To Mate A Dragon (Venys Needs Men) Read online

  Rain plops down on both of us as she says it. “I’ll get them. Go back to the tribe! They need help getting everything inside.”

  She nods and jogs up the path. I pivot back to my siblings…

  “Delina!” I shout, waving my hand, getting no reaction or notice from my sister.

  A streak of lightning sparks through the canopy and without waiting, I dive into the water and swim to them. Under the falls within seconds, I grab Leith’s shoulder and tug him back.

  They meet me with muted screams and one boyishly shocked expression.

  “What are you doing!?” Delina cries, shielding herself. Leith wades back. I keep my eyes high.

  “There’s a storm! A bad one. If you heard Milaye shouting for you, you would know. We need to get back to the village now!” My voice strains under the din of the water. I swim back to the shore without waiting for them to argue. Grabbing one of the hide towels they brought with them, I wipe myself down once. When I turn, Delina’s behind me tugging on her clothes, Leith doing the same. My eyes don’t stray because it’s apparent he and Delina didn’t finish.

  “It was so nice a little while ago,” Delina whines but grabs her basket.

  Leith picks up his spear. “It’ll be nice again. Let’s go. The tribe will need us,” he says. And with that, we head back.

  When we get to the bridge, my mouth drops in horror. It’s thrashing from side to side, and on the other end, anything not bolted down is blowing in the wind.

  Leaves from the trees fly everywhere, the rain has turned into a full-on downpour, and the lift is crowded with people as they head down with supplies and animals. Below us on the beach, there are others rushing inward to the sea cliffs bordering the jungle, and to the caves a short distance inland that becomes our shelter in emergencies.

  “We need to get across!” I scream, looking back up. Milaye is on the other side of the bridge, facing us, with her sisters Ola and Panyia.

  Thunder resonates.

  “We’ll hold this end. Leave the basket behind!” she shouts across, wind chasing her words.

  “Delina, you go first,” I say, taking the spear from her. “Leith, you follow close behind. I’ll go last.”

  My sister gulps and nods, and I see her shake through the rain gathering in my lashes. She grips the rope handles with white knuckles and takes a step forward.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Leith tells her. Delina nods and slowly makes it across.

  “Go,” I tell Leith when Delina reaches the end.

  “You should go first.”

  I shake my head. “No. You are far more important. You are needed—our salvation. I’ll hold the ties on this end. You have to go first.”

  “Aida…”

  Forcing a smile. “If you die, I’ll die anyway,” I say lightly. “The tribe would never forgive me.”

  He nods stiffly but his brow is furrowed, worry in his eyes. He turns to the bridge and grips the handles, white-knuckled like my sister. “You’ll be right behind,” he calls to me.

  “Yes.” I hold the ties.

  Leith nods again and makes his way across, stopping whenever a gust shakes the bridge. When he makes it to the other side, I sigh in relief.

  My turn.

  Grabbing the rope for myself now, I hear snapping as a single fierce gust swings the bridge. Taking a step onto it, I’m immediately thrown to the side.

  I hear a scream but don’t look up, trying to remain calm. Holding strong, I ride out the shift, focusing. When it levels, I move forward, one step at a time.

  Another crack slices the air, joined by thunder. I halt, waiting.

  Glancing outward, my mouth dries up. I’m midway. Only midway. The bridge sways side to side. My feet shift and part.

  Lightning fills the sky in vibrant flashes. A spark of heat whips through the wind when a terrible erupting boom fills my ears. I see one of the trees in the village sizzling, split in two. Milaye covers both Delina and Leith with her body, forcing them to the ground.

  Screams ring in the air.

  They look at me with wide, horror-filled eyes.

  “Go!” I shout, “Get to the lift. I’ll be right behind! I promise.”

  Milaye nods resolutely and I’m thankful. Delina starts fighting but Ola grabs her and forces her away. Leith lingers another moment, catching my gaze, and I take another step forward. He turns away and runs after Delina.

  Only Milaye remains to hold the bridge for me. Now, swinging back and forth, I’m practically hanging on, using my feet as leverage as my arms do all the work.

  I see some of the tribe staring up at me from below on the beach.

  “Aida! Don’t stop,” someone yells, and I drive forward, pain ripping my shoulders, jerking my arms this way and that to get to the end.

  I miss my final step, but Milaye grabs me, pulling me into her arms, and we tumble to the ground together in relief. But we have no time to celebrate.

  In the next instant, we’re running to the lift. Delina and the others are below. We begin cranking it back up as Ola and Panyia run with Leith and Delina down the beach, under the gape where the bridge swings, and toward the caves.

  As we wrench the lever, I realize Milaye and I are the last ones left in the village. The rest have already fled to safety. The underlying scent of burnt wood floods my nose.

  And then I hear it, a different sort of roar. Not like the screeching one from before…

  It’s so loud, so much closer than any other, so terrible it nearly stops my thrumming heart. My hands stop cranking, and Milaye takes over as I peer out to the east, down the coast, over the turbulent waves where the sound resonates from.

  In the direction of Shell Rock and Issa’s home.

  But it’s so much closer than that, my thoughts tangle, fearful. It’s right there.

  Right there.

  Coming through the veil of rain.

  It goes on and on, over the thunder, joining with flashes of lightning, pounding my eardrums, taking me over, solidifying me to the spot. I can’t tear my eyes from the horizon, knowing it’s growing ever closer. My heart lodges in my throat. My fingers twitch.

  “Aida! We must go!”

  Milaye says something and grabs my arm, pulling me onto the lift. My eyes tear away from the horizon. The roar continues.

  “Aida, what is happening to you?” she snaps. “Help me with the lever. It’s sticking.”

  It’s enough to shake me out of my reverie. Just as the dragon’s roar ends.

  Together, we release the sticking lever and loosen the ropes for our descent. The lift starts lowering, but Milaye rushes her side, and we jerk down at an angle. Catching up to her, I straighten us out, knowing it’s fear that’s driving her.

  It should be driving me too, but it’s not. My veins are full of the lightning that’s in the sky, of wild adrenaline, and not even the aching pain in my wrenched muscles can overpower the thrill surging through me.

  A dragon made that sound. I steal a glance back to the horizon.

  I see a shift, a giant shadow.

  Before the lift hits the beach, Milaye jumps off and runs toward the cave, vanishing around the rocky outcropping that makes up the base of our home. I take a step to follow but stop, staring down the coast. I cannot resist.

  Something dark moves in the rainfall, something large, menacing, and far more astounding than anything I could’ve imagined. It’s not coming from the sky or the land, but from the water, emerging like a tidal wave to curve downward and disappear a moment later.

  Water rushes over my feet, the waves building higher and crashing, moving farther inland than any storm has taken them before. Still, I’m rooted to the spot. But the shadow vanishes and it’s enough to bring my senses back.

  Run! My body urges me suddenly. Go!

  I pivot to the lever and yank it until the lift is above my head.

  And when I turn back around, the shadow is no longer a shadow, but a dragon in all its beautiful, frightening glory coming straigh
t for me.

  3

  Zaeyr Surfaces

  Yes.

  The hollow cry resounding in my watery cave makes me alert. A femdragon is in heat, is in need. And she’s close to my abyssal territory where I horde my treasures. I hear her, though she is above the surface, crying for a male to seed her and give her a dragonling.

  It is what I have been waiting for. A female to bring to my nest, to covet and protect. Offspring to raise and expand my domain.

  Though listening to her cries, so far away, I soon realize they are from above the surface, and not the yowls of another water dragon like me. I had always planned to breed with another of my kind, to share my sapphire and pearl caves with her, but no matter, a rare female is nearby, and she will be mine.

  Mine. The word is strange in my mind. Mine…

  Slipping through my underwater system, seeking one of the exits to the sandy bottom, another, more infuriating cry reaches my sensitive ears.

  A male roaring in response to my female. A male who does not know better. I am an alpha water dragon! An alpha of ancients, king of this trench, ruler of the turquoise depths, and guardian of the deep! Any alpha or beta male within miles will know of my stirring, as I sense theirs. They should be afraid.

  This femdragon is mine. I have claimed her. Even if the other alpha dragon gets to her first, I will fight him off her—slice him open with my talons, and take his place mounting. I have waited too long for a femdragon in heat to enter these lands just to lose her to another!

  Clawing my way from my glittery caverns, my patience flees, discovering cave-ins where I have failed to maintain the area over the years. A serpent like me does not leave his home on a whim, I snarl, baring sharpened teeth at the rocks.

  The male’s roar echoes, fueling my frustration, my longing to breach the surface and inhale the femdragon’s mating pheromones that are sure to bloom the air for miles in every direction.

  I wonder what she smells like…

  Turning my head to the side, I peer through one of the many holes from which light streaks from far above into my caves, contemplating the barrier holding me back. My tail overturns shells, rocks, and jewels as it scours the bottom of my deep cavern. A low growl escapes me, releasing stores of oxygen in my gut and forcing bubbles up through the hole. Watching them rise, I see a shadow swim overhead, and then another, and another.

  Mermaids.

  More bubbles escape me in surprise as a boulder is moved over the opening, right before my very eyes.

  Quiet accompanies my shock, as one by one, all the holes that give my dwelling light are closed off. I twist around, making the ground tremble. I peer up through the last one left until that too closes off.

  The mermaids are trying to trap me in!

  Sea snakes, villainous wretches!

  This is how they repay me? For leaving them alone, allowing them to settle within my coral reefs and valleys? For protecting them from vicious, hungry deep-sea monsters that would love to dine on their flesh?

  Worst of all, the echoing yowls of my future mate and my competitor are gone. I’ve waited centuries for this. Loss hits me harder than it should. Loss and anger—rage ignites.

  How dare they? I dig my talons into the stony floor of my domain and pull my wings inward, upward, shelling my back. They think they can keep me trapped?

  My body fills with lava-like heat, erupting with my quaking emotions.

  Nothing will keep me from what is mine. NOTHING!

  I ram my back upward.

  The ceiling cracks and stones and dust falls around me, polluting my cherished home. I ram my back again, and more gives way. Terrible, hollow sounds fill my ears, eclipsing even the thunder of my furied heart.

  I do not stop, and even when the rocks and sand bury me within, I keep hitting the cave ceiling with all the might of my body. Pain tears through me. The weakest parts of my wings scrape and rip as my body becomes compressed. But each time I thrust up, cracks form—it is working. The trench terra shifts, and slowly, far too slowly for my liking, the pressure on me gives way.

  Hours turn to days, and my body is nearly empty of all its oxygen stores. My limbs are numb with exhaustion. I need to surface soon. Desperate, giving a final shove, the ground below me loosens. The remaining rock and sand fall upon me, around me, under me where a deep crater forms. Renewed with the seabed’s movement, I slam my tail up and break through. My wings and body quickly follow.

  Sunlight—red light—fills my view.

  I am free! I open my long mouth and roar. My body revels and shakes with ferocious delight.

  The ground sinks beneath me, caving in. I swim upward into the open water. The once mountainous seascape crumbles and vanishes around me. Water whooshes past my hide and under my scales, falling into the terra below. Coral reefs collapse, and colorful schools of fish scatter every which way.

  Sharks swim away; octopus scurry from the budding cracks. My creatures flee because the merfolk sought to contain me.

  Part of me is sad for the loss of my home, my treasures and jewels, for the space I hoped would one day become a nest to share with my mate, but the other part is dead set on one thing: finding the femdragon in need and making her mine.

  My shaft emerges from my body, rigid and ready—and large, my potent seed brewing forth, ready to fertilize.

  Feeling it drag beneath where my tail meets my body, my eyes focus through the light I am not used to—not anymore—and scan the blue waters of my home for mermaid traitors. They have fled, I notice, seeing none around me. Good.

  Taking no time to hunt for them, I swim toward the direction my femdragon’s sounds came from, picking up speed as the dappled sunlight and glow of the cursed comet disappears in the waters. Everything moves out of my way.

  Days, I realize, I have lost days escaping from my caves.

  And then I hear it again, my femdragon. Heat grows in my belly all over again.

  The water is gray and dark when I emerge. Clouds fill the sky overhead. I inhale air. Rain falls upon me when I glimpse the shore and the edges of my territory.

  Kaos’s territory. Now I know who my adversary is. A jungle dragon bred from a water and earth dragon long ago. Like I was. We are similar in age, he and I. We respect our borders and have never had a need to fight.

  All these thoughts fall from my head as his and my femdragon’s pheromones fill my nostrils.

  Not even a storm could remove them from the air.

  Hot, mossy, potent, and rich. Subtle in the winds but I smell them, hating Kaos’s scent as much as loving the femdragon’s. My large body contracts with need, my talons descend, my wings strain and seize. I dip my head beneath the water to cleanse the chaos in my mind, only to reemerge to scream at the world, my eyes on Kaos’s jungle.

  FIGHT ME! All the power of my soul erupts in the air, louder than thunder and higher than the crashing waves. Meet me and fight for mating rights! Smoke plumes from my mouth, saying as much in challenge.

  My eyes go to the jungle’s edge as rage builds, where a lone figure is standing on the shore. A human. Throwing all my intensity her way, she retreats back into the shadows of the trees.

  “FACE ME, KAOS!” I bellow in dragon. “Come to the edge!”

  I do not want my future mate near us when we battle. Blood will spray.

  But minutes pass, and Kaos does not show. He does not answer, and my mind grows curious in its chaos. Seeking him out with my senses, I find I no longer feel him.

  My opponent is no more, though his pheromones remain on the wind.

  It cannot be. My nostrils flare. Tearing my eyes from the shore, I look ahead of me down the coast, straining my sensitive ears for a telltale sign of my brethren. He cannot be dead. I would smell that as well… But the femdragon comes back to mind, and all thoughts of Kaos fade.

  And then I realize it.

  Humans. Distant screams flood my ears. Human shouts.

  Protect my female at all cost. Slipping back into the water, I follow the
noises down the coast, to the source of the damning yells.

  If they have touched Kaos, then my mate is in jeopardy. I will not lose her, I vow. Not after losing everything else.

  I will not.

  4

  Facing an Alpha Dragon

  Stilling, I feel the blood rush from my face. My heart nearly jumps from my chest, and my throat closes off as my mouth opens. Rain hits my face, falling over my brows and into my eyes. I reach up and wipe them only to lose sight of the giant beast swimming toward me. And when they clear… he’s just that much closer.

  Hazy gray swathes of rain are all that lies between us, and without looking, I know there’s no place for me to hide. The lift wouldn’t help me escape. Only the beach spans out before me, and the rocky cliff-face behind me has no outcroppings or rocks for me to hide behind.

  The jungle is far above, and so are the giant broken-off land masses my village rests upon.

  I’m stuck. Out in the open, exposed. And though my body screams for me to run, I can’t move.

  I can’t lead him to my people, who are surely in the caves by now. Delina, Leith, and Milaye are probably just as exposed as I am as they head there.

  No… I swallow hard. I can’t run. My hands clench at my sides.

  The dragon heading straight for me is nothing like the beast the messenger spoke of. Her story depicted an enormous brown and bronze dragon, with leathery wings, deep amber eyes, and scales covering its huge body from tail-tip to snout.

  She said it looked like it belonged in the wastes, colored by the terrain it slumbered in.

  No, this one is nothing like that dragon at all. I gape.

  This water draconid is something straight from the colorful reefs and the turquoise ocean on a clear, calm day. And with each second, it gets closer, and more of its details appear. Awe and terror hit me all at once. My fingers twitch at my sides. I stiffen further, muscles locking.

  A long serpentine body slips in and out of the waves, making waves pound upon the shores violently. A tail that goes on and on follows and sways behind the body, getting lost in the riotous water as much as its causing it to be that way. Sapphire-like scales cover whole sections of its body, and deep ridges ascend from its brow to crown its head in a myriad of opaline colors.