The (Not) Satisfied Dragon - Colette Rhodes Page 0,55

be arrested the moment I walked in the door?

“It will be fine,” Oren muttered, pulling out my chair so I could sit down for breakfast. I'm sure I should have been on kitchen duty today, but Levi and Seff had insisted they would do it. They were preparing eggs so we could have a hearty breakfast before setting out on the one-hour flight to wherever the Council building was.

“You don't know that,” I mumbled back, smoothing my dress over my lap.

“We don't know that,” Ezra agreed, unsurprisingly listening in. “You need to get all those nerves out now though, Shira. Don’t let them see your fear. You've got to prove that you belong there.”

“You're right,” I replied, nodding my head slowly. “I won’t show weakness in a room full of predators,” I affirmed, more for my benefit. Whatever misgivings I had, I needed to leave them at the door. The Councilors would already be looking for reasons to discount me without me giving them anymore.

“Breakfast is served,” Seff announced cheerfully, placing a bowl of scrambled eggs in the center of the table. He was so excited about today, he'd been all but whistling since he woke up. Levi followed with bread, looking more reserved. The love bites I'd given him had already faded, and I made a mental note to replace them as soon as possible.

“There's one thing we need to discuss before we go,” Ezra said, looking impassively at the five of us while we served ourselves. His stoic facial expressions never failed to make me nervous, like something terrible was about to happen. It bothered me that my experiences with Flight Milain and Glendower had made me constantly brace myself for the worst. I didn't want to live the rest of my life this way.

“What's that?” Hiram asked amiably, piling eggs on his plate.

“Our flight name.” Oh. That wasn't so bad. “Does anyone have any ideas they'd like to put forward?”

I shrugged when they looked at me. I knew my family's flight name, Anturus, meant ‘adventurous’ but I wasn't familiar enough with any others to have a preference and I didn't want to use my family's name.

“The usual choices all mean things like ‘merciless’ or ‘strong’,” Seff mused. “Not that we aren't those things when we need to be, but I'm not sure they represent who we are. The kind of flight we want to be.”

“Agreed,” Ezra said shortly. “We are more than brute strength.”

“Galon,” Oren rasped, looking immediately irritated when everyone looked at him.

“Flight Galon?” Seff confirmed. Oren nodded before focusing back on his breakfast as if he could will the attention off him.

“What does it mean?” I asked curiously. I had a feeling it was meaningful if Oren had bothered speaking out loud to suggest it.

“Heart,” Ezra said quietly, glancing at Oren. “It's good.”

Flight Galon. “I like it.”

“Any objections?” Ezra asked with a cursory glance around the table. Everyone shook their heads. “Then hurry up and eat your breakfast, Flight Galon. We've got some old male dragons to shock into early graves today.”

✽✽✽

“This is madness,” I murmured, taking in the scene below me.

“Or genius,” Hiram chuckled, standing close enough to my right side for our arms to press together.

The Council of Dragons did not meet in a building. They met on a rocky outcrop surrounded for miles and miles by an unforgiving sea. It was only accessible by air, limiting the chance of any other races dropping in. Even the mermaids avoided this treacherous section of water.

I'd been questioning whether my mates were just doing this to appease me or if they were taking this seriously ever since Ezra suggested it. Watching them now, intently cataloging every interaction occurring below us, I was confident that this hadn't been a ploy to satisfy me. Getting a seat on the Council was something we all wanted, though we would struggle to do that if I kept being thrown by every little detail because no one bothered to explain anything to me.

Perhaps sensing my confusion, edged with irritation, on the flight over — me sitting on Oren’s back because no one wanted me to be naked in front of the Council — Seff had panic projected facts. He'd explained that the rocks had been shaped and molded over the years by generations of dragons. They left the side where the wind blew strongest tall, sheltering the visitors in the carved out amphitheater from the gales. The rows of benches were carved into the rock, three layers high in a