Page 16 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

She looked at him. He was kneeling on the red rock of an alien planet with his collection of human junk spread out in front of him like sacred objects, and his blue eyes held a vulnerability she hadn't seen before. He wasn't showing her artifacts. He was showing her himself. The part of himself he'd hidden from his father, from Khrelan, from everyone on Dobromia. The part that loved humans before he ever met one.

"Thank you for showing me," she said.

"Thank you for being worth showing."

The moment stretched. The twin suns beat down. Peter, Athena, and Patel waited near the Weredragons. Somewhere behind them, forty-seven people watched from the Vulcana's viewports.

Marina stood up. "Pack these," she told him. "Bring them to Dobromia. If we're going to convince your father that humans are worth knowing, this is your evidence."

Toren smiled. The full smile, the one with teeth, the one he didn't seem to realize he was doing.

"You think a children's book and a whale movie will convince the D'Karr of Dobromia to form an interplanetary alliance?"

"I think they convinced his son. That's a start."

He packed the artifacts carefully into a pouch at his belt. Marina turned and walked to where the team was waiting. Her heart was doing things she'd specifically told it not to do, and it wasn't listening.

Peter was watching her from behind Athena. His expression said everything his words that evening had already said. Be careful. Don't lose yourself. Come back in one piece.

She gave him a small nod. I hear you. I'll try.

Then Toren spread his wings, and the morning light caught the rose-gold scales, and Marina stopped trying.

CHAPTER 6

*** TOREN ***

Flying with Marina pressed against his body was a problem Toren had not anticipated.

He'd carried passengers before. Auren, once, when a training accident had left his friend with a torn wing membrane. Khrelan, twice, during storm evacuations on Dobromia's surface. Carrying another person in flight was a mechanical challenge. Adjust for the extra weight, compensate for the shifted center of gravity, fly slower and lower than instinct preferred. He'd trained for it. He was good at it.

He had not trained for the sensation of Marina's arms around his neck and her body against his back and her breath warm against his shoulder. He had not trained for the way her thighs tightened around his torso when they hit a thermal updraft, or the way she pressed her face into the space between his wing joints when the wind picked up, or the way her fingers found the gaps between his scales and held on with a grip that was both trusting and terrified.

She was terrified. He could feel it in the tension of her body, in the quick rhythm of her breathing, in the way she held herself rigid against the unfamiliar motion of flight. She was also exhilarated. He could feel that too; in the moments when the fear loosened and she lifted her head to look at the landscape below, and her grip shifted from desperate to curious, and she made a sound that was half gasp and half laugh.

"You okay up there?" he called over his shoulder.

"Define okay!" she shouted back. The wind tore the words apart, but he caught them. "I'm clinging to a dragon over an alien desert at approximately two hundred yards! My definition of okay has expanded significantly in the last ten minutes!"

"We can go higher if you want."

"Absolutely not!"

Behind them, Auren carried Peter and Dr. Patel with considerably less grace. Patel had her eyes closed and was muttering what sounded like scientific observations into a recording device, which was either incredibly brave or incredibly nerdy. Peter looked like he was trying very hard not to scream. Athena flew with Khrelan, and from the rigid silence between them, Toren guessed neither was enjoying the arrangement.

The journey from Ceylara to Dobromia took four hours. They flew through the space between the two planets which was technically impossible without life support, but the Weredragons' partial-shift form generated a protective thermal envelope that extended to anyone in physical contact with them. Marina had asked approximately nine hundred questions about how this worked. Toren had answered all of them and enjoyed every one.

*** Marina ***

Dobromia appeared below them as a dark sphere against the star field. No oceans, no green continents, no cloud formations. Just rock and heat and the faint amber glow of the twin suns reflected off the barren surface. From space, it looked dead. Toren had always known his planet wasn't beautiful by anyone's standards. Seeing it through Marina's eyes made the knowing sharper.

"That's home?" Marina asked. Her voice was quieter now. The exhilaration of flight had given way to something more complicated.

"That's home."

"It looks..."

"I know."