He laughed under my weight. “My hair?”
“Yes! Your precious little golden locks.” My body bounced against his strong bones as he continued. His grip around my legs tightened. “And get your hands off my ass!”
He scooted his hands down. “Yes, milady.”
“Good,” I grunted. “You don’t deserve to touch my ass.”
“Then stop looking at mine back there.”
“I’m not.” Disgust coated my words, ashamed and embarrassed. Blood must have been rushing to my head because I definitely was looking at his ass. I mean, he held my face right above it. What’s a girl to do? Instead, I kicked and pounded some more. “Put me down, Laken Christopher!”
Laken obeyed, plopping me abruptly in front of him and steadying me with his hands around my arms. “Christopher? Pulling out middle names now, are we?”
Yes. We were. I said nothing, offering but a snide little snicker before realizing we stood in Benedict’s enclosure. He lowered me, straightening my shirt as I swatted his hands away and sorted my hair. Whatever boiled in the tension between us, it burned. However, Laken took the bucket farther in instead of handing it to me like before. “The trick with Benedict is that he likes to play games.”
At the sound of Laken’s voice, the vicious raccoon showed himself. He sat up on his back feet, his tiny hands rubbing against each other. If I weren’t mistaken, I’d think he looked happy to see Laken. I didn’t blame him.
Laken lifted his shirt, wiping sweat from his face and exposing a chest I couldn’t recognize. I mean, he’d always been fit, but this… this was different. New. As was the brutal and jagged white scar across his ribs. “Laken, what the fuck is that?”
Closing the distance between us, my fingers grazed over the scarred skin, goose bumps lighting up across his chest. “It’s a scar.” His voice cracked.
“Yeah, obviously.” I looked up at him. “From what?”
Dropping his shirt, he took a step away from me. His eyes darkened. “I got in a bar fight a year or two back.”
He must’ve thought I was naïve. “A bar fight? Seriously? Laken, what—”
“Look,” he interrupted me, “it was just a bar fight. I was drunk. It was reckless, nothing to be concerned about.” As though it were no big deal, he spun around and returned to our lesson. “Since you won’t touch it, I’ll feed him today,” he said. “He’s mischievous and wants to be entertained.” He tossed different foods in several different places, waving some in an attempt to trick the trickster.
I didn’t know why Laken was being weird about it, but I decided it’d be best not to push anyway. “Like playing fetch with a dog?” I called from the gate where I leaned and observed.
“Yeah, I guess so. That works.” He threw the last pieces, and Benedict raced between the ones left on the ground. Making his way back to me, he turned his face toward the field. I wouldn’t necessarily say he purposely avoided looking at me, but I wouldn’t not say that, either. I could tell by the way he rubbed his lips together.
Archie next.
“Alright,” Laken started once again, and I began to grow tired of hearing these tricks. “The trick with Archie is like the goats, speak his language, but with him it’s to let him know where you are and where you’re going.”
I leaned against the fence to his enclosure. “You mean, like squawk?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Because my feet were tired and I wanted my coffee, I did it without arguing. And as expected, it worked. Of course, because Laken was always right. That fact actually started to annoy me.
Butters came last on the list of creatures needing to be fed in specific ways. It didn’t come as a shock when Laken told me to bear crawl across his enclosure. Dirt and grass covered my hands, feet, and the stitched edges of my boots. I didn’t even protest when Butters rose from his bed, and Laken told me to growl to communicate.
Lastly, save for the indoor ones, would be Indomitus. As Laken and I trotted along, I caught him up on Indo not eating. His face alone told me enough. We passed the boulder with the last several servings of meat still on it, now swarmed with bugs.
“That’s not normal for him, he doesn’t have any tricks or games. You leave food and he eats it. Something must be wrong.”
I shook my head, feeling a guilty nausea. “I didn’t know, I figured he’d come around and if not, I planned to look into it…”
“No, it’s not your fault,” he interjected, “and dragons can go days between meals. But he usually doesn’t.”
My brows pressed together, but when Laken pushed farther into our woods, I followed. Briars stuck into my pants until I pulled past. Raising my legs over the vines and twigs and stumps, I started wishing they were longer. High-kneeing it through the thicket wasn’t for me, not my cup of tea, as I panted for breath trying to keep up.
We didn’t find Indomitus, but we did find a dug-out area large enough to sleep a dragon. The trees around were broken and splintered, rubbed raw from claws and wings. I thought he’d burned the grounds, but as he couldn’t conjure fire, Laken said it was singed from being under his body heat alone. Without Indo, we couldn’t check on him, but a foul smell polluted the air, and as I gagged, Laken found the cause.
Dragon bowel movements. Not good ones.
