Page 35 of That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human
His hold tightened with each word until he was squeezing the breath from my lungs. My feet left the ground as he held me tighter. I tugged at his wrist, but it didn’t budge.
“She can’t breathe, Dante,” Alexis called out.
He gasped and released me. I dropped to my knees and gulped in precious air. Dante backed away further and put his hands behind his back.
“We need to work on your hugs,” I coughed.
“Cherry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize I wasn’t curbing my strength.”
I waved him off, silencing his nervous apology. I was starting to think I needed to add my own chapter on dragons toThe Book Of Beasts. Fact number one: dragons are very strong. “Yeah, I know. Look, just call off your vendetta against the harpies and I’ll call it even.”
He tilted his head, clearly bewildered at my request. “They could have killed you.”
“Yeah, so could any predator. Or a really enthusiastic flamingo. Humans aren’t that hard to kill. Are you going to wipe out all flamingos on the off-chance one tries something?”
He looked away and shifted on his feet as if considering.
“Dante,” I warned.
“Fine,” he scowled, crossing his arms. The storm surrounding us had simmered down to a dark overcast. Judging by his distemper over my unwillingness to let him commit bird genocide, I think that’s as good as we were going to get.
Fact number two: dragons are fucking dramatic.
“Let’s get you back to camp,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. “I have some Kiboon honey we can put on your hands. It should soothe the burn.”
“What about Rebekah?” I asked. He kept a wide berth between us as we made our way back to the beach.
Dante lifted a branch out of my path and guided me through. But I couldn’t help but notice the way he flattened himself against the tree to avoid touching me. “We’ll leave some food out for her. She’ll come back if she doesn’t want to be left behind.”
“Who’s Rebekah?” Alexis asked, coming to float at my side.
“She’s a little white ball of fluff about this big,” I said, widening my hands to show the length of the little kitten.
“Oh, you mean that freakish horror creature?” she asked. “I saw it run off just before you showed up.”
Her eyes may have been a little beady but calling the kitten a freakish horror creature seemed like a bit much. “I mean, it’s a cat.”
“Hehe, sure it is,” Alexis said.
For a man on the brink of exhaustion, Dante sure was determined not to stay still. I shifted on my feet awkwardly, unsure of what to do. The dragon-shifter busied himself with setting out food for Rebekah and setting up camp. Any attempt at helping was met with him herding me back onto the blanket he’d set by the fire.
“I’m getting dizzy just watching him,” Alexis whispered to me.
So was I. The inhuman speed he used to move around the beach was hard to follow. Instead, I settled myself down by the folding table he’d set up and picked at the food. All of which he had arranged in a tasteful display, complete with a small vase with fresh flowers. Where the flowers came from was an absolute mystery.
“How do you two know each other?” I asked.
The sword sank herself a few inches into the sand and let out a contented sigh. “We helped fuck up a sexist cult together. He’s good people.”
Of all the ways I thought she was going to answer that statement, fucking up a sexist cult was not one of them. “So, he saved people then?”
“Yup. The cult was full of a bunch of gross men nobody wanted to bang, so they stole a bunch of women to sacrifice to a giant lobster. It was wild. On a good note, we managed to get all the victims out safely and I was able to steal their magic and gain the ability to move.”
I narrowed my eyes at the sword in the sand, yet her lack of a face made it kind of hard to tell if she was serious. “Are… are you messing with me?”
She laughed. “I swear on my creator, it’s all true.”
I sat down beside her and mulled over her story. It sounded like the weird ramblings of someone on too much ganja. Yet when I considered the fact that I was chatting with a cursed sword, while a dragon set up camp, it didn’t seem so far-fetched. If the sword was telling the truth, then maybe Dante wasn’t such a bad guy. “I think I’m gonna give him a shot,” I whispered to Alexis.
