Page 35 of Bred By the Dragon

“That nickname.” He fixes his gaze on me again, and it frightens me. I’m afraid of how hard and steely those reptilian eyes have suddenly become. “I don’t like it.”

“Zak?” I ask, and his shoulders rise up stiffly around his neck. “Oh. I’m sorry. I...” I blink back the hurt. He doesn’t like it? Why didn’t he tell me before? “I won’t call you that again.”

“Thank you,” he says, but his voice is rough. He goes past me, out through the curtain that keeps his bedroom walled off, and doesn’t look back. “I’ll fly you home now.”

It’s not a question. I watch Zakarion stalk away, and then I follow him, biting my lip so I don’t cry. I’m just trying to do what’s right for both of us, but I know I’ve hurt him.

We fly in silence, me sitting atop his back with my arms wrapped around myself because I’m freezing. I don’t lean forward and cuddle into him like I did on the way here. No, I keep a polite distance between us, because Zak—no, Zakarion—has made it clear that “polite” is where we stand now.

I try to make friendly conversation for a few minutes, but when he gives me monosyllabic answers, I give up. We fly for some time in silence, and I let a few of my stopped-up tears flow. I’ve never seen Zakarion so... cold. It’s like a wall of ice between us.

But I’m annoyed at him, too. What did he expect? We had an agreement when we began all of this, to protect us from this very thing.

Ahead, the wilderness gives way to civilization, and I know that I’m almost home.

Zakarion easily finds his way to my house and lands in my front yard. I slide off his back without any help or fanfare. When I peer up at him, his face is expressionless and impossible to read.

“I’ll call you,” I say meekly. “When I take a test next week.”

He gives a sharp nod. “That would be ideal.”

That’s it. That’s all. I bite my lip as he looks up at the sky.

“I had better go before these clouds move in,” he says, though I have a very hard time believing that a light snow would affect a dragon’s flight.

“Oh,” I say stupidly. “Okay.”

He lets out a deep sigh, and when he peers down at me, his eyes look infinitely sad.

“Thank you for doing this for dragons like me,” he says. “Be well.”

And with that, he flaps his huge wings, and the gust almost knocks me over. He rises up into the sky, then zooms away—leaving me with nothing but an emptiness in my chest.

ZAKARION

I decide to stay close by to wait for Sammy’s phone call. Most likely I’ll have to sell off this house soon, but I will keep it until my hatchling is born so I can be near her while she carries it.

That will be torture, but she has made it clear that “close by” is all she wants from me. That was what we both agreed on. When I land, though, I am irrationally angry. Rarely in my life have I felt true anger, but right now I can’t escape how monumentally unjust it is.

Why would Sammy have been placed in front of me that day, on that bench at DreamTogether, if this is how it was supposed to turn out?

Friend. That is how she sees me: as her friend. Despite everything we’ve done, all the ways we’ve connected, how I’ve felt her heart beating so close to mine, I am not an option for her romantically.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. She’s human. We have very little in common. Surely once she’s finished with her obligation to me, she will move on with her life, find a human companion, and perhaps have a family of her own. One day, she will have a child who sits on that swing set out front of her house.

At the idea of someone else in Sammy’s life, the flames have built up so fierce in my chest that I have to let them out or risk hurting myself. I blow a hole straight through my wall, and someone outside shrieks as my fire shoots out into the sky.

Fuck. I can’t afford to get that fixed.

I wish I’d never met Sammy, so I didn’t have to know what it was like to love her and not get to keep her.

I sleep and sleep, the way dragons do to pass the time. I plan on continuing this way, until my hatchling is born, and then my life will be consumed by raising my new offspring. Then I can devote all my waking hours to caring for it.

When my phone rings, I already know what Sammy is going to tell me.

“Zak!” she cries. “I mean, I’m sorry, Zakarion! Guess what, guess what?”

“What?” I ask, although I’m quite sure of the answer I’m going to get. We’ve managed to conceive.

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