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“I’m used to most things being beyond my control.” Serylla places a hand on my muzzle. “Not that I like it, but it’s familiar for me. You, however—you’ve always been respected. You’ve always been given responsibility and choices, even before your father passed, so the loss of control has been harder to manage than you thought. That’s why your body keeps reacting like this. And then there are your feelings about Mordessa. You cared for her, but she loved you, and you feel guilty that you didn’t love her back. You feel guilty for surviving. You don’t think you deserve to experience the kind of love she wanted from you. So you’re fighting against what you need, as hard as you can, and it’s hurting you.”
I rear back, staring at her in utter disbelief, my wings draped limply on the stone floor.
I thought, once we were alone, she would rage at me for being so fickle, for rejecting her and then claiming her in front of them all. But instead of chastising me, she’s being unutterably kind. And she seems to understand me better than I understand myself, which is both wondrous and unsettling. The emotions that I’ve been struggling to untangle… she picked them neatly apart and laid them out for me. It was the work of a moment.
Noting my surprise, she laughs a little. “I never thought I would be able to get inside a dragon’s head like that. Was I close to the target?”
“Dead center,” I manage.
“Good.” She smiles, pats my nose. “Get some rest before the storm hits. And dragon—don’t ever grab me in your jaws again.”
“I won’t. I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“You were very gentle. But I was scared. I mean, your teeth are huge.” She pushes up my lip with her small hands. “Look at these things. Each one is the size of a butcher knife. Open up.”
I obey, feeling that low thrill in my belly again. There’s something oddly intimate about the matter-of-fact way she’s handling my lips and jaws. When I open my mouth, my tongue twitches automatically. I can taste the crackle of the oncoming storm in the air.
“I remember you,” the Princess says softly to my tongue, and my whole body thrills. I try to suppress the shiver, but I think she notices, because she smirks and closes her fingers around my tongue. It’s a handful for her. Is she thinking about the way I probed inside her body and coaxed her to climax? Because I can’t think about anything else.
She tugs on my tongue gently, and my cock hardens inside my body. But then she lets me go, and she ambles away, swishing that little round ass of hers as she proceeds to inspect the food I’ve stocked.
“This will last both of us for several days?” she asks.
“It should last through the worst of the storm, at least. As a dragon, I can go without prey for days if I must. We’ll make it work.” I don’t tell her that stocking our caves for the storm wiped out much of the remaining game on Ouroskelle. We had no time to travel all the way to the Middenwold Isles, so we had to make do with the available prey, including our cows. It’s a loss, but it had to be done.
After the storm, we will switch to hunting solely in the Middenwold, allowing the animals on Ouroskelle to replenish their numbers. And I have some thoughts about exterminating the fenwolf population, now that we can shift into human form and enter their dens. We will have to train first, develop ourselves as human warriors before we attempt to cull the wolves.
Serylla throws me a keen glance. “I told you to rest, but you’re planning and worrying. Stop thinking.”
“I don’t understand rest anymore,” I grumble as I crawl to the nest and settle myself within it.
She laughs. “I enjoy work, but to do the work well, one must get a decent rest. Close your eyes, and I’ll sing to you while I unpack the things I got from Thelise. I’m also going to rearrange the food supplies—they’re in a dreadful jumble.”
The cave lends a faint echo to her sweet voice, and the melody she sings is so soothing I don’t even realize I’ve fallen asleep until a giant explosion of thunder sends me startling out of the nest, with my spikes bristling and a snarl on my lips.
For a moment I thought the mountain cracked in half. But my cave is still here, still solid. Torrents of rain shatter on the ledge outside and gush off its brink into the void below.
Serylla crouches in my nest. She’s wearing the white shift dress now—she must have put the orange gown away for later. I should have told her how much I liked that flame-colored dress, but she looks just as adorable in this one. She’s frightened, though. The Mordvorren brought utter blackness down upon us, and she can’t see in the dark like I can.
“Kyreagan?” she says faintly.
Before I can answer, a blazing bolt of white fire streaks down from the sky, so close I can hear it sizzle. Serylla shrieks. A sharp, acrid smell assaults my sensitive nose, as if the air itself is burning, despite the sheets of thundering rain.
“Kyreagan!” cries the Princess.
“Wait a moment.”
I locate my two dyre-stones and push them into the center of the cave. With my breath I heat them until they glow like lanterns. Then I climb into the nest and curl my body around hers. She crawls right against me and shivers against my armored belly. I ache to be in human form right now, to be able to feel more than the pressure of her body. I want her skin under my fingertips, her breasts beneath my palms, my lips on hers. I crave that nearness so badly I find myself holding my breath.
A buzzing sensation jolts through me, and suddenly I’m him—my other self, so much smaller and leaner than my dragon form, yet still larger than the Princess—large enough to provide her with security and comfort.
Serylla falls backward into the straw when I change, as my bulk vanishes from beneath her. She sits up, looking flustered. “What just happened?”
“I did it.” I sit up too, grinning. “I wanted to change forms, and I did.”
“So I see.” She reaches out, strokes my long black hair out of my face, and disentangles a lock from my horns. Her lips part to say something else, but the wind outside rises suddenly to a shriek that sounds so human her eyes flare wide with terror. The shriek goes on and on, rising and falling, a fierce keening wail that veers between mourning and madness.
“I’ve never heard anything like that,” she whispers, crawling closer. “Hold me.”
