“Is that it…there?” Gillian points to the screen of the comm.
I look down at where her finger is, the soft pink claw hardly even noticeable.
And there it is. Deus’s ship. A small bright spot in the surrounding vegetation.
I zoom in. While the scan isn’t too clear, it’s the definitive shape of a Sarkarnii spaceship.
“Well done.” I grin at her.
“So that’s it?” She stares at me, her eyes wide.
I press my lips to hers, to extract a kizz, a mouth mating I will be enjoying over and over.
“This is it,” I say, releasing her. “I will arrange for a flyer once we have rested.”
“Why wait?” Gillian says and yawns.
“Because you came out of a healing pod this morning,” I suggest. “And while I am sure you believe you are capable of continuing, I would prefer it if you rested. The ship isn’t going anywhere, or Deus would have already left.”
I may as well not have said anything, as my mate is already asleep, her head resting on my arm and her long eyelashes brushing the soft pink of her cheeks.
I move as carefully as I can, obtaining a blanket and wrapping her up before shifting into my Sarkarnii form and curling myself around her.
No one will come for my mate, not even in her dreams, not while I have flame in my lungs and the mix in my veins.
GILLIAN
Iwake with my face smooshed against a lot of scaly flesh, which sticks slightly to me as I pull away. I am surrounded by dragon and I really mean that. Dalox, because I’m presuming this is Dalox, doesn’t fit entirely in the cushioned depression. His tail trails out across the floor almost to the doorway.
Dalox’s breath comes in a big whoosh, in, then out again. He is very much fast asleep. It’s hard to believe a creature like him can sleep so deeply, but he does.
And I watch him. The way his scales ripple with light as his great flank rises and falls, the spines on his back which lift occasionally with a corresponding rear leg tremble. Smoke rises from his great nostrils, not much, a mere trickle, but with the occasional puff as whatever is going on in his great head causes his eyelids to flicker.
I wasn’t expecting to find watching a dragon sleep calming. But then after what he did in his more human form to me yesterday, surely everything should be calm.
I still can’t quite believe I’ve gone from the girl fighting in a dusty pit to the one being guarded by the dragon.
I could get used to it.
But I won’t.
“You think too loud,” Dalox rumbles, his voice booming around the space as his eye rolls open and fixes me with a slit pupil.
“I doubt that very much,” I huff as his tail slithers back over the floor and in a weird, slightly queasy motion, he turns back into a man.
A dragon man.
Without pants.
“You slept well,” he says.
“So did you.”
“I don’t sleep much,” Dalox says. “But with you, it was different.”
“Different?”
“You make me want to sleep.”
