Page 18 of Court of Rivals (Their Dragon Rider #1)

We take off into the sky, and then more dragons fill the training yard, and more riders climb onto their dragons’ backs.

Overhead, we circle the academy, catching the warm summer breeze.

I stick my arms out and close my eyes, loving the feeling of the wind rushing around me.

It’s strange, up here I feel safer, and more like I belong, than anywhere I’ve ever been in my life. And I love my home.

“Okay!” Prince Gareth shouts. “Formation one!”

The dragons fly, moving to line up behind Ebron and I, then spread out behind us.

Prince Gareth’s dragon is directly behind us, Prince Lucien and Prince Alaric’s dragons are next to each other behind him, and all the other dragons are behind them, spreading out in lines that goes wider the further you go back.

“No! No!” Gareth shouts, pointing at me. “You’re in the back.”

“Let’s move,” I tell Ebron, feeling nervous.

He circles around, and all the dragons fly behind him in perfect formation. No matter where we go, they follow behind us, making us the front of the formation.

The big dark-haired human keeps trying to get the dragons to listen to him. Ebron says with amusement.

“And what are the dragons saying?”

The dragons do not speak to him much, but their actions are clear. They follow me. Not him.

“Then what do we do? We’re supposed to be training.”

Then, let’s train.

Ebron begins flying faster and faster. He soars along the coastline, then begins to duck and dive between the mountains.

Behind us, the female dragons fly in perfect formation.

Whether Ebron slows or flies faster, they follow.

He dives down to skim the treetops, then darts straight up in the air.

I’m clinging on for dear life, my face chapped from the wind.

“Higher!” I shout as we pass the clouds and come exploding out from above them.

He seems to reach his peak, then simply falls back down the earth, nearly smacking into one dragon after another as he falls down, just barely catching himself before he hits the treetops once more.

We dart back towards the ocean. I think I hear Prince Gareth shouting behind me, but I can’t be sure, with the wind whistling around me.

We dive low above the ocean. His wings clip the water, sending mists of water coating my skin. He rotates slightly onto his side, and I take a chance to let my hand skim the water.

“ Wooa ! Wooa !” I shout, like my soul is taking a deep breath.

We do a bunch of moves that seem weird. But as I watch them, I get the sense that we’re fighting an imaginary foe.

We move, duck, dive, never sticking with one movement for long.

My thighs are starting to hurt from gripping Ebron so hard, and my hands are sore from holding onto his scales.

Dragon riding is hard work. Harder than I imagined.

It’s not so much sitting here as it is fighting for your life to stay on.

I really have to get one of those saddles.

We dive up, and then we suddenly start diving down.

Ready for a dip?

I grip onto him tighter. “Ready!”

He dives down into the ocean and the cold water hits me like a brick wall. If I hadn’t been warned, I might have struggled not to drown, but I hold my breath until I don’t think I can hold it any longer, and then Ebron shoots us right back out of the water.

Wet, the cold wind stinging my skin, I laugh. “That was amazing!”

Looking behind me, I watch as one after another female dragon pops right out of the water. Some of the smaller ones struggle a bit more to escape the water, but before long, we’re all back in the air.

I feel… alive. Alive and free. Maybe I wasn’t born to be a dragon rider, but my soul was meant for greater things than just the earth and walking on my two feet. This is everything I never knew I wanted and more.

Time to head back. The females are getting tired, Ebron says, his tone amused.

“Are you tired?”

Never , he has a sharp bark of laughter. But the male dragon riders are tired too. Tired and grumpy. I don’t think they enjoyed our dip in the water.

“Ugh,” I say, already preparing myself for a fight.

We land in the training yard, and the princes land beside me. Their dragons are the only ones who managed to stay right behind us throughout all the training. I use Ebron’s wing to get off my dragon and start heading for my room for a much needed bath and meal.

“Harper!” Prince Gareth shouts behind, and it’s the kind of shout that makes all the hairs on your body stand on end.

I whirl around, fists clenched, pretty sure no one has ever made the prince this angry before.

He storms up to me. His pretty dark hair soaking wet and falling over one eye. His bare chest covered in a layer of water that gleams back at me. “What the fuck was that?”

I tear my gaze from his very delicious-looking chest. “What?”

He grabs me by the arm and hauls me against him. “That was reckless, immature, stupid, and selfish. Do you have any idea the danger you put all of us in today?”

Glancing up, it’s strange to see the storm brewing in his deep blue eyes. “I didn’t do anything. Ebron led the other dragons, and they followed.”

“But you’re not the leader,” he shouts into my face. “I’m the leader. You and Ebron need to follow me.”

I try not to flinch with the full force of his anger leveled at me. “Your dragons wanted to follow him, so they followed him.”

“Fuck!” he shouts, his mouth inches from mine. “How can you possibly be this careless? This stupid?”

Something warm hums in my lower belly. Something I don’t understand.

There’s movement to my side. Prince Lucien and Prince Alaric are watching, but based on the looks on their faces, they both agree with Prince Gareth. Great, I won’t find any allies with them.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. If you want to lead the dragons, then you find a way to get them to follow you. That has nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you,” he growls.

“Ebron decided–”

“That’s exactly it, you’re letting your dragon decide.

That can’t happen. In battle, it’s imperative that your dragon obey you.

I’ve never seen such a strange relationship between human and dragon before, but you need to get something through your thick skull.

Ebron is not your friend. He is not your equal.

He’s a tool you use for battle. The dragons understand this.

Just as the Hollowborn are our enemies, the bone wyrm are theirs.

This system works because we have a shared enemy.

Because we’re the brains and they’re the brawns. ”

I don’t know what to say. “I’ll talk to Ebron–”

“Fuck!” Prince Lucien shouts from nearby, stray long blond hairs dripping with water down his face. “She doesn’t get it.”

Prince Alaric gives me a look. “You don’t need to talk to your dragon, you just need to do better. You need to lead him.”

I glance over at Ebron. To my surprise, his focus seems to be on the white, gold, and silver dragons. For a second I wonder if this means they’re the three he might pick as his mates, but then Prince Gareth jerks my arm again.

“And that stunt in the water… never fucking do something like that again.”

“As dragon riders, don’t we need to be prepared for everything?” Ebron didn’t dive into the water for fun, he dove into the water because he thought it would help with our training. There must have been a reason why.

“ So help me, Harper, ” he whispers, teeth clenching. “If you can’t be the leader your dragon needs, I will ignore my father, I will ignore what Ebron ‘wants,’ and I will claim him for myself.”

I step onto my tiptoes. “Let’s see how that works out for you.”

My bet… Ebron will leave him a charred mess as a reminder to the other riders that he’s not just a tool. He’s a living being with thoughts and feelings of his own. And people who don’t respect that, well, things won’t end well for them.

“You’ll see,” he says, softly.

I yank free of his grip and step back. “If you want things to change with Ebron and I, you all need to stop with the dick measuring contest and actually teach us something. Tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing, so we actually learn.”

Prince Gareth crosses his arms in front of his chest. “If you were cut out for this, I wouldn’t need to tell you what to do, you’d have trained all your life and know what to do.”

I roll my eyes. “You know that ego of yours is going to be your downfall.”

Turning, I walk away, feeling their gaze blazing into my back.

No, things are not going the way I planned when I agreed to come here with Ebron, but their hate is only driving me harder.

These idiots are going to be damned surprised when I become a better dragon rider than any of them ever thought they could be. I’m sure of it.