Page 67 of Ensnared

I punch his shoulder. “Stop.”

He turns toward me slowly, his eyes capturing mine. “I mean it, Liz.”

“No way.” I sigh. “Listen, dragons don’t even feel emotions like we do. They don’t love or desire or long for things. They don’t have compassion or disappointment, either. He told me that himself.”

“You think they can’t learn?”

I shrug. “I think emotion’s something you may learn about, but I don’t think you can really grow into emotions. You just feel them or you don’t.”

“You’re saying they’re all indestructible, maniacal sociopaths.”

“Maybe.” I’d never thought of it like that. “I don’t think they form connections in the same way that we do. He watches me with Sammy and Coral and Jade sometimes, and he looks genuinely surprised that we show affection to one another.”

“They have families, though, right?”

I shrug. “He hasn’t said much about it. I think Prince Azar has a father. I definitely heard that somewhere, so yeah, I guess they must. But I don’t think they resemble ours very much.”

“We need to get you out of Houston ASAP,” Gideon says. “You have so much to teach our commanders.”

I’d actually been lamenting the opposite, that I felt like I’d learned nothing. I suppose I hadn’t compared it to what I’d know if I’d only been battering myself against the dragons in military applications.

But the idea of telling some general everything I’ve learned about Axel feels. . .wrong. “I do think they really just want to find this thing they need and leave. Why do we keep attacking them over and over?”

“They dropped in and just took Houston,” Gideon says. “Do you hear yourself?”

“Yes, but most of the deaths have been caused by us attacking them, right? I’m just saying, maybe if we helped them find what they came for, they could leave without turning every city into Houston.”

“That red dragon is the problem,” Gideon says. “It’s eating warheads, apparently, and it flies faster than our jets.” He drops to a whisper. “But we’ve discovered that there’s only that one. If we take him out. . .” He shrugs. “We think we can take the others down.”

“Azar is Axel’s best friend,” I say.

Gideon’s brow furrows. “You met him.”

“And?”

“And you said your death would incapacitate Axel for days,” he mutters. He frowns. “When we get back, you can’t tell anyone that fact.”

“They’ll hear that I’m ensnared,” I say. “Obviously they have to?—”

He shakes his head. “You can’t tell them, Liz. Promise me.”

“Why not?”

“They’re desperate,” he says. “They’re running scared. If you tell them your dragon’s connection to Azar, if you say you’ve met him, if you mention that Axel values you, they might kill you to wound him. Or they might send you back with some kind of crazy plan to kill Azar yourself.”

Why didn’t I think of that already? If Azar’s the key to their dominance, I should already have considered whether I could take him out.

“You’ve already killed three times the number of dragons any other individual has ever killed.”

“Actually, Azar might have one weakness they could use.” I’m so stupid for not thinking of this before. “The dragons have this downtime they have to take once a week.”

Gideon’s eyes light up.

“They have to, I don’t know, process the gases they breathe or something. They’re vulnerable during that brief few moments.”

“We have to escape in the next day or two,” Gideon says. “Not just to escape the nuclear attack, but also so you can tell them about this.”

“There’s no way to know when it’ll happen,” I say.