the fuck are you?”
“Don’t you take that fucking tone with me.” Gorri puffed out his chest, and while he’d seemed older before—only five years younger than her—standing beside Cam, she could see just how young he truly was.
“I’ll take whatever tone I damned well like. I will not be tied down, and I don’t like being lied to.” His gaze lasered in on Kayda.
“What have I lied about?” They’d barely spoken.
“That thing behind your leg. It’s a dragon.”
“It is.”
He jabbed a finger in Gellie’s direction. “You said they were killers. Obviously a lie since you’re protecting one.”
“Don’t you talk to Kayda like that!” snapped Gorri, meaning well, wanting to help, and yet only making things worse.
She wanted to sigh. “Both of you need to put your egos away and shut your mouths for a moment so I can actually string more than a sentence together.”
“He started it,” Gorri complained.
“Would you like me to finish it?” Cam asked softly. The menace held a bored note to it.
She didn’t doubt the man could kill. Danger oozed from him. Confidence, too. He’d pulled that gun so fast she’d blinked and missed it. A good thing she was quick too, or he might have killed her pet.
“I’m going to gag both of you if you don’t stop.” Kayda lost patience, her irritation not cooled one bit by the sudden cold draft that pushed through her open door.
“I’m willing to listen.” Cam’s words held a challenge as he smirked at Gorri.
Gorri didn’t quite pout, but it was close.
“Maybe I should start with introductions. Cam, this is Gorri. Gorri, Cam.” She indicated by pointing. “And this”—she gestured to the knee-high creature hiding behind her—“is Gellie.”
“You named it.”
“Him, actually.”
“And he is a dragon. A young one I’m guessing by his size.”
“He is.”
“Earlier you said they were dangerous. Implied they’d decimated your population and kept you prisoner of these tunnels.”
“And that statement is true. The ones that emerged out of the crevices where the lava flows are savage beasts. True killers in every sense of the word. The fire dragons are pure rage and murderous intent. They hunger all the time. Gellie, though, is an ice dragon.”
“Which makes a difference?”
“The people of Diamond have long been friends of the ice dragons. In Gellie’s case, given he lives with us, he’s quite domesticated. His mother died trying to defend him and her nest against the interlopers. If I’d have left him out there, all alone, he would have died, so I adopted him,” she explained, ending with a shrug.
“You decided to mother a dragon.” He appeared rather baffled. Not an unusual reaction.
Gorri snickered. “That’s more polite than what we said when she brought him back.”
Rather than wait or politely ask, Lila pushed her way in behind Kayda. “We told her she was fucking crazy.”
“Gellie isn’t dangerous, are you, baby?” she cooed, and the youngling climbed her leg and torso to wrap around her shoulders, his weight heavy, but familiar. “Ice dragons have always gotten along well with humans.”
“Especially in her family,” Lila stated with a jerk of her thumb at Kayda.
“Because we’re not afraid of them,” Kayda said softly, stroking Gellie’s nose. “I started visiting them the moment I was born. My father introduced me before I was even a week old. They used to fly the skies above Diamond. Each of the peninsulas in the Cloudring city sported a roost for a mating pair and their dragonlets.” Her gaze took on a dreamy cast as she remembered, through the eyes of a child, her wonderment at the majestic beasts. She loved watching them leap from the cliffs and, at the last moment, snap their wings to soar. Poor Gellie might never know that freedom with the menace in the skies.
“We never had pets in the Wasteland. Meat was too scarce for that. The only exception was Axel’s pack.”
“Wasteland?” Lila breathed the word. “You come from Emerald?”
Cam wasn’t ready to discuss that yet. He kept his focus on Kayda. “So ice dragons like humans, but the crevice dragons don’t.”
“I’d have said they like us too much. They think we’re a tasty snack,” Lila responded with way too much glee.
“And how do you tell them apart so you don’t kill the wrong one?”
“Color. Ice ones are gray or blue and, every rare generation, white. But you won’t have to worry. There are no ice ones left in the wild. They fought when the fire dragons came, but being a gentle species and much smaller in number, they lost. As far