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
Startlingcries 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.
