“I am not. You are weak. I should have kept my hand to myself.”
“I’m not weak.” Indignation wipes away any lingering traces of sleep. I rise.
“Stay,” he pleads, keeping my hand hostage. “I do not mean it as an insult… I smell your blood.”
After a moment, I drop back down. At being mentioned, my head throbs and I wince. “You can smell it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just a gash,” I reassure him because there’s concern on his face. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“I caused it,” he rumbles.
“I fell. I lost my grip.”
“When running for safety when I transformed.” There’s accusation in his voice.
True, but I don’t tell him that. The way he’s gazing at me, the way his brow furrows, it makes me think he’s profoundly unhappy about my wound. I don’t know how to take it. “I’ll be fine. And you’re—” my eyes widen “—you’re moving.” I sit up and check out his body.
He’s shifted. Now he is on his side with his arms reaching before him, the one that had taken my hand now placed palm down on the ground, holding his weight. And he is holding himself up, slightly, using his arm as a prop. His tails are behind him, and his other arm lies under his cheek.
I realize he’s been watching me. It would be easy to do so in this position. That he may have been watching for some time.
His eyes twinkle. “I am making progress.”
I scrape my teeth across my bottom lip.
“Your voice is clearer now too,” I say.
“It has not been used in many years. It is strange to speak again.”
I remember his unmoving dragon form. “How long?” I pull my legs under me and rummage through my scattered belongings for my rations of dried meat.
His dark eyes follow me. I know they do.
I can feel them like burning stabs.
“A long time,” he says.
“You were… When I found you, I thought you were dead.”
“I was sure I would die that way. Perhaps another hundred years or so, and I would have.”
A hundred years or so…
He continues, “But you came.”
I unwrap my dried meat and move back to Drazak’s side. “Hundreds of years is a long time. That isn’t close to being dead…”
“For a dragon it is.”
I shake my head. “So you’ve… been down here a long time?” I can’t even imagine it. “Hundreds of years?”
“Thousands, I believe.”
My lips part. My eyes go wide. “How? How is that possible?”
“Dragons are immortal unless something comes along and kills us. We will not die otherwise. But I have been starving, unmoving for so long… I was weakening.”
“From poison?”
His dark eyes glint again. “Yes.”
We stare at each other. I wait for him to tell me more. He doesn’t.
What could poison a dragon? If I struggle to wrap my head around his age, how could I understand the creature that could poison him? Drazak’s dragon was gigantic. Hundreds of me put together would’ve still been smaller than his body’s size. I’ve seen sea serpents off the coast and giant mountain eagles fly overhead, but nothing as large as he was.
What could possibly poison a massive creature like him?
I’m afraid to ask. Do I even want to know? Is having an answer worth the nightmares?
I hand him one of my rations. “I don’t want you to starve,” I whisper, changing the subject.
He looks at my offering.
“Wait!”
I set the meat aside and wrap my arms around him. He stiffens in my embrace.
He growls. “Let me do this. I will sit up on my own.”
“You can sit up all you want later.” I’m used to dealing with kids. “For now, I will help you while you heal.”
Positioning myself behind him, I haul him into a sitting position, but when I start to let go, he drops. Indignant growls and curses fill my ears but I ignore them. Looking around I find a boulder a few feet behind him. Getting a better grip, I brace and drag him to the rock.
A few minutes—and lots of grunting—later, he’s propped up against it.
Catching my breath and ignoring the renewed pressure in my head, I drop beside him and wipe the sweat off my brow. I’m strong, but he’s still large for a human and much bigger than I am. And he’s got those tails, and those horns, I moan. Horns I want to explore thoroughly.
Maybe even lick.
When I catch his eye, he’s angry.
“I will not get any stronger if I am not given the opportunity to challenge myself,” he snaps.
“You will not get better at all if you starve to death.” I grab the rations. “Dragons may not have to eat for long periods, but humans must eat every day. You’re human now. Mostly.” I put the dried meat in his hand. His fingers wrap around it.
“Thanks to you,” he grumbles.
There’s a surge of guilt. “I—”
“I am moving again, thanks to you. I have not yet decided if that is a good thing. Though I never thought I would be bonded, lose my immortality, or my power, now I am able to perish with a voice again.”
I can’t tell if he’s mad at me or not. “I am sorry, regardless.”
“You know of the dragon’s curse,” he states it more than asks.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you not claim me when you first came upon me?”
“First came—” my eyes flick to the jewel on his brow, and I watch the puffs of dark smoke coming from it “—upon you?”
“I heard you, felt the warmth of your fire stick. You were by my hindleg, then you were before me. Why did you not claim me?”
“It didn’t feel right.”
“Any human would bind a dragon if given half the chance. The bond does more than mate us for life, it also strips away our threat.”
“I thought you were dead,” I murmur.
His brows arch. “And you did not want to make sure?”
I shake my head, then wince. I rub the sore, swollen flesh at
