her heavy flapping wings filling the air.
“Kaos, we need to leave!” I yell at him. “Before she lands!” His eyes snap to mine. I reach for him, shaking now with panic. Why isn’t he moving!?
“She will not kill me. Go, Issa!” he snaps. “It will not be long now.”
“Long for what?! You can’t know that,” I beg, seeing the femdragon getting closer. “Please, we can get away. The jungle is thick.”
“Issa,” he says muttering, turning back to look at the dragon. I see his eyes narrow, his body going rigid. “If she sees you, she will kill you, if only because you touched me and denied her what she wants most.”
“Kaos—”
“GO!” he roars, making me flinch. The femdragon is nearly through, and my whole body recoils at her massive size. Her tail lashes out, and Kaos ducks. “Now! Think of the child growing inside you!”
The femdragon’s head pops through, long and windy, curving to stare directly at him. She shrieks in his face, and everything gusts away. Lowering to the ground, tears fill my eyes, and Kaos glances at me.
We share a final, desperate look. He’s pleading with me as I’m pleading with him.
I can’t leave you.
“I will follow,” he says, a whisper.
I don’t want to go, don’t want to leave him, but lowering slowly over the side—so as to evade the femdragon’s notice—I keep my gaze on Kaos the whole time, even as tears blur my vision.
Ripping our eyes apart, dropping down, pain erupts through me at losing sight of him.
Shrieking from above makes me wince, makes me lose my footing, and I flop, sliding down a slope. The river emerges through the thick foliage of trees.
Another screech, it sounds like the femdragon is right behind me, like she knows I’m here and fleeing, and she’s furious because of it. A breeze whips at my back. I get up and push through the final vines and rush to the river’s shore.
When my feet hit the water, I twist back around, sobbing Kaos’s name, seeing the canopy high above me now shuddering wildly. No birds, no jungle creatures. Nothing else moves—and I realize they all left long ago, knowing the danger.
Think of the child growing inside you. Wiping tears from my cheeks, I turn and run, begging the waters the whole time for his life.
My moment of happiness was torn away.
19
Another Alpha Rises
Staring into the femdragon’s black eyes, I feel nothing. Her steam blasts my face, covers my body, and if any water from the basin—any of Issa’s essence remains on me—it quickly evaporates away.
All I can do is bide my time.
Her thin nostrils flare outward, breathing me in. I know my smell fills her, know she is trying to figure out why my scent pulls her to me, and I can see it—the thoughts roiling through her mind, as her glistening pupils look at me hard. Harder still with each second.
Each second is all I aim for. For every moment she is focused on me, she is distracted from the other smell in the air—Issa’s smell. Even though we washed our bodies, the rocks around the basin, everything is clear of my seed, but the smell of our pheromones are still in the air.
The femdragon sucks in another breath and sharply jerks back, head swinging side-to-side. Her claws grind and crush the ground.
“Human,” she says, her voice deep and long-winded. “Dragon human.”
Cocking my head, I choose not to answer yet. She is ignorant, I note. Good. I am up against a female far younger and far weaker than I ever was while a dragon. An advantage.
“Why do you smell of dragon heat, human?” she asks.
“Do you not know the comet’s curse?” I ask in return. If she does not, I am saddened that my kind has failed her so deeply. Perhaps she is from the far parts of the world, or her mother and sire perished without relaying such information. Rare as it is for a human and dragon to bond, it is something all dragonkind should know.
But her ignorance works for me. There is still the alpha dragon I sensed from before rising, before I turned and lost my immortality. I sense him still, though the sensation is muted and hidden under… layers of human emotions.
A male I would have fought to the death, not long ago, I hiss in my thoughts, is the male I now seek to save me from this femdragon, to save Issa.
Issa is in me now more than ever, feeling her adrenaline, her