Page 43 of Training my Human

The blanket Maddox included in my supplies was wrapped around me snug enough, and yet I shivered. Blame the fever. Or perhaps trepidation was more the cause.

The hunters had found me.

Almost captured me.

I didn’t doubt their nefarious intentions, but I’d proven wilier than them, despite fighting off the lethargy of the molting. A fatigue that caught up to me and led to me sleeping well past twilight.

By now, Pip would have returned home. Did those miscreants lie in wait for my human servant? I would be most vexed if they harmed her. Yet, while my belly now rumbled with flame, I lacked the size and strength to do anything to protect her. I’d barely escaped myself. If I hadn’t somehow sped up my transformation to the next level of my evolution, I’d be in a cage—or worse.

One thing that did please me? Of all the gifts a dragon could expect, I’d gotten the classic fire breathing. My inherited knowledge informed it was one of five possibilities—the others being acid, wind, lightning, or water, which sometimes emerged as ice.

As for my newly unfettered wings? They lay folded along my spine, still dewy from emergence. It would take a bit of time before the membrane toughened and the tendons strengthened enough to give me true flight. Once that occurred, I’d have to practice, which might prove difficult. Already I knew there would be no returning to the trailer. My enemies would be watching.

Thankfully, Maddox’s plan to have a rendezvous point that acted as a safe cave proved smart. When Pip discovered me missing, she would know where to join me.

If the malefactors didn’t get their hands on her first.

The passage of time proved interminable as I waited. No television to bore me. No books to feed my mind. Nothing but my thoughts and rumbling belly. The snacks beckoned, but I’d already eaten a bag of beef jerky and a chocolate bar. With limited food supplies, I needed to ration, a horrible thing for a growing dragon.

If I didn’t feel so weak after the events of the day, I might have dared to hunt. I’d smelled many warm-blooded yummies on my flight to the cave. It would be exciting to track and capture my own meals and eat fresh. Humans had a tendency to cook everything through and through, except for steak. For some reason, slightly singed on both sides was acceptable to them.

What I wouldn’t do for a steak right now…

I needed to turn my mind away from food. It only made my hunger more pronounced.

I let my mind mull over something Graytemples and the woman had said. Something about an incident in South America and the allusion they’d captured a dragon. Had they hatched from my same clutch, or did they belong to a rival? Did it matter? In this world overrun with humans, dragons might want to think about banding together, lest we be wiped out. I wondered how I could find these other dragons. Had all of them been taken captive, or did some live free?

So many questions and no way of getting answers. The annoyance of it led to me eating another bag of jerky. Then a bag of sour gummies. I slaked my thirst in the puddle that existed down one of the narrow passages, fed by the drips of stalactites above.

The fever passed as I waited, my body returning to a more normal temperature, though still hotter than that of a human, and hotter than before now that I had fire in my belly. A fire that simmered in the back of my throat and wanted nothing more than to spew as my keen hearing caught noise coming from below.

Had my enemies found me?

My tension eased at a whispered, “Abaddon? You up there?”

My protector had come! The elation filling me might be unseemly for one of my elevated stature, yet I couldn’t help it. If Maddox lived, then surely Pip did, too.

I crept from the cave and glanced down to see the large man wearing the darkest of clothes. He’d even smeared his face to match, giving him the ability to blend with the shadows, but my discerning gaze spotted him.

I leaned over the ledge and called out. “I’m here.”

“Are you injured?” he asked.

“No.”

“Thank fuck. We were worried about you, bud. What happened?”

Rather than reply, I had my own query. “Where’s Pip?” For I neither saw nor scented her.

“She’s at my place making sure any spies don’t realize I’ve come to fetch you.”

“She is safe?” My relief was because I wouldn’t have to train another servant and nothing else. Dragons didn’t form attachments to humans.

“For now, but I don’t want to leave her alone for too long. I’ve already been gone almost three hours.”

“It doesn’t take that long to hike to the cave,” I pointed out.

“It does when you first have to sneak out of your building, drive somewhere no one will think to look, and hike in the dark with a GPS-created map that keeps losing a signal.”

---