Page 15 of Fated to the Dragon Warlord

I lean into her, rather disliking her present scent, which has changed to something slightly bitter. I slide a finger under her chin and turn her face back to me.

“Sarkarnii,” I rasp. “Our forms have kept us as the top predators, in our galaxy and in this one. Provided you stay by my side, I will always protect you.”

She blinks at me as I release her and straighten.

“As I would protect any creature I find useful,” I add.

Kerra doesn’t reply, but she also doesn’t keep looking at my warriors, an action which was beginning to make my skin itch even more. My heart is pounding and my head swimming. Changes which can only be from the mating gland pumping the mix into my veins.

A mating mix which signals only one thing.

If I don’t mate…if I don’t mate the creature fate has chosen for me, I will lose my mind, my position, and my body.

And yet mating Kerra seems as unlikely as finding my lost jewel.

“Come,” I snarl, motioning to my warriors. “Before Dalox gets here and I have to shed Sarkarnii blood for entering my sector.”

The area on the edge of my sector is mostly scrubland, save for the waving forest of grass which towers over us. I have warriors ahead, pushing through and clearing a path as we make our way to the area which the scanner indicates contains the hoo-mans.

“Why did you tell me you had one friend when you have four?” I ask Kerra.

“Because I only have one,” she says dully. “I don’t know who the others are or why they’d even be here.”

I growl under my breath. This galaxy has various anomalies, the wormhole which brought us here mutated our forms and then closed behind us being one of them. That a group of hoo-mans, a species I’ve never heard of, would suddenly arrive in my sector sends my scales tingling with concern.

I don’t trust it. I don’t trust any of this. And the mating mix makes it harder to work through everything.

“Lord Darax,” the warrior at the front of our party calls out.

I make my way to him. He’s checking his scanner.

“The creatures we seek are just ahead,” he says.

I beckon to Kerra. “Your hoo-mans will need to see you, if what you say is correct.”

“It is,” she says, and before I can stop her, she pushes through the grass ahead and disappears.

Mating mix roars through my veins at her loss. With a snarl that sends my warriors scattering, I dive into the grass after her.

Nothing takes my mate from me, not even the landscape.

KERRA

If Rosalie is in this mass of weird rustling grasses which have to be twenty feet high and smells like a swamp, then I want to be sure she’s the first thing I see, before the Sarkarnii arrive.

After all, my brain still isn’t getting over what I saw in the sky above me.

Dragons.

Not even being abducted by aliens, another supposed myth, could have prepared me for seeingactualdragons.

And then Darax admitted they arealldragonswhen they want to be. It’s basically blown my mind.

Squid aliens aside, I absolutely know I’m as far from home as it’s possible to be if there are dragons here.

Shoving my way through the thick blades of grass, most of them as wide as my head, I’m confronted by an open area where it looks like the vegetation has been plucked from the ground. In the center are a group of women sat on the ground, including, to my utter, utter relief, Rosalie.

“Rosalie!” I call out her name as I run toward them.

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