The Dragon's Touch (The Dragon Realm #2) Read online

  “Fine. You’ll sleep in my hut, then.”

  Panic flitted across her face and he felt a stab of remorse that the idea would cause her such distress.

  “Alone,” he finished. “You’ll sleep in my hut alone.”

  “But where will you sleep?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.

  “Not your concern,” he snapped and had her eyes dropping to the ground again. Fuck. Yelling at her was like trampling on a flower. But there was nothing to be done about it now. The petals were already smashed to oblivion. They were both just going to have to learn to live with it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Well, he’s definitely kind of an ass. But he’s not completely wrong,” said Keiko, one of the other Surgere nurses and easily Zara’s closest friend in the camp. The two women stood hip to hip in a stream, checking nets they’d put out to catch fish. Zara had just gotten done explaining some of the finer points of her talk with Solar the other night.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it sounds like he was just as bossy and rude to you as he always is. But he was kind of right about your desires changing.”

  “You mean after I hit fertility and become mateable?”

  Keiko nodded her beautiful head of long black hair. “Yeah. It’s not crazy or uncontrollable or anything. You don’t go around howling at the moon. But when you reach fertility, you… want.”

  “Want what?”

  “The company of a man,” Keiko said discreetly. “Some women feel it both emotionally and physically, and some women feel it just one way or the other. But you never quite know how you’re going to feel.”

  “I don’t want to feel any differently,” Zara confessed.

  “I didn’t either. Before I hit my season.”

  “What happened when you did?”

  “Well,” Keiko stood up and stretched her back for a second. “I hit my season a week after I turned 21. I know. A little late. But most women don’t hit exactly on their birthday.” She bent back to her work. “But it hit and I was very… aware of my body. Not to mention curious. I mean, you gain access to a body part you’ve never really seen before.”

  Keiko was referring to the fact that, until they hit their fertility season, female dragon shifters have their dragon scales between their legs to keep them from breeding too young. When their fertility season hits, their scales shift away for the first time, leaving them bare.

  Zara nodded. She guessed she was pretty curious about that. “Did you mate with David right away?” Zara asked, referring to Keiko’s mate.

  Keiko let out a bright laugh. “No way! I sowed my royal oats for a few years, if you know what I mean. The first year or so after you become mateable is so energetic. You have a lot of mating energy, you know?”

  Zara completely blushed. She didn’t know. She actually had no idea what that felt like. “So you’ve been with other shifters besides David?” She felt dumb for even having to ask.

  “We both have. When you first shift, men are very attracted to you. They say you smell differently. And they come after you until you’re mated with somebody. Some are more determined than others. If, after a few years you still haven’t mated with someone, they’ll still find you attractive, but the fever goes down a little bit.”

  Zara bit her lip against the question she desperately wanted to ask. It finally bubbled out. “How do you know if you’re mated with someone?”

  To her credit, Keiko didn’t balk at the question, although it was a question that even very young dragons knew the answer to. Keiko knew that Zara had been raised very sheltered. “Well, the fastest way to get mated with someone is if they get you pregnant. But the other way is if you’re claimed.”

  “How do you know if you’re claimed?” Zara asked.

  “Trust me. You know.”

  She’d already asked so many embarrassing questions. What was one more? “Did David claim you?”

  A light color came into Keiko’s cheeks but she didn’t pause as she slipped a fish loose from the net and tossed it, flopping and gasping, into the basket at her side. “Yes, he did. And I claimed him right back.”

  Keiko waded out of the water and Zara followed. Some things were much clearer now. And some were much more confusing. But she supposed the ins and outs of it didn’t really matter considering she didn’t intend on partaking in any of it.

  The first time she’d ever even imagined what it would be like to have a mate, a voluntary one, had been last night. She’d lain in Solar’s bed, completely unable to sleep. His smell had surrounded her. Grass and wind and man all rolled into one. In a way, it had been comforting, because she trusted him so deeply. But in another, more confusing way, it had been deeply disconcerting. She didn’t understand why it would make her heart race, her palms sweaty. And then every time she felt like she was about to drift off into sleep, she would hear Solar rustle and it would jolt her awake again.

  Solar slept outside, in front of the door of his hut on a thin little mat he’d rolled out. Zara had been mortified that he’d be putting himself out like that for her. But all he did was repeat that it was “none of her concern” before he closed her into his hut and told her to go to bed. She should have slept easy considering she was completely protected by Solar. No one was going to get past him. But she was too aware of him out there, ten feet away.

  Would that be what it was like to have a mate? She had wondered it all night. Were you hyperaware of your mate all night long? It sounded exhausting to her. And oddly thrilling.

  The two women carried their baskets of fish back to camp. According to camp rules, since they had caught them, they wouldn’t have to cook them, for which Zara was thankful. She really wanted to use her free time that evening to move her things to her hut. She didn’t think she could take the tension of another night in Solar’s. And she was certain he wasn’t going to let her sleep in the infirmary anymore.

  “Look, the watch is back,” Keiko said, raising her eyes to the sky. Ten Surgeres soared overhead, circling camp before they landed in the big clearing a quarter of a mile south.

  Zara immediately recognized Solar among the group. He was in his dragon form. She’d always admired it. His scales were the same midnight blue as his eyes and instead of reflecting light, he almost seemed to absorb it. He was the color of moonlight on the ocean, the sky in the moments right after twilight. And he was sleek. He was a dragon built for speed. She’d never seen a faster flier than Solar. His flight was dexterous and agile. He was really something to behold when he was in the air.

  Keiko hurried ahead to deliver the fish to whoever was cooking tonight. The watch would be hungry. Keeping watch over the rebel territory was an exhausting job. One they all rotated through. Zara wouldn’t be surprised if they’d flown a hundred miles today, keeping tabs on all perimeters.

  The other dragons instantly headed off to land, shift, and come back to camp to eat. But Solar did another circle of camp and then another. Keeping an extra eye on things, as usual. Zara hung back under the cover of a towering balsa tree and watched him swooping through the air. Such an impressive dragon. Something pulled tight, like a string, inside her, but she didn’t know what it was. Couldn’t have said what it was even if she’d been trying to answer her own question.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Solar spent a week of virtually sleepless nights tossing and turning on a thin mat outside of a hut. This time it was Zara’s new hut and not his own. He cleared out every morning at first light. The first night that they’d slept there she’d been utterly mortified to learn that he was going to sleep outside for her again.

  “Are you going to do this every night?” she’d asked, her eyes planted firmly on the ground.

  Look at me, he’d wanted to say. Just look me in my eyes.

  But he didn’t. Instead he’d gone his usual route and just snapped at her. “What do you think ‘protecting you’ means, Zara?”

  She hadn’t responded to that. She’d merely thanked him and steppe
d back into her hut.

  He didn’t want to go through the whole song and dance with her again every morning so he was generally gone before she woke up. Now, the sun was rising through the mist of the jungle, the birds were starting to chatter in the trees, and it was time to meet with the Oracle and with Javi, Solar’s right-hand man.

  He never knew what to expect from these meetings. Sometimes they were fraught with frustration over whatever riddles and jokes the Oracle was speaking in that day. Sometimes they were tense with some imminent danger they needed to figure their way out of. And occasionally, they were joyous. He never knew which kind he was going to get. But he did know that showing up on less than a handful of sleep, no coffee, and an aching back was a bad idea.

  It was going to make him late, but he ducked into the kitchen hut, where they all took turns cooking for the camp. He had to make a cup of coffee before he sank back into the primordial soup from whence he came.

  Sniffing the air as he walked into the spacious hut, Solar was delightfully surprised to see Keiko over the cooking fire, heating up a pot of coffee and frying an egg.

  “Morning, boss,” she said, concentrating on the pan she held over the fire.

  “Just barely,” Solar said, glancing out at the thin wisps of dawn curling into the edges of the sky.

  “Cup of coffee?” she asked, gesturing to a large thermos behind her.

  “Did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite member of the Surgere?” he asked, flicking a grateful smile her way.

  “Say that in front of the others and this egg’s got your name on it.”

  “You have got yourself a deal,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  They companionably watched the egg fry in the pan for a moment. He’d always liked Keiko. She’d been one of the first members of the Surgere. He’d met her on the streets of the royal city. She’d barely had two cents to rub together and some pretty bad bruising. He didn’t know her full story then, and he didn’t know it now. But he knew a mistreated serf when he saw one.

  The Surgere had been just Solar, Javi, and the Oracle at that point. It had been nice to add a woman’s perspective on the direction the group should take. Especially one who was so intelligent. Patient. Kindhearted.

  “So I hear you’re being a regular asshole to Zara.”

  And a real ball-buster.

  Solar gulped down the coffee in his throat and watched her flip the egg from the pan onto a waiting piece of toast. He shrugged his shoulders, feeling like a kid caught making a mess in the kitchen.

  “I’m just trying to prepare her for the world, you know? She’s so young. And softhearted. She needs the training.”

  “Bullshit,” Keiko said and handed the egg sandwich to him.

  “Excuse me?” Solar raised his eyebrows and bit into his breakfast.

  “I said… bull… shit.” Keiko enunciated each word very carefully.

  “Which part?”

  “The part where she’s young and soft is true enough. But you’re not being a dick because it’s going to prepare her for the world. That part’s the bullshit.” She cracked another egg into the pan.

  “Then you tell me. Why am I being a dick?” Solar filled up his cup of coffee again and took another giant bite of his sandwich.

  “Because you’re sweet on her and you wish you weren’t.”

  He had trouble swallowing down his bite, but he managed. The scalding hot swig of coffee helped. And hurt.

  Solar said nothing and Keiko took it as a signal to keep talking. As she always did with him. “And I get it. She’s younger than you are. You’re the leader of a very dangerous revolution.” She waggled her fingers in the air as if the ‘dangerous revolution’ were a spook in the attic. “And you can’t split your attention by getting all caught up in some love affair.”

  Still, Solar said nothing.

  “But the way I see it,” Keiko went on, “is that your attention is plenty split already. You think about her a hundred times a day and don’t deny it.” She pointed the spatula at him. “You’ve been fretting about her fertility season from the day you realized how attractive she was. So for about a full year now from what I’ve noticed. And you’re about to rip the head off of any comrade who so much as bats his eyelashes at her. I’d say that, currently, you’re a pretty distracted leader of the revolution.”

  Solar opened his mouth but shut it when he realized she was still going.

  “So. Frickin do something about it, already! I don’t care if you propose, kiss her, mate her, tell her how you feel. Whatever! Just do it. And do it quick. I’m sick of the lovey dovey eyes across the campfire.”

  Solar thought about denying it. But he watched Keiko scrape the char off the bottom of the sizzling pan with the flair of a person who knows exactly how to get where she’s going. There was no bullshitting her. There was no getting one over on her. No use.

  He cleared his throat. “Who else knows?” His voice was quiet. And serious enough that it had Keiko twisting back around to look him in the eye.

  “Just me, I think. And lord knows that the Oracle has an inkling. But I think that’s it. I haven’t even talked to David about it.” She held out her coffee cup and he automatically filled it up. “And despite what I was saying, you’ve been discreet. Word on the street is that she’s like a little sister to you.”

  “In some ways, she is,” Solar said, catching a distorted reflection of himself in his coffee.

  “In the important ways, she’s not.”

  Solar cleared his throat again. The question was sticking in his throat like tree sap, but he had to ask it. He had to know the answer. “Does she know?”

  Keiko barked out a laugh. “No. You’ve done quite the job hiding your feelings there. That girl’s clueless. She thinks she bothers you.”

  “She does.”

  “I don’t mean hot and bothered, Sol.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Keiko filled two more mugs with coffee, took the sandwich out of Solar’s hand and shoved it straight into his mouth. “Finish your sandwich, take the extra coffee to Javi and O, and think about what I said.”

  She gave his cheek a sharp, if not loving, slap and turned back to the fire. Solar recognized himself as dismissed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Their weekly meeting had been a frustrating one. And depressing. After their attack on King Dalyer four years ago, when they rescued Zara, the king had gone into hiding. No one knew where to find him. Even the Oracle. Dalyer being in hiding wouldn’t be such big deal if he weren’t still in control of his million-man army. If he weren’t still terrorizing the dragon realm. Pillaging and burning as he went. And if he weren’t still bringing down swift and deadly retribution upon anyone who spoke up against him.

  Hence, the jungle camp. Nearly 500 miles away from where they suspected him of hiding. Their guess was that he was deep in the Shina Mountain range. But they couldn’t say for sure. The Oracle was frustratingly stymied. For some reason he had some sort of block on the king. One he never had before.

  Javi, mid-forties, with salt and pepper hair and a soldier’s mind, was always spoiling for a fight. And lately, he had had enough. He wanted to hunt some royalty. His vote, every meeting, was to stop hiding and go find a fight. Solar’s vote was simply to have a plan. He had no interest in free-wheeling across the realm, searching for someone who didn’t want to be found. And it meant that they stayed where they were. Moving camp now and again. For four years.

  The Oracle, inevitably, waffled back and forth between the two viewpoints. He argued one side and then the other. Offering advice that was always wrapped up in prophecy, real or not, it was always hard to tell. If he hadn’t known O for so long, he might have thought that the bastard was just fucking with them. Trying to stall the revolution from the inside. But as it was, Solar knew that the future was viscous, ever-changing, like the direction of a lava flow down the side of a volcano. The Oracle might know how things would end up, but he wouldn’t always know
how to get there. Or conversely, he knew exactly what to do next, but not where their actions would ultimately lead. There was no sense in putting too much pressure on the Oracle’s gift. He was the revolution’s ultimate weapon, and they needed him sharp.

  After their meeting, Solar thought about trying to seek out Zara, just to see if she was alright, but he remembered Keiko’s words from earlier. Instead, he chose to walk along the river and remain discreet. Doing something about it, as Keiko had ordered him to do, was just not an option. Maybe she was right. Maybe his… thing for Zara was distracting him from being the kind of leader he needed to be. But doing something about it was never going to happen.

  Solar heard footsteps behind him and whirled. It was just the Oracle, sauntering after him, one hand in the pocket of his worn and ratty cargo pants, the other flipping the dagger that he always favored.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ bout?” he called to Solar as he approached.

  “Don’t you already know?” Solar raised an eyebrow.

  “Of course. That’s why I came.”

  Solar’s eyebrows raised even further but his heart sank. The Oracle was finally going to make him talk about the real reason why he wouldn’t court Zara. “You came to talk to me about the prophecy. My prophecy.”

  “Well, more specifically, I came to talk to you about the reasons you won’t let yourself have what you want so badly.”

  “And we both know that the answer to that is the prophecy you gave me three years ago.” The memory of that day still made Solar’s blood run cold. It was a burden to know certain information about your future. And it was one that Solar never would have chosen for himself if he hadn’t had the lives of all the Surgere in his hands. And by extension, the lives of all the dragon shifters in the realm who lived under the tyranny of a power-hungry, vindictive king.

  He’d made the Oracle give him a prophecy about his future. And it had been bitter. A very hard pill to swallow. And one that would keep Solar from getting too close to anyone.