“M’alex tells me that L’eesha says I need to put my mouth on yours because you want to mate with me,” he said.
“Oh, God and Goddess!” I took a step back from him, feeling my face go hot with a blush. “I never said that!”
He laughed, a low, amused rumble that I felt all through my body.
“She’s quite a little matchmaker, your Golden Queen.”
“She’s a little meddler,” I said fiercely and frowned at her.
L’eesha was immediately contrite. Though she rarely apologized for anything she did, she felt bad if I got upset with her.
“i’m sorry, my Auri!” She pressed her soft nose against my side and looked up at me with the saddest puppy-dog eyes. “i was just trying to help you mate with Ryse. he wants to mate with you too, you know. M’alex says it’s all he thinks about.”
It was my turn to give Ryse a look.
“What? What is it? What are they saying?” he demanded. Then M’alex must have bespoken him because his face turned red. “You said what?” he exclaimed, and I knew he was talking to his dragon, not to me. “You can’t go telling people things like that!”
“see? i am not the only one who is in trouble,” L’eesha said in my mind, sounding exceedingly smug. “anyway,” she continued. “M’alex says the two of you are just being foolish. he says eventually you will mate.”
I didn’t know about that, but when I looked back at Ryse, he had a troubled look on his face.
Of course he doesn’t really want to “mate” with you—he still thinks you’re a boy! Another male cadet! I told myself, being careful to keep that little nugget of information to myself and not pass it on to L’eesha. I loved my little golden dragon with all my heart, but she couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. I didn’t need her telling Ryse or anyone else that I was hiding my true identity.
“Well…” Ryse said and cleared his throat.
“I guess you’d better teach me how to swim,” I said brightly, doing my level best to change the subject. “Since the ‘Golden Queen’ commands it.”
“You laugh but the dragons really do listen to her and obey her,” he said seriously. “At least, M’alex does. And he’s the biggest and most powerful dragon at the Academy.”
I frowned.
“Does that ever happen? I mean, a hatchling telling a full-grown dragon what to do?”
He shook his head.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of. They mostly treat the hatchlings the way you or I would treat a baby or a toddler. But M’alex takes everything L’eesha says seriously.”
“that is because i am smart and i am the Queen,” L’eesha said, butting in as usual.
I had to laugh as I turned to scratch behind her eye-ridges again.
“You’re incorrigible, you know that?”
“i know you love me,” was her answer. “and that is all that matters, my Auri.”
And for that moment, she was right—the love we had was all that mattered…but I had a feeling that there were more problems coming soon.
I wasn’t wrong.
52
AURORA
I expected the trouble to come from my head-strong, opinionated, and downright bossy golden dragon. And some of it did.
There was the time when the ladies who ran the Dragon Nursery told me that L’eesha had led a rebellion and refused to let any of the other drakelings have lunch until they all lined up in the flight formation she wanted them to. Then she drilled them, making them running back and forth—they couldn’t quite fly yet—until she was satisfied with their form.
“She orders them all about and they all listen to her—I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been working here for nigh on forty years!” one of the women who ran the nursery told me, wide-eyed. “Of course, I can’t hear what she’s saying, but she understands me right enough—I can tell by the way she looks at me when I talk to her. She still won’t mind me, though.”
