* * *
The moment I closed my eyes...
I sat beneath the stars.
I couldn’t tell if they were my own or that of my new home—I didn’t know the constellations well enough. Certainly, the single moon hanging above seemed familiar. But the plateau was from the previous dream—the ravine lay before me, the forest below.
Was this the human realm?
And when had I stopped dreaming of daylight? As of late, all my dreams were in darkness. Not that I minded if my night beast was with me. But I seemed alone—no howl relieved the silence.
Then, a sound. The whisper of wind against wing. Now that I knew what to look for, I distinguished the shadow flitting across the moon.
The Dragon banked toward me, trailing vapor off the tips of his wings. The moonlight gleamed indigo off his scales, and his eyes glowed blue.
My heart accelerated. With his size, those teeth and talons, it should have been a fear response, but it wasn’t. He was magnificent. Like something out of legend.
The huge form twisted away from me, wings beating for altitude. No—I wanted him closer. I wanted to touch him.
I rose to my feet and reached out my arms, fingers extended, as I imagined him turning, coming closer. Something within me swelled, and fed into my voice. “Come to me, Talakai!”
His wings paused, and then tilted as he swung back toward me. I let my arms fall, and he immediately banked away again.
It was as though I had him on a string. I extended my hands once more and shouted again. “Come to me!”
This time, I witnessed the tremble that ran through his wings as he responded. As if he fought me.
Clouds appeared out of nowhere, scudding across the moon, driven by a wind that whipped my hair free from my ponytail and sent stray strands dancing around my face.
My dream, my rules. “Talakai!” I shouted his name as I yanked on what I felt coming from inside me, and fed it into the words, “You will come to me!”
His jaws opened, and he shrieked. A strange, half-strangled sound of denial. But his wings brought him to where I stood until he hovered only a few feet from the rock.
“Talakai.” This time, I purred his name and walked until I was right below him. “Come here.”
He hissed at me, but his eyes flared, reflecting his inner chaos. It fired something deep within me, and I gestured to the rock beneath him.
“Down. Now.”
He thumped to the cold stone, his talons shedding sparks as they skidded. This close, I saw how his ribs heaved, his breath sending gouts of steam through his flared nostrils. He towered above me, but every scale shook.
I rode a wave of euphoria, a sense of control that I didn’t understand. But here, in this dream, I was far from powerless.
I looked up into his tortured gaze. I wanted so much more than just to touch him, but the look in his eyes twisted my heart. Instead, my eyes slid to the great wings arched over his back. What must it be like to soar among the clouds?
My hand folded around a forelimb that was larger than my thigh. Electric pulses shot up my arm straight through to my core. He shuddered and tried to pull away, but I tightened my fingers.
“No,” I said.
He froze. His scales were deceptively soft to the touch, but they overlaid muscles as rigid as steel.
Why was my dream portraying him as so resistant? It confused me. But it was my dream, and I wanted to fly. “Take me up there, Talakai.”
His teeth gnashed together, and his lips peeled back from them.
I took a deep breath. “Take me flying.” My voice had deepened, and it rang with an authority I didn’t know I possessed.
Another massive shudder passed through the Dragon, but then he crouched, and bent his foreleg for me to use as a step. I scrambled up onto it and reached for the giant spikes along his spine, up near where his shoulders joined his neck. I squeezed my body between them and gripped the two in front of me.
