I’d never seen my dragon freeze before.
Goosebumps rose on my arms.
‘Donavyn!’He sounded awed.
‘What is it?’
‘You need to be here. Come directly to me—keep me between you and her. Quickly.’
With a muttered order to the men around me not to let any more dragons or people down into the bowl, I started down the incline towards the center.
‘Tell me. What’s the problem? Is she hurt? Does she have young?’It seemed impossible—dragon babies incubated in the hatching ground for almost a year. But maybe the missing eggs were being laid outside the Eeyre? Perhaps she’d mated with a feral dragon and now was bringing her baby home?
My heart rose. If she’d done it, chances were, others were also. Perhaps this was our answer! But Kgosi didn’t answer me, which was his polite way of telling me I was wrong. And that only made me more tense as I jogged to his side, slowing and dropping my chin to reassure her when the female lifted her head and her nostrils flared.
Kgosi crooned again—and shot me a look.
“I won’t harm you or anyone with you,” I said clearly, but softly. Her dragon ears could hear my heartbeat. “I belong to Kgosi.”
The female fluttered her wings again, and I caught a quick glimpse of something rumpled and curled in the crook of her foreleg, but it was there and gone too quickly.
‘Move slowly, but come,’Kgosi urged me, his nostrils flaring and pinching, flaring and pinching.
Finally, I made it to her shoulder and laid a hand flat on the thick muscle there. Her skin quivered like a horse trying to rid itself of a fly and her head whipped around, so that I suddenly stood in the circle of her long neck. She stared down at me with a wide eye, the slash of her pupil contracted. Yet, she didn’t hiss.
Kgosi crooned one more time and nudged at her wing. She grunted, but with a final warning look at me, she lifted it.
I saw crumpled, dirty cotton and a small smear of blood on a forearm. A very small forearm.
What in the world?
I took one step closer, frowning, because my eyes couldn’t make sense of—
Kgosi rumbled as the arm drew back and a head popped up from behind the dragon’s thick foreleg. A pair of wide, haunted eyes opened, then locked on me under a head of hair so messy it looked like a bird's nest perched on top of a boulder.
Her.Herhair was so messy.
The person with the dragon was aher.Was she a child? Had her father been Chosen and the dragon brought the child along?
“You’re safe,” I said quietly. “You’re safe here. No one will hurt you. But tell me, are you injured? I could take you to a healer—”
‘No!’Kgosi snapped in the link, his head swinging around as the female hissed and smoke plumed from her nostrils.
I raised my hands to reassure them both of my submission, but addressed Kgosi because he was Primarch.
‘I need to see if she’s been hurt. There’s obviously something wrong. How did she get here—and why is the female protecting her? Where is her Flameborne? Did he fall? Is she confused?’
But Kgosi shook his head like a dog, his neck snaking as he snorted his unease.
‘She is Chosen. She is bonded. The girl, Donavyn… sheisthe Flameborne.’
4. Flameborne
~ DONAVYN ~
What. The actual.Fuck?!
Forgetting the precarious tension with the female, I whirled to meet my dragon’s eye. “Keg, that’s not possible—”
