Finally, some pressure lifts—it vanishes completely when Mother smiles. I can’t help but smile back at her. Excitement for the future and everything it will bring with it fills me.
Father raises a cup of spirits, clapping it against Zaeyr’s—it’s more of a response than I could’ve asked for—and we all raise ours in celebration.
Then Issa, Tulia, and even Milaye grab hold of me and drag me to my hut.
22
Mating Ritual
Watchingmy mate get pulled away, I stop myself going after her, calmed by the laughter and the grin on her face.
I have never witnessed such happiness.Her tribe is not only a place of safety but community too, and love.The love she offers so sweetly to me.
I am beginning to understand humans. They are not at all the wretches we dragons make them out to be. If they can survive this world, like us, they must be great in their own way. Intelligent, emotional, strong…
As Aida disappears with her tribe’s women, my eyes drift back to Kaos.
Even from where I sit, I could sense the young in the belly of Kaos’s female—its life. Though now she is with Aida, I no longer feel the child.
To be so near another alpha dragon’s young and his mate—for him to be so close to mine—is unheard of. But here we are, humans both, not trying to kill each other. Succeeding.
Kaos notices my gaze and leans back. Stiffening, I watch him rise and move toward me. He keeps his wings retracted. I keep my tail relaxed in response. He sits.
“Good journey, ancient one,” he says.
“Good journey,” I tell him back. Kaos is an alpha dragon too, but younger than me. He is a dragon born of two other elementals: Earth and Water, and it is his water half that aligns us. Somewhere, far back in our ancestry, we may have shared a relative, but with so many years between then and now, we will never know.
Though, I wonder…
We sit in silence for a time watching the fire. Fire that, at one point, lived in our bellies. It grows as more wood is added, fighting off the coming twilight.
“You did not answer me that day I roared for you,” I muse at last.
He shrugs.Such a human gesture.“I had no reason to,” he answers.
I try shrugging myself. “It is for the best.”
“Yes.”
“You kept your wings,” I say.
Kaos hums. “You kept your tail. I say we are equal.”
I find myself chuckling. “Are we though? Really?”
“Perhaps we will find out in the years to come,” he muses. “Perhaps we will never know. I do not think our mates will like us battling.”
“You may be right.”
“I know I am. Aida is your mate’s name, is it not?” he asks.
Hearing Kaos say her name makes my heart pound. “Yes.”
“Issa has been worrying about her often since the storm. She was afraid you might destroy Sand’s Hunters, Aida and Leith with it.”
I stiffen, snarl. “Leith.”
“You do not like the young male?”
