They could have left me there to rot. They hadn't. And I couldn't bring myself to do something similar to them.
...Besides, if I was honest, they were growing on me. Even the scowl that Vadriq shot me was somewhat... charming. He jerked his head at the door and I followed him without hesitation. On the driveway, he once again became the massive golden beast. Unlike the others, his horns curved along the sides of his face rather than up and out.
"Is there a reason you look different than your wingmates?" I asked, dragging myself onto the wing he offered.
The dragon snorted. "All betas are missing their points. Our horns grow down because we don't battle over mates. Why? Do you have a problem with that?"
"No?" I said, confused. How could he ask me that? Without the protruding spikes to hold on to, I slid down his back to grab his wing joints with both hands and hoped that would be enough. He was a hell of a lot more slippery than Eskal was.
Without an answer, he stretched those enormous wings out and walked to the center of the road. There, he broke into a run, gathering speed rather like an airplane. I felt that thrill rise again in my chest as his wings slapped the air once, twice, a third time, and then we were lifting into the sky far more quickly than I had either time on Eskal.
And my grip was slipping.
Chapter 15
Vadriq
We flew due northeast toward her tiny hovel of a room, a few flaps from the ice cream parlor we'd met her in a thousand years ago. The past few days had been impossible. I felt as though she'd been in our lives forever, and yet.
...And yet one quick roll would change that. She would never manage to hang on to my back if I decided to toss her. I mulled it over, one last flicker of resistance to the fact that I was going to have to share Eskal.
Because I'd been the only one willing to leave her at the jail.
Apparently, my wingmates had decided she was the best thing since sliced bread. After all, she was going to help us hatch the nest; somehow. But she'd failed when she'd had her chance and, as far as I was concerned, one chance was enough. Sour, but managing to hide it well, I landed on the road just outside of the bed and breakfast she was staying at.
Without waiting for me to lower a wing to help her down, she jumped off my back and nearly flew inside.
The game was up. I eyed a car as it brushed past me, tempted to fry it for running over my tail. But the people inside were already screaming, flooring the little Volkswagen. It revved with everything it had in it and hurtled down the road toward oncoming traffic. A last second twist of the steering wheel saved the humans within from certain death, but four more cars shot past me and stared.
One slowed to a halt just before it went past me. I looked down at it and frowned as best as a dragon's muzzle can do so. The windows rolled down and out came the cell phones, the flash of their camera sharp in my sight. I flinched, turning my head away, and put my chin on the sidewalk. If they wanted to send pictures to their friends over social media, I didn't care anymore.
Eskal had been the one bound by the pact, not the rest of us. We'd followed along to try to make his life easier and to, most likely, make our own lives a bit safter. Yet, after all that caution, that wasn't what had happened. Part of our flight, and Olivia, had been arrested for taking back our eggs.
The idea still threw me for a loop. I knew the humans didn't understand and I wasn't, I supposed, surprised by the fact that they had arrested them, but it went against any natural convention I could think of.
And I had to admit, getting back to nature as we were likely to have to do, seemed like a wonderful vacation. I enjoyed turning wrenches and working on the machines that kept running over my fucking tail at the moment, but it wasn't what we were made for. We were predators of the skies, no one's pet or mechanic, and we needed to roam.
We needed to live.
Iyadre, Eskal, and Nariti's real estate office would probably end up investigated and, eventually, cleared of all potential charges. With their business mindset and their talent for creating money from nothing, we would come back to society when it was safe. But I longed for a mountain retreat where we could live as we were, not as we happened to be sometimes, and take to the air when we pleased.
Something pecked my left flank. It came again, accompanied by the pat pat pat of an annoying little handgun. I scowled back at the human who stood with a poor stance, the gun too close to their face, intent on ruining the scales on my leg. It was irritating, but it was something I could handle.
In the distance, I saw something I couldn't.
A tank rolled across town, probably still half a mile away. People scattered before it, as scared of it as they were of me. It was a show of force by the local police or, perhaps, the military. Though I doubted that the city could have requested assistance from the military so fast, humans sometimes did things quicker than I assumed they could.
The military meant trouble and I had no way of calling Eskal or Nariti to warn them.
I shoved the human with the pea shooter away from my leg and looked back
