I shouldn’t be enjoying this sparring we have either. I should be concentrated on meeting the other women and then arranging for us to get back to Earth.
I need to get back. I certainly have no intention of staying here, wherever here is. I have promises to keep, and I will keep them, even if the person I promised is no longer there to see me fulfill what she wanted.
Dalox reaches the edge of the platform, looks into the dark abyss, and before I can say or do anything, he steps off. Instinctively I claw at him, bellowing his name and hearing his dark chuckle as we fall and fall into the void.
“Did you think I would drop you, little spark?” Dalox says, his voice deep and velvet in my ear. “You’ve seen how I handle my precious hoard.”
“We’re…”
“I hear the sound rather than see anything in the dark, but we are not falling anymore. Instead there is the noise of steadily beating wings.
“You’re not a…”
“I do not have be in my Sarkarnii form,” Dalox says, still in my ear. “It is preferable because it is less…penetrable, but as I am not fighting, it is not strictly necessary.”
“If I could be a dragon, I’d be one all the time,” I grumble, half to myself.
“And why would that be, my mate?” Dalox asks.
I bristle a bit at the use of the term mate, because I’ve made it very clear I am not his mate, not at all.
“Because then no one would attempt to take advantage of me due to being small and a female,” I growl.
I feel Dalox laughter rather than hear it as I’m pressed against his scaly chest.
“And no one would promise me a ride and then do the exact opposite,” I add.
“If you wish to ride me, then you shall ride me,” Dalox replies.
I can’t see anything, but I can feel his hands move, I feel his body move, I feel it getting larger, and there’s a strange movement before one of my legs butts up against something and I find myself straddling…Dalox?
“Hold on.” His voice booms around me, and I reach forward, finding a pair of bony spikes within arm’s reach.
I have hold of them as a light appears ahead and what I’m sitting on is revealed in all its scaly glory.
I am riding a dragon.
A real life, real alien dragon, which only moments ago was sort of a man.
Dalox releases a burst of flame, and I feel the cinders patter over me as we fly through the remnants. It should be terrifying.
It is not.
As we burst out into the hot air, lit by not one but two suns, I hear myself whooping like a mad woman.
I am riding a dragon, and he’s going to take me home!
DALOX
Ihave to take her back to her galaxy and to her planet.
Not one single part of me wants to do this task. But I am Sarkarnii. I am of the High Bask. My ancestors will judge me based on every move I make in this life.
I have honor, and I will do as my mate asks me to. She might be mine, but I belong to her in a way even I don’t quite understand, nor expected as my rut burns within me, fighting to get out.
On my back, I can feel every move she makes. I hear the sound of her voice as she shouts in triumph at Vorostor and at the entire universe.
Were any two creatures ever any better of a match than us? Gillian may be tiny and apparently fragile, but she is not, in the same way I may appear fearsome, but I would lick her from toe to scalp if she asked me to.
