Page 18 of Accidentally a Dragon Daddy

I needed answers.

“Where are you going?” the senior palace guardsman asked I brushed past him and out of the room, heading deeper into the palace and the cave below, the only thing on my mind a perfect pair of brown eyes.

“To do something really stupid.”

Chapter Ten

Elanya

I reached out without thinking, clutching the hands of one of the other women as the huge door rumbled upward for the third time.

“It’ll be okay,” someone whispered. “We’ll be okay. Just breathe.”

By then, we all knew what would happen. A dragon would emerge from the darkness beyond the door and move forward into the giant cavern. It would shift into a man, and a third woman would be taken.

Above us, in the depths of the dark underground cave, other dragons sat perched on ledges, staring down. Watching us. I didn’t know who they were, but none of them had made a move to come down to the cavern floor. Instead, it was as if they were there only to watch. Perhaps to judge the other dragons?

Movement brought my attention back to the door, and a huge cobalt blue-scaled dragon emerged into the dim lighting. It’s golden-yellow eyes appraised the line of human women. There had been eight of us as first, shoved into a small room, given mere moments to acclimate to that before we’d been shoved into the huge cave.

Then the first dragon had emerged. My heart still hadn’t calmed from seeing it transform into a human. None of us had known they could do that. To the best of my ability, nobody knew they could do such a thing.

It answered a lot of the “How the hell will this mating thing work?” questions we’d all had.

“You.”

I looked around to see who the dragon was referring to, his deep, powerful voice easily carrying across the cavern. When the other women edged away from me, I swallowed nervously.

“M-Me?” I asked, stumbling over the word as my heart leaped into my throat, muscles constricting, making it hard to breathe even as my heartbeat soared.

“Let’s go,” the dragon-man said. At some point, he’d shifted into his human form, and now, he crooked the fingers of his right hand at me.

I shuffled forward, more than a little reluctant to leave the false safety of the other women. None of us knew what happened after we left the chamber. It was all unknown.

“Well, hurry up,” the dragon-man growled, his lips pulling back in disdain. “No point in stalling. It won’t get you anywhere.”

I looked back over my shoulder. The other women had huddled together after my departure, watching fearfully as I was taken from them, each one knowing they could be next. Each one hoping perhaps the terrible dream would finally end.

Did the dragons know none of us wanted to be there? That we hadn’t volunteered. That, instead, we’d had been sent against our wills?

“My” dragon was a tall man with a slightly narrow face accentuated by a short dagger-beard. His hair was some shade of brown. Though, in the dimness, it was impossible to tell what, just like his eyes. I thought they were some shade of green-blue, but I couldn’t be sure.

He didn’t speak again as we left the cavern and walked through a tunnel with even less light than the cavern. I assumed we were heading for the surface, but I only guessed that because the ground sloped upward.

“You can see just fine in this?” I asked finally after the silence had dragged on too long. I wanted to be meek and not draw attention to myself, but that just wasn’t who I was. There were too many questions that needed answers.

“Yes.”

The answer was more grunted than spoken. I opened my mouth to say more, but a speck of light ahead revealed what I hoped was the end of the tunnel. I started considering other options, instead. Ones that might result in a better outcome. Ones that didn’t end with me becoming a dragon dinner.

After all, I’d spent plenty of time evading dragons. What was a little more time? If I could just escape, I could lose myself in one of the cities and take my time working my way toward the border. It wouldn’t be easy, but if anyone could do it, I could. All I had to do—

We reached the entrance to the tunnel, and all my plans tumbled down as I stared at the scene before me.

“Welcome to the Dragon Isles,” the dragon-man rumbled, waving a hand at the miles of coastline visible in the distance, with waves crashing down against them and the smell of sea-salt infusing the air.

I was so caught up in despair I failed to notice it was the first polite thing he’d said.

We were on an island. An island filled with dragons. There was no way I was escaping, not when I didn’t know where we were. Which meant I was stuck with dragon-man.

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