To Love a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,4

in her ears slowly diminished.

The treelurker was gone.

She halted her arm and stared at the spot where the treelurker should have been.

The ground a few paces away was blackened and smoking, the dirt free of leaves and debris as though it had all been blasted away. But that wasn’t right. Even if Mother Eurynome had chosen to smite the creature with lightning, there would’ve been something left of it—a charred carcass, a heap of ash. Something.

Leyloni’s breath caught in her throat. There was movement overhead, distinct from the leaves thrashing in the wind. She tilted her head back.

The treestalker was dangling from high above, water dripping from its carapace. A few of its legs were twitching, but it was otherwise limp. Tendrils of smoke, barely visible in the rain and gloom, wafted from its body.

Yet Leyloni’s eyes did not linger on the treestalker—they were called higher to the huge maw clamped over the creature’s middle, holding the carcass aloft. Her eyes rounded as she took in a scaled snout, a powerful jaw, and a long neck that led back behind a large tree.

Her gaze finally stopped on the big, impossibly vibrant purple eyes staring down at her. Glowing, reptilian eyes.

That jaw flexed, producing a wet, crunching sound. Dark ichor oozed from the dangling treestalker, and its legs curled inward toward its belly. The scaled head snapped aside, flinging away the dead treestalker like a child might toss away a toy that no longer held their interest.

Leyloni could only stare as this new monster moved into the open. Rainwater streamed off its scales in little waterfalls, accentuating the shape of its huge, powerful frame. The beast walked on all fours, and its front paws—which looked closer to hands—were big enough to wrap fully around Leyloni’s body. And those black claws…

Instinct screamed for Leyloni to run as fast as she could and never look back, but it was overpowered by a deep, instinctual fear. A paralyzing fear. Her feet refused to move, rooted as firmly as the trees around her.

Lightning pulsed across the sky, illuminating the beast’s scales—they were teal with blue and green sheens—and making the double set of backswept horns atop its head gleam.

This beast couldn’t be real, couldn’t possibly be standing before her. No one in her tribe had seen one for countless generations. These beings existed only in old stories; they had died out long ago.

But she knew what it was.

“Dragon,” she whispered as icy terror spread outward from her heart.

Those violet, reptilian eyes fixated on Leyloni again.

2

Leyloni stared up at the dragon, deaf to Serek’s cries, barely feeling the cold penetrating down to her bones. Her extended arm shook, and the knife clutched in her fist looked smaller and more ineffective than ever. Her terror and awe were so intertwined that she couldn’t tell one from the other.

She was staring at her imminent death, and she doubted it would take the beast more than a couple bites to be done with her.

The dragon reared back, opened its maw wide, and angled it toward the sky. Runoff from the canopy poured into its mouth. The beast closed its mouth, shook its head from side to side, and turned to spit the water out into the jungle foliage.

“Those creatures have a foul taste,” the dragon said in a voice as low-pitched and rumbling as thunder.

Leyloni’s brows creased, and she blinked rapidly to clear the rainwater running into her eyes.

Did…did the beast just speak?

Serek wriggled against Leyloni, his cries growing louder as her shock faded and her awareness of everything else returned. The storm was still raging, she and Serek were soaked, and her skin was going numb with cold.

Finally, her legs agreed to move, carrying her backward a few staggering steps. Her knees were wobbly and weak, and her extended arm was still trembling.

The dragon dipped its head toward her, regarding her with those glowing eyes.

Leyloni froze.

The dragon’s long, forked tongue flicked out of its mouth—a mouth full of long, sharp teeth. “Have you been harmed, human?

She shrank back and screamed.

The dragon’s eyes narrowed as though it were pain, and it flinched away, lips peeling back to reveal its teeth. “What is wrong, human? Are you broken? Are you injured?”

She scrambled back, her boots slipping on wet rock. After a brief battle to regain her balance, she clutched Serek against her chest with both arms, reassuring herself she still had hold of him, and thrust her knife toward the beast.

But what beast had such intelligence in its gaze, such