Sunlight—red light—fills my view.
I am free! I open my long mouth and roar. My body revels and shakes with ferocious delight.
The ground sinks beneath me, caving in. I swim upward into the open water. The once mountainous seascape crumbles and vanishes around me. Water whooshes past my hide and under my scales, falling into the terra below. Coral reefs collapse, and colorful schools of fish scatter every which way.
Sharks swim away; octopus scurry from the budding cracks. My creatures flee because the merfolk sought to contain me.
Part of me is sad for the loss of my home, my treasures and jewels, for the space I hoped would one day become a nest to share with my mate, but the other part is dead set on one thing: finding the femdragon in need and making her mine.
My shaft emerges from my body, rigid and ready—and large, my potent seed brewing forth, ready to fertilize.
Feeling it drag beneath where my tail meets my body, my eyes focus through the light I am not used to—not anymore—and scan the blue waters of my home for mermaid traitors. They have fled, I notice, seeing none around me. Good.
Taking no time to hunt for them, I swim toward the direction my femdragon’s sounds came from, picking up speed as the dappled sunlight and glow of the cursed comet disappears in the waters. Everything moves out of my way.
Days, I realize, I have lost days escaping from my caves.
And then I hear it again, my femdragon. Heat grows in my belly all over again.
The water is gray and dark when I emerge. Clouds fill the sky overhead. I inhale air. Rain falls upon me when I glimpse the shore and the edges of my territory.
Kaos’s territory. Now I know who my adversary is. A jungle dragon bred from a water and earth dragon long ago. Like I was. We are similar in age, he and I. We respect our borders and have never had a need to fight.
All these thoughts fall from my head as his and my femdragon’s pheromones fill my nostrils.
Not even a storm could remove them from the air.
Hot, mossy, potent, and rich. Subtle in the winds but I smell them, hating Kaos’s scent as much as loving the femdragon’s. My large body contracts with need, my talons descend, my wings strain and seize. I dip my head beneath the water to cleanse the chaos in my mind, only to reemerge to scream at the world, my eyes on Kaos’s jungle.
FIGHT ME! All the power of my soul erupts in the air, louder than thunder and higher than the crashing waves. Meet me and fight for mating rights! Smoke plumes from my mouth, saying as much in challenge.
My eyes go to the jungle’s edge as rage builds, where a lone figure is standing on the shore. A human. Throwing all my intensity her way, she retreats back into the shadows of the trees.
“FACE ME, KAOS!” I bellow in dragon. “Come to the edge!”
I do not want my future mate near us when we battle. Blood will spray.
But minutes pass, and Kaos does not show. He does not answer, and my mind grows curious in its chaos. Seeking him out with my senses, I find I no longer feel him.
My opponent is no more, though his pheromones remain on the wind.
It cannot be. My nostrils flare. Tearing my eyes from the shore, I look ahead of me down the coast, straining my sensitive ears for a telltale sign of my brethren. He cannot be dead. I would smell that as well… But the femdragon comes back to mind, and all thoughts of Kaos fade.
And then I realize it.
Humans. Distant screams flood my ears. Human shouts.
Protect my female at all cost. Slipping back into the water, I follow the noises down the coast, to the source of the damning yells.
If they have touched Kaos, then my mate is in jeopardy. I will not lose her, I vow. Not after losing everything else.
I will not.
4
Facing an Alpha Dragon
Stilling, I feel the blood rush from my face. My heart nearly jumps from my chest, and my throat closes off as my mouth opens. Rain hits my face, falling over my brows and into my eyes. I reach up and wipe them only to lose sight of the giant beast swimming toward me. And when they clear… he’s just that much closer.
Hazy gray swathes of rain are all that lies between us, and without looking, I know there’s no place for me to hide. The lift wouldn’t help me escape. Only the beach spans out before me, and the rocky cliff-face behind me has no outcroppings or rocks for me to hide behind.
The jungle is far above, and so are the giant broken-off land masses my village rests upon.
I’m stuck. Out in the open, exposed. And though my body screams for me to run, I can’t move.
I can’t lead him to my people, who are surely in the caves by now. Delina, Leith, and Milaye are probably just as exposed as I am as they head there.
No… I swallow hard. I can’t run. My hands clench at my sides.
The dragon heading straight for me is nothing like the beast the messenger spoke of. Her story depicted an enormous brown and bronze dragon, with leathery wings, deep amber eyes, and scales covering its huge body from tail-tip to snout.
She said it looked like it belonged in the wastes, colored by the terrain it slumbered in.
No, this one is nothing like that dragon at all. I gape.
This water draconid is something straight from the colorful reefs and the turquoise ocean on a clear, calm day. And with each second, it gets closer, and more of its details appear. Awe and
