I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) Marc Secchia (most read books .TXT) 📖

showed her what it meant to find his fires, how a Dragon had changed his every scale, all for the sake of the courage and confidence a treasured Dragon Rider had instilled in his hearts. She melted against him, sobbing – for joy, it must be. He even admitted how miserable he had been out at the end of the talon without her, and how he had feared all was lost. Azania reassured him without words that it was not so.

He said, “Oh! It’s almost time!”

“Time for what?”

“Do you want to hear the Sea Dragons, and my dam’s voice? They’re just days away now!”

“Right – of course! That’s why you’re glowing!” She bounced on her toes. “Oh, Dragon, that’s just the best news since … whenever!”

Aargh, girls. Leaking again. Maybe he was learning to love that Human reaction.

ARIA!! he bellowed.

“Honestly, I’m not going to have any ears left by the time you’re done.”

You thundered, o mighty denizen of the deeps?

There she was! With a smile that squirted fire through the portals of his Dragon hearts, the cobalt warrior Dragoness winged toward him from where she must have been watching their interaction from a quarter-mile away.

Submerge quickly, and listen. Snaffling the Princess into his paw, Dragon hurled himself out over the last boulders. Deep breath, Azania!

Splash. Oh, the music! Her eyes popped wide; he was not sure where Aria was, but he imagined her response must be similar. It was a symphony of draconic horns and bugles at a level of musical complexity that befuddled the brain with its intense, intricate beauty. Next came the words:

≈We’re coming faster. Wait.≈

≈Waiting with my two best friends beneath all the waves!≈

Oh. That was new.

Flummox his white wings, oceanic language really did seem to have a mind of its own. He could not fathom it – pun intended.

Azania signalled upward. Losing air already? He helped her to surface, pushing that part of her which had so distracted a King. She burst into the air with a yell of amazement, splashing so haphazardly, he gripped her waist lest she sink again.

“What was that? Dragon! That was – it really was your dam?”

“Aye, after the music. She said, ‘We’re coming faster, wait.’ They say the same thing every day at this time. I’ve been tracking the incoming migration from over 2,500 miles away.”

“Whoooo-wheeee! No wonder you got stuck here.”

“I think that was more about my fears than –”

“Dragon!” Aria burst out of the waves about four Dragon paces away, swamping them both as she lunged into the air, only to realise that he was still bobbing in the surf. “That was your dam? Incredible! They’re that close?”

“A little under six hundred miles,” he smiled.

Jaw-dropper.

Perhaps he ought not to enjoy confounding her quite as much as he did.

“Dragon – you!” she spluttered at last. “You’ve got some explaining to do. Come over here and let me tell you how much I missed you, and how when I thought you were lost … ah, a Dragoness despaired to the depths of her hearts.”

He eyed her playfully. “Aria, if you’re expecting intelligible sentences and rational thought, maybe we should keep a healthy distance?”

“Mrrrr, you get that stupendously attractive hide over here right now, Dragon, or I’ll have to threaten you with a range of unspeakably delicious torments.”

Whadda-whomp! His fires ignited.

Judging by the way he was now steaming, getting dry would not be an issue.

Looking extremely pleased with herself, Aria added, “Have I told you recently how much I despise the words, ‘healthy’ and ‘distance’? Ghastly idea. Especially when it involves you going missing on the far side of the Archipelago with so much remaining unresolved between us.”

With that, she blew his concern that she was merely content with a renewed flirtation, right out of the water.

No, he knew nothing about females.

Wrong. He knew one thing. Underestimate them at one’s peril, Dragon!

* * * *

The Princess of T’nagru wandered off along the beach, collecting shells. Ahem. In other words, removing herself from the ambit of fiery romance. Subtle. Besides, the beach promised hours of delight for a child of the desert. Her realm was all sand and a lifelong struggle for water. Here was water in incalculable measure, albeit too salty for any Human to drink.

With the evening drawing in, Dragon picked a pleasant spot on the soft white sand against a cosy-looking boulder, well above the high tide line. Let’s overnight here, Aria. Is it … just you two?

Just us. Azerim was fighting off an infection. My Dragonesses returned to Wave Dragonhome for a brief space. They understand that this is a personal matter.

You take the boulder.

Thanks. I am tired, I’ll admit. We flew from one end of the Archipelago to the other, searching for you.

She curled up with her flank against the boulder. Dragon tried to judge how she was lying, before wedging his tail beneath her neck and making his much larger, taller body into a bulwark of protection, bending about her much smaller frame with draconic limberness until his muzzle rested within the ambit of her hind paws. Tail to muzzle they lay, but their necks curved inward until their eyes lay only a couple of feet apart, and their warm breath mingled in the space between.

For the longest time, they simply lay close. No need to speak in this cosy lair for two. At last, he realised that their breathing had synchronised, for he felt the rise and fall of her flank against his neck and cheek.

Comfortable? he rasped. Not squashing you, am I?

I’ve never lain like this with any Dragon before, let alone one who fires my hearts as you do. It’s … intimate. He inhaled sharply. I have a deficit in that I was never raised to know much affection and