Page 6 of Bitten in the Wild

“Yeah,” he nodded, taking a sandwich out of his bag.

It was pig and yellow cheese.

“Why complicate it and give it a special name? It’s pig and cheese,” I shrugged, taking it from him.

My dragon had eaten his fair share of wild rabbits, fish, and deer while I was locked away, but every wild dragon knew you didn’t say no to food. Besides, for all I knew they had some pig and cheese exchange custom back where he came from.

“That’s just what it’s called. I think it was probably the way folks differentiated what they were buying from shops or something,” he shrugged, taking a bite of another sandwich from his bag.

I took a bite of the one he handed me. It was just okay. He was a very typical alpha in my experience. He didn’t bother cutting up any veggies to put between the pig and cheese. I’d have to watch after him to ensure he ate properly in the future. Healers were always the worst about things like that.

We ate in silence and my dragon nudged his horns against my ribs. Food was usually one of his favorite things in the universe, but now his mind was on other things and I wasn’t sure how to close the gap to get to where he wanted to be. He let loose a smoke ring inside his inner sanctum and it drifted out of my nose. Mine waved it away and let out a little chuckle. Was his dragon trying to crack through his ribcage too or was that just me? Was it the wildling in me?

I’d left society after I finished high school. I found the quiet in the buzzes and the lulls of nature. I found peace in the sky and on the ground surrounded by mushies. I found everything society couldn’t give me only a few miles from where I’d originally hatched from my egg. My parents still lived in that nest. Every time the hot season rolled round, she laid a clutch. She hadn’t laid another one like me. I checked every time because if the day came, I wanted to guide my sibling through the crazy world the others called society.

“You alright?” Mine asked.

“My dragon isn’t polite,” I shrugged.

“Most aren’t,” he laughed for real this time and the sound wiggled under my scales.

“Society,” I shrugged again, finishing off my sandwich.

“What about it?”

“Dunno.”

“You’re not a dragon of many words, are you?” he arched his brows.

“I know plenty of words.”

“Maybe we got off on the wrong wing,” he said and extended his hand.

I shook it like I learned from the townies, but I held onto it, unwilling to give up the connection to my newly met mate. His eyes dropped to our fingers as they entwined, and he asked my name.

“Nycto,” I said. “Named after the night. My mother gave it to me. Before you asked, yes, I know my scales are brown. She named me that so she could hide me, and it worked for a while.”

“I think most carriers would like to hide their newly hatched babies,” he said. “I’m Izora.”

“Iz-sor-a,” I rolled his name around on my tongue, testing it out. “What does it mean?”

“I’m not sure. My parents never told me, and I don’t think I ever really thought to ask them about it either.”

“Did the war eat them?”

“No, it did not. Their door showed up before that war.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll introduce you to my parents eventually. I go over every Tuesday night for dinner and before you ask, yes, they are aware of when I’m coming over. They don’t call it Tuesday, of course. That’s a townie word. They know it by how many times the sun comes up and goes down.”

Izora didn’t say anything for a long second. My dragon snorted another smoke ring out of my nose. Maybe he was right.Maybe there was only one way to get past the awkward stage of meeting this alien dragon from a whole other world. It was the way dragons had been doing it since the first two mates met in the dead place. So, I dived in head first. Well, lips first.

Mine - Izora - didn’t mind at all. I tossed his name around my brain again as our lips met. I couldn’t call him Mine forever. He had a name after all. His hands roamed up and down my sides. I wasn’t wearing a shirt. No one really wore a shirt around here. They were for decoration mostly. I wasn’t really wearing pants either. My dragon never let me keep much on when it was his turn to take over. So, Izora’s thumbs played at the waistband of my boxers as our tongues licked and danced between our mouths. He pulled me closer, nearly onto his lap, his fingertips digging into my hips as if he meant to leave behind fingerprints to mark his territory.

As we kissed, I wiggled out of my boxers and shoved them through the trapdoor down into the house underneath my nest. I lost enough clothes because of my inner beast. Soon, I’d have to go to town again to get more and I wanted to put that off for as long as possible. Maybe going to town with Izora wouldn’t be so bad, but town was town and a handful of strange dragons wasn’t going to change it all that much.

His eyes raked down my naked torso to my hard dick. The pressure had been building inside me since the moment I smelled him in the forest. Our game of cat and mouse only made me want him that much more.

“Like what you see?” I asked and his eyes flickered back to mine.

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