To Enchant a Dragon by Amanda Milo Page 0,22

in here!”

I sigh. “It’s not a turd. It’s called a ‘casting.’ It’s made of all the bits of things his system won’t digest. He has to hork them back up.”

Everyone looks at me like this is madness. Well, almost everyone is looking at me. Patrice is evidently watching Kalos because she exclaims, “Why is he picking up his turd?”

“It’s not a turd!” I shout.

I don’t glance behind me to watch Kalos… because I already know what he’s doing. I groan as my sisters watch my oblivious dragon pick up his own casting in his mouth (it’s surprisingly dry, for the record. Like a compacted ball of… well? Coughed up hair and feathers and bone bits) and he starts walking it proudly down the path.

“What the hell is he doing with it?” Sirena asks, sounding truly perplexed.

Patrice’s voice is angled away from us when she calls, “Cu, Bossie, Cu Bossie! Come Bossie!”

We ignore her and Sirena is still looking absolutely confused about Kalos’s regorging quirk. And who can blame her? Even I still think it’s beyond strange, and I’ve been trying to hide this habit of his since he first called me over to admire one of his regurgitations.

(Yes. Dragons are very proud of what their systems can’t eat. Since it happens to be so very little compared to what they swallow, I suppose it is quite a marvel.)

I knew my sisters would never understand. “You see, dragons collect them. What he’s doing is completely normal.”

“And what is he doing?” Katiana prompts, staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

I sigh. “He’s got a little cave where he’s storing his castings. And stop gaping. It’s not strange for dragons!”

“Well it’s damn strange for mermaids,” Ianthe points out. And she’s not wrong.

“Come Bossie!” Patrice hollers again.

“But I’m mated to a dragon now, so we’re accepting it,” I inform Ianthe.

Kalos bounds back into view, casting gone and squirreled away with his other self-made ‘treasures,’ thankfully. “Adella!” he calls, spotting me. All my sisters scatter as he crashes into the water, plodding right up to me as inelegant and lumbering as a flippered loch creature.

I eye the invisible avoidance-perimeter my sisters are giving Kalos, and my brow rises slowly. I give my mate a considering look. “I’ve just decided that I adore your casting collection.”

Kalos’s dragon visage brightens. Not in color, it’s more an uplift to his scaly mouth and his jutting dragon brows. “Really? What wonderful news! I would like to show you my newest—”

And he begins to extoll the virtues of his latest casting-contents, which include lots of fish scales and feathers, because he’s been cleaning the skies of seabirds… something my sisters don’t approve of.

I try to shush him as he reveals his casting’s contents, but it’s too late. My sisters are glowering at us.

“Oi,” I admonish them. “He’s keeping us safe. And he has to eat.”

“He ate our sea cow, didn’t he?!” Patrice screams.

Oh no. I try to shutter my stunned expression, but I’m pretty certain I fail.

I sigh, my arms crossing over the shells on my breasts as I look to my shame-faced mate. It would be one thing if this was his first transgression, but Kalos has frightened away our fish, eaten our dolphins, swallowed down our rays, sucked our starfish off their rocks, and now if it’s true that our gentle sea cow is missing... If he’s responsible for her disappearance, then the only thing Kalos hasn’t devoured are our sea otters.

(But only because he tried to eat one, and the entire romp of otters chased him.)

He was covered in so many little bites by the time he managed to flap his way out of the water and into the safety of the sky that he declared the animals wretched and vowed to burn them all the next time he saw them.

My sisters and I intervened.

But our last sea cow? “Kalos…” I chastise.

“I was hungry and she came right up to me,” he explains.

“Because she was tame!” Patrice sobs.

“I’m sorry!” Kalos insists. He’s stricken to see Patrice so overwrought. He keeps himself low as he stretches his neck out over the water, truly apologetic. “I didn’t know the thing was off limits.” He casts a gimlet eye over my sisters. “If you listened to their shrieking, it seems everything in this cove is off limits.”

“It IS!” they screech in unison, making him flinch and pound his ear depressions with his tail.

“Maybe…” I start. “Kalos, maybe it’s time for new hunting grounds.”

Kalos shoots to his full height,