My opponent is no more, though his pheromones remain on the wind.
It cannot be.My nostrils flare. Tearing my eyes from the shore, I look ahead of me down the coast, straining my sensitive ears for a telltale sign of my brethren.He cannot be dead. I would smell that as well…But the femdragon comes back to mind, and all thoughts of Kaos fade.
And then I realize it.
Humans. Distant screams flood my ears.Human shouts.
Protect my female at all cost.Slipping back into the water, I follow the noises down the coast, to the source of the damning yells.
If they have touched Kaos, then my mate is in jeopardy.I will not lose her,I vow. Not after losing everything else.
I will not.
4
Facing an Alpha Dragon
Stilling,I feel the blood rush from my face. My heart nearly jumps from my chest, and my throat closes off as my mouth opens. Rain hits my face, falling over my brows and into my eyes. I reach up and wipe them only to lose sight of the giant beast swimming toward me. And when they clear… he’s just that much closer.
Hazy gray swathes of rain are all that lies between us, and without looking, I know there’s no place for me to hide. The lift wouldn’t help me escape. Only the beach spans out before me, and the rocky cliff-face behind me has no outcroppings or rocks for me to hide behind.
The jungle is far above, and so are the giant broken-off land masses my village rests upon.
I’m stuck.Out in the open, exposed. And though my body screams for me to run, I can’t move.
I can’t lead him to my people, who are surely in the caves by now. Delina, Leith, and Milaye are probably just as exposed as I am as they head there.
No…I swallow hard.I can’t run.My hands clench at my sides.
The dragon heading straight for me is nothing like the beast the messenger spoke of. Her story depicted an enormous brown and bronze dragon, with leathery wings, deep amber eyes, and scales covering its huge body from tail-tip to snout.
She said it looked like it belonged in the wastes, colored by the terrain it slumbered in.
No, this one is nothing like that dragon at all.I gape.
This water draconid is something straight from the colorful reefs and the turquoise ocean on a clear, calm day. And with each second, it gets closer, and more of its details appear. Awe and terror hit me all at once. My fingers twitch at my sides. I stiffen further, muscles locking.
A long serpentine body slips in and out of the waves, making waves pound upon the shores violently. A tail that goes on and on follows and sways behind the body, getting lost in the riotous water as much as its causing it to be that way. Sapphire-like scales cover whole sections of its body, and deep ridges ascend from its brow to crown its head in a myriad of opaline colors.
A dangerous, sharp-edged jewel of a dragon is before me, so beautiful and terrifying all at once that it could make me cry if numbing adrenaline hadn’t already taken me over first.
It lifts its head to the sky and bellows, and I’m finally able to move, stumbling back. Flinching, I cover my ears with my hands. A walloping shriek tears from its throat and two massive silver-blue wings snap from its body, shooting upward as its body rears back to rise from the waters.
Like its long tail, the dragon’s wings are so large they could destroy my entire village in one thrust. They fill the sky, the horizon, and one gust from them is strong enough to lay me flat.
My butt strikes the sandy ground as a wave careens over me. Gasping, I scramble up and backward, blinking out salty tears to the higher ground on the beach.
Making it to semi-dry land, a fallen spear washes up next to me. Grabbing it before it’s lost, I pull it close, turning back to face the dragon.
Glowing blue eyes pin me to the spot. My once thundering heart stops. The dragon’s long head is forward, pointed in my direction.And those eyes…
A soft cry of fear tears from my throat.His eyes are on me.
I’m going to die.
How did I ever think going after a dragon was a good idea?
But even as I’m thinking these things, other, more primal sensations course through me. The wordfatehits me, making me shake.
