”
“I do not know. I do not think so.”
Lisa sighed – he was beginning to realize that that sound indicated frustration, most of the time. (Sometimes it indicated something else – something that belonged to the night before – but that was a memory that now belonged to a past neither of them was going to speak of again.)
“How are you going to know that it's her? Will you recognize her when you see her or meet her, or ... is there some kind of dragon sense thing?” She frowned. “It's not telepathic, is it? Do you need to be in – you know, lizard form?”
“I am not a lizard,” Alexander snapped, ruffled despite himself.
“Sorry. I keep inventing slurs, don't I? I'm sorry. Dragon form. Do you need to be in dragon form to tell if it's her?”
“I don't know,” he said moodily, reluctant to admit that her questions had been haunting him for days on end. “I imagine I will need to meet her.”
“And trumpets will sing from on high, or whatever?”
“Something like that. The prophecy is not clear. Or helpful. I am sorry.”
“Don't be sorry. It's fine. Nobody can know their soulmate just from looking at a picture, anyway, or I'd be out of a job. Why should dragons be any different? Oh my God.”
Lisa sat bolt upright in her chair and grabbed him so hard by the upper arm that he jolted in alarm, swinging to look behind him – had the wolves found them so soon? But the house was empty – just him and Lisa, who was staring at him with rapt attention.
“I just realized. That night in my apartment.”
“What?”
“You were watching How to Train Your Dragon!”
“I – what?”
Lisa collapsed onto the table, laughter exploding out of her in a way that was almost deafening. She drummed her fist on the table, howling, and Alexander stared at her, completely baffled but feeling a smile creeping across his face regardless. He remembered, now – something on Netflix that he had clicked on in a moment of idle curiosity.
“I was interested in what your people know about mine.”
Lisa was gasping for breath and reached out with one hand to steady herself against his shoulder. He smiled down at her for a moment, felt the closeness between them – felt that strange sensation again from the night before, that tension between them, the spark. She was looking up at him with those bright, brilliant eyes and her soft lips slightly parted and before he knew what he was doing he was halfway to her, his hand going to the nape of her neck, but before he could kiss her, she pulled back, just a little. Not all the way, some desperate, hopeful part of him noticed. Just enough to stop them kissing.
“Alexander.” Her breath moved against his lips, and he felt a shiver move down his spine. The sensations were intoxicating. Human skin may have been frail and weak, susceptible to damage, but the things it felt were just – wonderful. “We literally just talked about this.”
He reflected, in the small section of his mind that wasn't absolutely entranced by the feeling of her lips just barely out of reach of his, that this would all be a great deal easier if he could make telepathic contact with her from this form. All he had to go by was her facial expressions and the tone of her voice and the things she did – and didn't do. Like the way she wasn't moving away from him, even though she'd said she didn't want this from him, said that they should stay friendly, leave the romantic tension between them in the past. Because they were looking for his soulmate. Trying to save his people.
Alexander stood up abruptly and took several short steps to the other side of the house, turning back when he'd reached the fireplace – Lisa was looking at him with a combination of exasperation and disappointment.
“I must apologize.” He cleared his throat, unused to the way his voice didn't seem to want to obey him. “Again.”
“It's okay.”
“What were we talking about?”
A smile quirked the corner of her lips up, and he tried very hard not to think any more about kissing her. “Your taste in films.”
“Yes. Right. The dragon film.”
“Was it accurate?”
“Not at all. Why would it be? How could any of you know the first thing about us? You think we're stories. Our people have kept our existence secret for hundreds of years. Most of our interactions with humans went – poorly. Many of them thought we were gods.”
“Is that why you're sort of rude and standoffish?”
“That may just be me,” Alexander admitted. “My sister is not rude.”
“You have a sister?”
“Helena. You'd like her. She knows a lot about humans.”
“Helena, huh? You guys have people names.”
“I think you'll find that you guys have dragon names.”
“Semantics.” She was smiling at him, which made his chest feel warm, but he stayed on his side of the room regardless. Dangerous over there, standing near to her. Some kind of pull she exerted – some kind of gravitational field, a kind of magnetism – science had always been far more his father's field than his, but it was that or magic.
Magic. Fate. Destiny. Could she be the human he had been sent to find? It wasn't as though he'd been given much information beyond 'a human woman.' She fit the description, certainly. And she had been kind to him. But – surely not. It wouldn't be as simple as landing in New York then running into her that very morning. And nothing had happened when they'd met. No bright light, no sudden realization that she was his destiny, no feeling at all, actually, other than the pain of his injuries and the fear of being injured or killed before he could save his people and his family. Whatever he felt for her – and he was doing his best to convince himself that that was limited to gratitude f
or her help, admiration for her intelligence and courage, and a little bit (well, maybe more than a little bit, but could he be blamed?) of superficial sexual attraction – that was all. That wasn't the way you felt about a soulmate.
And besides, wouldn't she have brought it up if it were even the remotest possibility? She was an intelligent young woman, it would surely have occurred to her that she was one of the three and a half billion women he had to search through. And she knew that she wasn't his soulmate, based on what she'd learned about him through their short relationship. And a good thing, too, he told himself as firmly as he could. It absolutely wouldn't do to have her developing feelings for him that were destined not to go anywhere.
It all made perfect sense. So why did it make him feel so forlorn?
“Well, there's only one thing for it,” Lisa said now, her eyes on her computer screen and a meditative expression on her face. “I'll just have to set you up on a bunch of dates.”
“Dates?”
“Yeah. Do dragons not date? Meetings, basically. You go out with someone, talk to them, get to know them a little, see if there's a spark.”
“Courtship rituals among my people are ... complex. There are very few of us left. It's mostly figuring out who's not related to you, then picking someone from that list,” he admitted.
Lisa laughed. “Simple, at least. We, humans, tend to overthink things. But – what do you think, do you think an hour or so with a woman would be enough to figure out whether she's the one?”
“Honestly, I don't know,” he said, not wanting to get her hopes too high. “But it's the best plan we have. We can at least make a start on the three and a half billion.”
“I've been thinking about that. We can rule some out, surely. You and this lady are meant to have children, right? So anyone over about forty-five is out of the running – unless you've got some kind of dragon fertility science we don't know about. And we can eliminate anyone too young... how old are you, anyway? Thirty?”