I brought my leg around so I could sit sideways and look back at Kane. “What?”
“It is of no consequence.” His voice was flat.
“Kane?” I was nearly scolding him.
“Auri.” He paused, obviously not wanting to tell me. Seeing that I wasn’t budging, he growled. “I fear your reaction if we are to find out that you can portal home.”
Wulfgar steered his horse away and put some distance between us.
“I can portal home. Well, take several portals and ride for a number of hours. We just did it.” I attempted to keep my voice calm.
“Not Everwinter. I mean…”
I reached up and put my finger to his lips. “Home is Earth. Yes. It’s my birth home. But home is also Everwinter now. It is my current home. And it is the home I want to stay in as long as it is with you.”
I pressed my lips to his and felt him relax slightly. His hand slid up my back, but our moment was brief as Wulfgar cleared his throat, having come closer to us again. Looking up, I noticed that a set of expansive wings were extending above the side of the rock face ahead of us.
“Looks like he’s home,” the raider chuckled.
Kane pulled me in tighter. “Turn around, little one. Look.”
I brought my leg back over the other side and adjusted back into my seat, my eyes not leaving the sight before me. “Boutrol.” The name came out in a whisper.
I was completely enraptured by the impossibly large set of wings, so much so that it took a long moment before my mind registered that they had taken flight, and the creature that was attached to them was coming our way.
I gasped, feeling Kane’s arms holding me even tighter. The horses were at a stop. But as Boutrol came closer, they started to back up, showing their fear. The men tried to keep them steady, but it was obvious that they were torn between listening to their masters and getting out of there.
The dragon, skimming the landscape as it came barreling toward us swooped up, revealing its abdomen before stretching its wings out wide by his sides and gliding back down, landing with a thump that shook the very ground beneath us.
Both horses took to their front knees as if bowing and stayed there.
Both men dismounted and bowed as well.
Boutrol turned to me and snorted. His voice boomed deep, vibrating through me as he spoke, “Your king bows to me, yet you stay stationed on your steed. Are you frozen in fear, child?”
I’m not sure how long it had been since I blinked, but when I finally did again, I was pretty sure the entire Sahara Dessert was in them. Well, them and in my throat, causing me to cough. “Sorry. You kicked up quite a bit of dust. I was struggling to think around it.”
I started to get down from the horse, who lowered fully down to rest as Kane instructed him to do. Wulfgar’s doing the same with his horse following suit as well.
Dusting my skirts off, I stood upright and clasped my hands in front of me. “I’m sorry. Am I too late to bow? Or should I since I haven’t? I would offer a high-five or a handshake, but I’m pretty sure you’d crush me. I guess I don’t know the protocol for these sorts of things. Ask Kane. When I first met him, I was a train wreck then, too.”
There was a silence from all of them that made my stomach plummet.
Rising up, Boutrol tilted his head as if studying me. Nothing about his posture or expression gave any indication of whether he approved of me or was about to eat me but was unnerving to say the least.
He leaned back in and sniffed me. Then, he roared with laughter. The wind stirred from his movement. I had to hold on to my hair and skirts from being whipped around.
Kane had risen and stopped by my side. When he stopped laughing, the dragon looked directly at him. “You are protecting a human? I shouldn’t be surprised since you saved this planet from its inevitable destruction.”
“You helped.” Kane bowed his head.
Shifting to sit, Boutrol bowed his head back at Kane. “That I did. But this human. She is different is she not? Not from Naelyra. She smells different. And she speaks of things I do not know.”
“Yes.” Kane was keeping his answers short, which told me that he was tense.
Looking at each of us in turn, Boutrol stops on me. “Your guardian and your king are scared for you. Yet, while scared, I sense there’s more wonder in your reaction. Which surprises me since you are with child. I would think that you would be far more protective of your wellbeing.”
My throat tightened in that moment. “Pregnant? How do you know?”
He laughed again. “See? You stand in front of me, never having seen a dragon by my estimate, and I make thinly veiled threats, yet you want to know how I know something that seeps off of you in scent. Something these two should have caught long before now.”
Both Kane and Wulfgar’s expressions were pinched with confusion. They looked between each other and then to me before back to Boutrol, obviously not having been able to smell what the dragon was picking up on.
“They cannot smell you? Oh, that is delicately rich.” He leaned forward and sucked in a slow breath, taking in my scent fully. “Oh! I see.”
“You see what?” I took a step forward as he sat back up, feeling Kane lightly on pull me, silently asking me to come back to him.
A smile tugged at one side of Boutrol’s face. “Your magic is strong. And so is your need to protect yourself.
