Page 30 of Draekora

Alex closed her eyes tight. “This hasgotto be a nightmare. Any minute now I’m going to wake up.”

“The bond between us allows me to understand your language so we can freely communicate,” Xira said, unaware that she was on the verge of a breakdown and couldn’t handle much more. “You’ll also be able to translate all of the dialects I know, which is why you understood Meyarin.”

This is madness, Alex thought, rubbing her temples.

“I know you nearly as well as you know yourself,” Xira went on. “I know your thoughts and how you think. So I believe it will help if you consider theabrassato be like a black hole. It’s a tear in the space-time continuum. The Golden One—the future Aven Dalmarta—found a way to open it and pull me through to your time, which is forbidden. We’re not supposed to mess with time.” Xira’s nostrils flared nervously. “Mother says bad things happen when you mess with time.”

Alex tried to keep a grip on her budding horror as he confirmed what she feared was true. “You’re saying we’re in the past? That’s why everything was messed up back at the palace—why Aven wasn’t on a murderous rampage and none of them knew me?”

Xiraxus bobbed his head again. “Yes. Theabrassabrought us both back to my time.”

Alex wasn’t sure if she wanted to throw up or pass out. In a weak voice she said, “You know, on the list of weird things that have happened to me—and believe me, it’snota short list—this tops the chart.” Her vision started to go fuzzy so she forced herself to inhale a deep, calming breath. “Okay, so I’m in the past. But this isn’t a problem because you can just take me back home using yourabrassathing again. Stranger things have happened, right?” She quickly amended, “To someone else—stranger things have surely happened to someone else.”

Yeah, doubtful.

She shook off her thoughts and stood to her feet, pleased to discover they were only a little unsteady underneath her. “After you fly me back to my time, I say we act like none of this ever happened for the sake of both our sanities. Agreed?”

“Uh…” he said, shifting nervously. “There’s one problem.”

Alex felt certain she wasn’t going to like what he was about to say. But she didn’t get a chance to hear it before a bellowing cry came from overhead, echoing throughout the forest.

“Uh-oh,” Xiraxus whispered, hunching his body with his tail between his legs.

“What wasthat?” Alex demanded.

“Zaronia.” Xira curled even tighter into a ball. “My mother.”

That was all the warning Alex received before a mass the size of a small house fell out of the sky and landed with an earth-shaking thud in the clearing. Alex had thought Xiraxus was huge, but compared to the deep purple draekon before her, he looked like a kitten beside a lion.

“Xiraxus, what have you done?” the purple draekon—Zaronia—all but shouted in a clicking, scratching, rumbling language that Alex effortlessly understood.

“I’m sorry, Mother, I had to,” Xiraxus replied in a whimper. “Alex saved my life.”

The purple draekon stilled and repeated in a deathly quiet voice, “Alex? You know its name?”

Without waiting for a response, Zaronia stretched her massive neck forward until her hulking face neared Alex.

Oh my gosh, she’s going to swallow me whole, Alex thought, frozen to the spot.

Zaronia jerked with shock, reared back and turned startled eyes from Alex to Xiraxus. “You bonded with her,” she said aloud in the common tongue, with something like fear threading through her surprised words. “I can hear her mind—I can see the evidence on her skin—You bonded with amortal! What were youthinking?”

“Mother, I had to,” Xiraxus said again, sounding everything like a petulant teenager. “She would have died in theabrassaotherwise. We travelled too far back for her to survive the time jump on her own.”

Zaronia’s fiery eyes widened even further at that. She released a furious sounding growl. “You brought her through theabrassa?”

“I panicked!” Xiraxus said, jumping to his feet and causing the ground to tremble under Alex. “The Golden One—he pulled me through to her time. He was going to hurt me. But she saved me. I couldn’t let him capture her, but I didn’t have time to move her to safetyandmake it back through the Void. So I… brought her with me.”

Alex had to clap her hands over her ears when Zaronia roared so loudly that the trees all around them shook down to their roots.

Turning on her massive hind legs, Zaronia stomped away from them, only to spin once more and pace back. Three times she did this, huffing with ill-disguised rage.

“Mother—” Xiraxus tried, but he was cut off abruptly when Zaronia snapped her frighteningly large teeth at him.

Suddenly the purple draekon was in front of Alex again—one moment she was pacing, the next she was stationary andwaytoo close for comfort.

“I can’t think with the air so thick down here,” Zaronia said. “The girl must come back with us. I’ll decide what to do with her—what to do with both of you—once we return.”

“Um, sorry to interrupt,” Alex said, speaking up for the first time. Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her, but she felt it imperative to put forth her opinion. “It’s just, I have to get back to my, uh, time. It’s certainly been…memorablemeeting you both, but I’m hoping Xiraxus won’t mind opening up thatabrassathing again and sending me home.” When both draekons looked at her without so much as blinking, she added, “Any minute now works for me.”

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