Page 35 of Entwined

“My uncle had horses. Never mind,” I say.

“I wasn’t afraid—it took great effort for me to leave. What I wanted to do was eviscerate that guy and then incinerate his remains.”

“Because of one little kiss? Really?”

Axel’s frown is intense.

I can’t help wondering whether it’s just the dragon’s natural possessiveness combined with our tighter bond. . .or whether he might actually care about me.

Which is stupid.

Delusional, really.

He’s a beast.

I have to do a better job of remembering that fact.

“What are you going to do tomorrow when?—”

Axel slides closer. “We aren’t doing the mating with others thing now,” he says. “We’re going to Iceland so I’ll have news to report about the heart.”

“What if it’s nothing? What if we get there and you still don’t have anything to share?” I ask. “What then?”

He inhales.

“How bad would it be if your father came here?”

“For Earth?” he asks. “Or for me?”

“I didn’t realize there was a difference.”

Axel stands up and begins to pace. “My father assigned me to handle the return for a very particular reason, Liz.”

“Which was?”

“There was a stupid prophecy surrounding the last egg to hatch.”

“Wait, concerning you?” I ask. “Or about the last egg, whoever that happened to be?”

“The last egg.” He stops and turns toward me. “Which happened to be me.”

“Only, you were not one dragon,” I say. “You were two, right?”

He shrugs. “I was one egg, and when I hatched out of the large, red egg, I wasn’t a scarlet flame blessed.”

He’s clearly telling me something that matters to him, so I stand up too, and I approach him slowly. “You were gold?”

He nods slowly. “If it had been any blessed other than Euphrasia. . . But she believed in the prophecy that the last blessed to hatch would allow our successful return to Earth where we could recover the heart and heal our people.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of things they think you’re going to do.”

“But because I hatched out earth blessed,” he says, “albeit with the royal golden scale color, Euphrasia fed me from the marine life of our new planet.”

“And that’s. . .bad?” I have no idea what that means.

“After eating for the first time, I shifted into something new. The flame blessed she expected.”

“Oh.” He’s saying it like it really means something.