Tropical Dragons Series Box Set - Naomi Lucas Page 0,41
next instant, standing with arms spread, claws out, blocking me.
“Issa!” a familiar voice yells. “You’re back…”
22
Kaos Rules
It is another female who stands on the threshold to Issa’s territory. A female, not a male. Not an adversary for me to fight. Her eyes go wide, finding me instead of Issa before her. Baring my teeth, her mouth drops. “You are lucky you are not a male,” I snap, unable yet to break my aggression.
“Tulia!” Issa tries to dash around me but I stop her with an outstretched arm, pulling her to my side.
“Tulia?” I ask, barely holding the snarl back. My gaze has not left the new human. There is a stick in her hand with a curved handle at the top. It is perfect and smooth, unlike any stick I have seen before.
She has not moved during my perusal, even though rain is pummeling her back. Good.
Gaping, this Tulia stammers. “Issa, who is this?”
“Kaos. His name is Kaos. Come in,” she says, tugging toward the woman but my hold tightens, “please, and I’ll explain.”
Tulia takes a step forward using her stick for leverage and I growl. She stops. The hut door rattles from the wind.
Issa pushes me. “Kaos, she is my sister. She is allowed in my home.” Her voice is reprimanding.
Unrelenting to her will, I move to allow Tulia entry, pulling Issa back in the process. Circling around her to close the door, my gaze never drifts away. She stumbles away from me as I corral her to the fire, where she quickly finds a stool and sits.
I notice her tipping, uneven movements, as if she has a problem with her legs like I did not that long ago. She clutches her smooth stick and uses it to help her balance, I realize. She stretches one of her legs out in front of her, and I come to the conclusion that it is hurt. The other remains bent at the knee, fine.
Issa glowers in my direction and settles next to her sister. It takes every ounce of control to not shove them apart and hide my mate away, but I end up allowing her near this new female, if only because I now know she is of little threat. My mate trusts her.
Pivoting back to the entryway, I barricade it with a big wood structure that has things atop it. Some of these human things fall to the floor as I push the wood piece in place. But now no one else will come in, and no one will be allowed to leave, not before I can stop them.
Turning back, the females are whispering to each other.
“Who is he, Issa? What is he?”
“It’s a long story,” she says, rubbing her brow.
“I am a dragon,” I fume, annoyed at this invasion.
Both females look at me.
“A dragon?”
My eyes snap to Tulia. “Yes.”
She glances at Issa. “What’s a dragon?”
Issa sighs as shock zips through me. How could this human not know my kind? We have been kings of this world for thousands of years, ruling all we see or want. How long have I been asleep?
My mate goes into a story that I have not heard myself. Of her brother Leith and going to another territory to deliver him to his mate, of hearing the mating call of the femdragon, being told by another female Aida of rumors of dragons being turned to humans once touched. How all of this has happened under the reappearance of the red comet…
How she decided to travel into the jungle to find me…
She was looking for me. Not me, though, a dragon, any dragon—to see if the rumors her friend told her were real. I find that I am not angry. I cannot even feel annoyance at her small deception. They were real, these rumors, and I cannot fault her for finding out the truth for herself.
But why risk her life for such a rumor? Everything about my mate so far has seemed capable, level-headed. She does not put herself in untoward danger, she keeps a weapon nearby always, and she is always listening and surveying her surroundings.
Issa continues with how our meeting occurred, her fear, her touch on my tail. I can feel it even now without it, as she speaks of it, reliving each first moment together again. She finishes her story with us traveling through the jungle, encountering the femdragon, explaining that the storm began when another dragon rose from the sea, and finally, our trek here.