Page 28 of Bred By the Dragon

I nod slowly, then turn away. “All right,” I agree. If she has put on her professional face, then there is little more for us to say.

Without a further goodbye—I don’t want to drive the knife even deeper into my own chest—I extend my wings and flap, taking off into the sky.

But leaving her feels heavy, and I wish I hadn’t said anything at all.

I fly home slowly, making lazy circles through the air, trying to remember how wonderful it was to make love to Sammy and not how miserable it feels now.

Already, I miss her. I hated seeing that fake smile on her face, the one that doesn’t reach her eyes, and wish that we could go back to lying on the blanket, talking about our lives.

I try to remember that we’ve been very intimate as a part of this process, and how I feel about her is driven by an instinctual need to bond. It’s not real. She’s human, small, and fragile. She wants a human partner someday, maybe children to play on those ancient swings.

I am not the fulfillment she’s looking for, and she’s not that for me, either. She will only live another sixty, perhaps seventy years, while I would go on for many more centuries after that.

Or worse, I would follow her into the darkness beyond as my father followed my mother, leaving our hatchlings alone as I was.

When I return to my house in the city, I don’t keep up with my eating, choosing instead to sleep as a means of passing the time. A week goes by in a flash, even though my stomach is grumbling whenever I open my eyes. I think it’s a Friday when my phone rings.

It’s Sammy.

I answer quickly. “Hi, how are you?”

She hesitates before answering. “I’m fine, thank you!” she says, with that fake sunny tone. “Bad news, though. Negative.”

I sigh. Perhaps this is truly all a pointless effort.

“But I’ll test again next week, and if it’s still negative, we can meet up on the full moon again!” She sounds so optimistic.

“Sammy,” I begin. We should stop doing this, before my feelings for her grow even more. If we haven’t succeeded yet, surely it wasn’t meant to be.

“Perhaps we should try somewhere else,” she barrels on. “You said the other dragons who conceived were able to do it at home? That might be the answer.”

I bite back what I was about to say, that we should quit now and give up. She’s right. “I suppose we could do it at my house,” I say. I could bring her into my big nest of pillows when I put one of my cocks in her. She would probably like that.

“Is that where you live? A house?” She hums. “Is that where your hoard is?”

“No, that’s at my mountain.” The mountain is my true home, really. “It’s far away.”

“And how long have you lived there?”

I wonder where she’s going with this. “All my life,” I say cautiously. “I was born there.”

“Ding ding ding!” she cries into the phone, and I have to pull it away from the side of my head to protect my hearing. “That’s the place we’re supposed to do it, Zak! Obviously!”

“Obviously?” I ask, perplexed.

“Duh! That’s your home. It’s where you’re likely to be most comfortable, with ideal temperature and humidity. If your parents were able to reproduce there, then you should be able to, as well.”

“Oh,” I say stupidly. She has a very valid point.

Sammy squeals. “I think we solved it! If we have sex at your mountain, under the full moon, I bet it’ll work.”

I can’t believe the thought never even crossed my mind. I’ve been too distracted by my emotions lately. But if she comes to my mountain, she’ll see my hoard—everything my ancestors have collected over the years. My most intimate place.

My heart stutters at the idea of what it would mean to me to share that with her, to show her my history.

“When is the next full moon?” I ask.

“Three weeks.”

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