Tropical Dragons Series Box Set - Naomi Lucas Page 0,7

is good at masking her emotions. Silence falls between us.

When I finish my breakfast, I turn to leave.

“Issa!” Shyn stops me. “If you or Shell Rock need anything, please just let us know. We have always been allies to you, and we owe you a great debt.”

My smile is genuine this time. “We owed you one first.”

A short time later, I’m loosening the rope pulleys on the lift with the help of one of the scouts below. When I make it to my raft, I pull out my supplies and check them over. After I’m done, I scan the coastline and crystalline waters.

Where are the mermaids?

I begin humming and singing their names when they fail to emerge, but my voice stinks like rotting fish. You’re going to scare them off, Issa!

But I continue anyway. I’m in for a day of teasing, I pout.

Minutes go by—they don’t show.

Frowning, and pulling out a spear in the raft, I walk down the beach, singing louder. If they’re playing with me… they’ll just have to suffer my voice.

The sun steadily rises, and nothing. No glittering tail, no giggles. I’m wasting time. Hoping they’ll show when I return to the raft, turning back, but when I place my spear within it a few minutes later, nothing moves in the ocean waves.

Odd.

But I push the raft out into the ocean and jump in anyway, lifting the oars and turning southward, thinking they’ll make their appearance at any minute. As time goes by, and Sand’s Hunters becomes a distant dot behind me, they still don’t show.

They’ll join me later, I hope.

I’ve made this journey alone before. It’s okay. Unlike the day before, I stay close to the coast, just in case. But as the hours slip by, more oddities come to my attention.

There are no crocodiles lounging, no fish swimming beneath my raft—not even the occasional curious dolphin. The swing monkeys are absent, their howling missing from my ears. Now and then I see a bird, but even still, nowhere near the number there were yesterday.

Twisting around, I scrutinize everything, searching for the culprit. I’ve never seen anything like it, and with the mermaids absent as well…

My stomach hollows and tightens, and the sweat on my brow builds a little faster. Maybe it’ll be better closer to home.

Hours later and it’s all the same. I see the waters clout below and know I’m close to the estuary and the mouth of the jungle river. Once I get to the isles, I can take a break and rest—

Before I can finish the thought, a shrieking scream-like pitch blasts my ears, so close now my eyes rush to the trees. The crack and split of trunks—like fire consuming dry wood—accompanies it. Only several birds fill the air, the rest long gone.

And unlike the last two shrieks, this one goes longer, with screaming yelps—as if it’s trying to communicate something specific to another far, far away.

Dragons.

Mating calls.

Aida’s words. ‘I’m going to find myself one.’

I repeat it. ‘Find myself one.’ Again.

My gaze stays fixed in the direction of the sounds. Back stiffening, my hold on the oars falters—just for a second. The yelps come to an end, and when no enormous monster with long teeth appears on the shore, nor in the sky above, I release a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.

Around the short bend ahead, the jungle river mouth is revealed.

I quickly check my supplies, my food stores, my weapons.

I have everything I need for several days. The coast remains devoid of all life, and I can only assume the jungle is just as quiet.

My heart pounds. It’s the safest it will ever be for going into the jungle.

I can scarcely believe I’m entertaining these thoughts.

No one expects me home for a while. I don’t have the mermaids to worry about.

I don’t have Leith. I am free to make my own decisions.

I’ll check, I’ll search, and if I find a slumbering dragon...

I row toward the river mouth, holding my breath.

5

Kaos Awakens

Startling cries rouse me from my sleep. Mating calls of a femdragon. Far off at first, I ignored them, despite the twitching of my shaft—it has a mind of its own. There’s nothing like a femdragon in heat to wake a dragon up.

The mud is cool and thick around my scales, and I settle back within the deepest parts of the river water where I am undisturbed. Where I have been undisturbed for… ages.

The call comes again later, and I am awake now, still as stone so