Page 30 of Surrendering Her Heart

“But I’m right.”

“Yes, my treasure. You are right.”

I snort, shaking my head then sigh.

“An invasion, huh?”

“So it would seem,” he says, surprisingly calm.

“You’re not worried?”

“No,” he says, staring across the rolling dunes.

“Why not?”

He frowns, his brow furrowing, which pulls his horns down too. Impulsively I run my hand along his jaw.

“Tajss provides,” he says. “They will come. That seems certain. I do not know how, but I do know we will be okay.”

“That’s a lot of certainty to put out there into the nothing of the future,” I say.

He turns into me, putting both hands on my waist. He bends his knees just enough to lower himself so our foreheads touch and then he curls his tail around the back of my legs.

“The future is not nothing,” he says.

“There’s nothing there yet, that means it’s nothing.”

“No,” he says. “My treasure, in this you are wrong.”

I narrow my eyes and then arch an eyebrow instead of letting anger and stubbornness fully take over.

“Go on…” I say trailing off with an obvious invitation to dig himself into an even deeper hole.

“Ava, you are brilliant. Strong. Beautiful. But you are not from Tajss, though I believe you areofTajss.”

That leaves me confused so I shake my head.

“What does that mean?”

“When we say Tajss provides, we mean it,” he says. “Not in some mystical manner, or maybe it is. I do not know of such things. What I know is I swore myself to the Order to serve and protect Tajss because I know the planet is aware. We, those of us who areofTajss, are its children.”

“I’m from a generation ship. My ancestors were from Earth, not Tajss,” I counter.

“Your genetics, yes,” he agrees, a half-smile on his lips. “But is that all you are?”

“You’re getting weird,” I say.

“Perhaps,” he says. “Maybe all this is my own imagining, or that of the Zmaj. Maybe we just project onto the world what we want to see or hope is true. But here is what I do know. I love you. I knew it the very first moment I saw you. My dragon laid its claim and that was it.”

“That sounds kind of creepy, if I’m honest,” I say.

“Knowing your love when you see her?”

“I mean, the way you put it, kind of,” I say.

He laughs.

“Then, I am creepy,” he says. “I speak from my heart, my treasure.”

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