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Chapter1

Elsie

The warmth of the soft sand beneath my back is welcome in the cool, dry air.The weather isn’t warm and humid like I’ve grown used to in Lona, and instead of smelling like moss and flowers, the breeze carries a stale, salty scent.

Goosebumps run over my arms under the light fabric of my shirt.I stretch out to better soak up the pleasant heat from the sunbaked beach.Squinting at the misty glare of the white sun, I study the colorless sky.There’s not a pterosaur or cloud in sight.

I’m lying on the shore of a small silver lake with gargantuan trees all around it.The star-shaped leaves are so delicate they’re almost transparent.They catch the pale light twinkling on the branches and sparkling in the reflection of the water.The fallen leaves glitter like a lacy carpet of cobwebs on the ground.The lake isn’t deep because the same trees dot the surface, standing up to their knobby roots in the water.

Betty, my quetzalcoatlus friend, sits close by in the shade of a palm tree, which is such a deep green it almost looks black.She watches me sulkily, her gaze flitting between my face and the weird tadpole-ish thing she’s plucked from the water and tossed next to me.It looks like a giant sperm with catfish barbels and two disproportionately miniscule lizard feet at the front.

“Nope,” I tell Betty.“I’m not going to eat that.”

She extends her giraffe-like neck and pokes the beige-brown, slimy glob with her beak.It wobbles like jelly.

Eww.And I’m definitely not eating it raw.

The tadpole hisses and slashes its tail viciously through the air, kicking up sand as it hits the ground.

“You’d better throw it back in the water.”At the almost dejected way in which Betty hangs her head, I add quickly, “But thanks for wanting to feed me.I appreciate it all the same.”

She lifts her long lashes, blinks innocently with those soft, big eyes, and unceremoniously gobbles up the tadpole.

Gross.

I suppress a shudder as she tucks her head beneath a wing to doze off in the hollow she’s scrubbed for herself in the sand.After a moment, I follow her example and interlink my fingers behind my head to make myself more comfortable and finally process what has happened.

I flew.

I freaking flew.

On a dinosaur’s back, no less.

The knowledge is so unreal and exhilarating that it still feels like a dream.

How much distance did we cover?I have no idea.I only know we were in the air for a long time.The landscape changed from stark iron-blue cliffs and foamy white-capped seas to rolling hills of succulent grass and tree-studded lakes.The vegetation slowly grew denser and darker until it turned into a jungle.We landed in a small clearing next to the water so that Betty could eat and drink.I sensed she was getting tired.

If anyone back home had told me I’d fly across a strange world on a quetzalcoatlus’s back, I would’ve laughed in their faces.How is this even possible?All I had to do to steer Betty in a specific direction was to think where I wanted her to go.Back at the palace, I only had to reach out to her with my mind, and there she was, landing on the balcony.

The strange power zapping like currents of electricity under my skin is responsible for this ability.It’s hard to believe that a short while ago, I lay in a hospital bed in Cleveland, Ohio, while my parents grieved in a corner as a doctor told me I was dying.Just as I was mourning my impending mortality, a circle of lights appeared, and I was sucked onto a different planet, an Earth-like world in what I figure must be a parallel universe.A world where lizard people would’ve gang-raped me and sold me as a slave if a darkly handsome prince with a terrible power hadn’t saved me, claiming that I was his mate.

I take a deep breath and slowly let it out.I’ve been too preoccupied with staying on Betty’s back to dwell on what happened with Aruan, but now I can’t help myself.

We had sex.He took my V-card, only to treat me with a cold, cruel indifference in the aftermath.

My chest tightens as I relive those terrible moments.

He must’ve hated the sex.

For all his claims that I’m fated to be his, we’re clearly not compatible as mates.

At the time, I was too overwhelmed to think clearly.I simply had to get away.What I’ve done only hits me now.

I escaped.

Holy fuck.

I actually did it.