I’m already dizzy from the fall, but this… this is like being upended by a wave and not knowing which way is up to break the surface of the water. My breathing shallows.
Must find Haime.
I shake away my fear.
I can’t punish her if I can’t find her. And waters, is she in for some discipline. I hold onto the thought as I pull a feather out of my hair and lay it on the ground by the wall, a trail to help me find the way out later. I twist around and take a steadying breath.
I step into the vacuous, open cavern, and shiver.
4
Drazak’s Furor
Haime. Haime. Haime.
This strange word keeps repeating. I do not understand its meaning, but when I think it has finally stopped, I hear it again.
Is this it? Have I gone crazed?
Am I hearing voices, real or imaginary? It has been so long I cannot recall the sounds of the last voices I heard. Nor do I want to, knowing it was the poison dragon’s taunts. His voice would send me into a rage.
Haime!
But this voice is not a dragon’s. I am sure of it. And if it were, it must be a femdragon’s, it’s too sweet and lyrical to be a male. The likelihood of a femdragon being here, in this cave of all places, it is impossible. Femdragons keep to themselves far more than males, and though they prefer to travel—rarely claiming territory of their own—they only engage with others if they are in heat.
This femdragon will not save me. Even if she is more than a voice in my head.
I do not want to feel it—this hope—but it is there nevertheless.
What if? No… My heart thumps repeatedly.
This is not a femdragon.
But…
I have not felt this way, not since I fell from the sky and crawled into this cave, racing against time before the poison took its full effect. I have not endured this feeling of excitement even before then. It has been so long that I fear my mind might shatter. It hurts. I hurt.
“That girl,” the feminine voice sours. So close now, almost too clear to be an illusion, and I am nearly wild with anticipation. “She’s never leaving the tribe’s rocks again if I have a say in it.” It is like a mumble across my wings.
I wish I knew these words.
Have I been here so long that my kind’s language has changed? The thought perturbs me. This whole situation frustrates me. Why is this happening now? That I cannot even seek out answers reignites my anger.
But the only part of me that moves is my heart. It beats despite everything. It is the one muscle not affected by the poison—which is stagnant deep within—and never has been. The slow thread of blood that pumps through me is what keeps me alive. And the darkness… I am certain my continued cursed life has lasted this long because of the darkness that feeds my body.
A strange scent fills the air, a beautiful, new scent, and I am transfixed. Hoping for change is one thing, hoping for death another, but hoping for a female is crazy.
This smell though… This is the smell of a female.
There is sweat and sea salt; there is jungle lily and spice. There’s a twitching in my nostrils, expanding for these smells to enter me, and I am stunned.
I twitched.
My mind goes blank. I barely comprehend what is happening. Whatever it is, I do not want it to end. Life after this moment will be worse than all that has already happened to me. To breathe in the ocean and jungle after so long, only to have the sensation taken away…
Something small rams into my side. I hear a groan, and the sensation vanishes.
“To the waters and back, my foot!”
The voice and the smell are so close now that I am all but salivating. Something warm flares across my back leg, and a gasping noise sounds my ears.
All noise stops completely soon after, not even the quiet breaths or moans continue.
Do not go away. I plead. But something is happening at my hindleg, and I am unable to investigate. All I can do is wait.
Minutes pass by, and my heart only hammers harder. The bloom of heat returns along my foot but disappears soon after. Now it is at my tail.
It is fire, I realize. Something is wielding fire beside me. Nothing can wield fire like this but another dragon or…
No.
A human.
Horror rushes through me. A human has found me. A great alpha dark dragon—a rarity in the world I once knew—lying paralyzed as a human nears. And not just any human, a female human.
If she touches me, I lose everything. Everything that I have not already lost. My greatness, my majesty, even my hope that I will beat this poison—that I may one day fly.
I will die human, bonded to a female, left unable to mate as the breeding heat consumes me.
That would be cruel and painful and far worse than my sorry state now. I will lie here desperate for rutting, unable to either defend myself or take my female and dominate her, and as I grow crazed with lust, terrible shame will drown me.
How much more will I be forced to endure? My thoughts roar. To be human and paralyzed…
I do not want to die while losing my mind with mating heat. A female, even a human one, will not want a mate who cannot move. I am nothing if I cannot protect her.
She will
