He hesitated, and then he confessed, “Because I am afraid this has all been nothing but a dream. That I will wake up, and you—you will be gone.”
I met his gaze, and saw the very real fear deep within it, and myheart twisted. “It wasn’t your fault that I didn’t know what we were getting into.”
He snorted softly. “You were right to be angry. I should have made sure you understood.”
I laughed. “Yeah, well, comments like ‘Let’s mate for life’, and ‘you can have my dragonlets’ would have been serious buzz kill at the time.”
“Buzz, Kill?” he asked.
“Offputting. Ruin the moment.” I ran my fingers along his jaw. “Anyway, I’m not going anywhere,” I stated emphatically. “So go to sleep. We have hours in slipstream before we get to Earth.”
I stroked along the underside of his muzzle, where the scales were small and smooth. By the fourth time drifting my hands over him, his gleaming eyes closed. He lay his head down alongside me, and sighed. Moments later, his breathing steadied.
I nestled against him, intending to sleep as well. But although I was exhausted, the heat radiating from him revealed just how sick he really was.
It worried me so much that I couldn’t do more than doze as the slipstream carried us home…
By the time the slipstream spat us out, Zyair was burning up. His wings and talons were so hot I could no longer touch them. At some point in the last few hours, he’d stopped responding to me and had fallen into a coma.
My heart was breaking. He was slipping away, and there was nothing I could do.
Rhodes and Xandros exchanged a meaningful look as they assessed him. Rhodes vanished to the bridge, while Xandros curled up with us.
They hadn’t needed to speak. Their worry radiated along the link.
The Nipslep slipstream port spat us out where we’d begun this adventure—in Earth’s solar system, but still hours from my home world.
Hours from Amelia.
I still lay in Zyair’s arms. When I ran my hands over his closed lids, there was no response.
Xandros tucked himself tighter against me as he lay with us. “He is strong, little drifter. We are almost there.”
I leaned into him, hoping with all my heart that it was true. As the hours passed, I sensed Zyair fading. Being strong wasn’t enough.
Rhodes must have known it, even from the bridge. “I am bringing us right into the compound near the mountain,” he announced.
“That is risky,” hedged Xandros.
“Azrome ordered it,” Rhodes countered.
That seemed to settle it for Xandros. Minutes later, the engines altered their roar, and the repulsors came online. Rhodes set us down with a bit of a bump.
It was a sign of how concerned Xandros was that he didn’t criticize. Rhodes appeared briefly at the door.
“Stay here. I will get her.”
He didn’t have to elaborate on who “her” was. I rested my forehead against Zyair’s scaled cheek. Even it burned against my skin.
Rhodes reappeared so quickly that I knew Amelia had been waiting for us to land. I looked past him, to another Drake—almost as tall as Rhodes, with the same narrow features, but more heavily muscled and with Zyair’s red-gold hair. The clan tattoo on his face gleamed almost gold, and he wore a broad metal band around his throat.
Azrome.
Beside him was a beautiful, shapely woman with long golden hair, and eyes that glinted a metallic version of the same color. She was clad in gleaming pale scales that hugged her every curve.
Rhodes introduced Amelia and Azrome.
I managed to sketch a smile at her, but she understood me perfectly—with a small smile of her own, she walked straight up to Zyair and laid her hands on the side of his head.
