To Wake a Dragon - Naomi Lucas Page 0,30
time I stay upright.
Three slow steps later, my lips twist into a smile. I pull my eyes from the ground and toward the direction where I’d heard my human’s screech.
With each step, my confidence grows. My tails swipe the cave floor, and with only the occasional wobble, I make progress.
The firelight fades behind me, and I inhale, searching for my human’s scent. Fear has a powerful smell. Catching a whiff, I shift slightly to the left, but there is another familiar smell in the air: the naga’s. I thought it was the aroma of the cave—the undergrowth and soil and faint petrichor—but I know now that it is him as well.
He has been living in this cave with me for a while, I realize. He came with the rain.
The smell of Milaye’s fear deepens and my chest constricts, but she is nowhere to be found. Relief and annoyance fill me. She is not hurt. Wherever she is now, she did not come to harm. But I hate that she is not here at all.
Where the skies has she gone to? I narrow my eyes and glare into the shadows.
Then I see it, the faint orb of golden firelight. It glints off the dull and dirty rocks in the distance. It is nearing.
The outline of her body appears next as she ascends an incline.
“Milaye,” I breathe her name as her features come into view, but she is too far off to hear me. She is carrying a load of roots to her chest, her eyes flicking about as she waves her torch slowly.
I move to the wall. She does not see me. The dark pulls itself toward me and like my old self; it absorbs into my flesh and feeds it. My scales get harder, and my horns bulge. My nostrils flare. She gets closer, not seeing the predator I truly am.
I thrive in darkness. There is nothing like a giant monster with teeth the size of small trees hunting you down in the dark.
Her sweat blooms the air. My shaft tightens and rises, chafing upon the rough cloth tied around me. She is all I know. My prey.
Almost upon me now, I ready to strike. If she thinks she will leave me again…
Her torchlight glimmers over me, but I consume it, repelling the glow. Her eyes go through me as if I am not there.
One more step, female, and you are mine. She steps into my reach—I grab her.
Her body jerks, the roots falling from her hold as she reaches for her weapon. Her eyes widen in shock, in recognition soon after, but I already hear her blood rushing through her veins.
“Human,” I rasp, pulling her to me and knocking her dying torch. It falls to the ground and rolls away, throwing us back into shadow.
“Drazak,” she stammers.
I lean into her, swing my tail around, and push her against the cave wall, trapping her there with my body.
“You can move.” She is nearly breathless. Her hands come between us, pressing into my chest.
“I can move,” I warn. “You will not leave me again.” I pull her from the wall so I can look at her and steal her eyes. Now that I am no longer prone on the ground, I discover she is much smaller than me.
This is good. I hear her heart thrumming wildly.
“I didn’t leave you,” she whispers, finally lifting her chin, meeting my eyes.
I snarl. “Going out of my sight is leaving me, human. You do not know…” I trail off. She does not know how messed up I am from all the years alone… I snarl again.
“Do not know what? That the bond becomes uncomfortable the farther we are away from each other?” She removes one hand from my chest, placing it over hers instead. “You’re not the only one bound by invisible strings.”
Some of her hair falls into my hand. I wind my fingers through it, luxuriating in its silken feel. “What we have is called a curse for a reason,” I say, my voice softening.
She flinches.
“It is a curse,” I continue, “because whether you like it or not, this is final. It is the sacrifice for stealing my immortality and might. The red comet has never given something without first taking something away. You and I will be together until one of us dies, and even then… the other will follow.”
My human licks her lips, it makes me hungry. I wish I was licking them myself.
“No wonder your kind avoids us,” she says with