Page 10 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 10
“She’s hungry!” My voice broke on the words as I felt a terrible pain tear through my stomach, the emptiness feeling like it had teeth. “I need meat! Give me meat!”
“Slowly, lass,” Soren said, his voice like a lifeline in the wild sea of emotion. “She is desperately hungry, but you can’t let her eat too much, not at the start. Flynn, slice off some lean pieces as well as some fatty bits: nice slender strips.”
“This isn’t my first time feeding a hatchling,” Flynn grumbled but he retrieved his knife and went about slicing the meat. I watched him with gritted teeth, wanting to slap his hand away and take over, but my attention was quickly brought back to the baby dragon. Her head was thrown back, her little jaws open, following the pathway of the scrap of meat as it was passed across.
“Give it to her!” I snapped, dimly aware I was acting in a terribly rude way, but unable to stop.
“No, lass, you need to give it to her,” Brom instructed. “She needs to feed only from your hand on the first day. It's part of your bonding process.”
I snatched the meat from Flynn’s fingers, but Soren reached out and stayed my hand when I went to feed it to the little queen.
“Slowly. She’s too hungry to show much sense right now and she’s not able to control herself. She’ll choke on too big a piece.” My hands went around the dragon, tightening, the shell shards pricking at my skin. “And you’ll both be in a world of pain if she eats too much. Slowly.”
He let my hand go and I watched myself lower the tiny sliver of meat into the dragon’s jaws, my breath coming out in a great hiss when I felt the subsequent rush of love and pleasure. I’d do anything to keep feeling this, the intense sweetness, the possessive fire. I panted my way through the wave, each man watching us intently as the dragon gobbled down the meat and opened her mouth for more. I reached out blindly for Flynn, feeling the meat pressed to my fingers and then bringing them back to the dragon, this piece marbled through with fat.
“She needs a good combination of fat and meat at this age,” Soren explained. “Meat to build her muscles, fat to keep her skin nice and pliable as she grows. She’ll be the size of those bastards outside before a year is out.”
“No…” I said, looking at him askance.
“If you’d been born in the capital, you’d have learned all of this at your mother’s knee,” Brom said with a small smile. “Instead, you have us.”
“It’s not so bad,” Ged said with a wink. “I’m a tanner’s son. I blundered my way through Cloudy’s hatching and the bastard thrives today.”
And at that, I noticed a long, almost ululating sound in the background. Both the little queen and I went still at the sound of it.
“They do you honour, milady,” Soren said. “Or rather, my queen.”
“Queen…?”
“You’ll rule by our prince’s side when it’s his time to take the throne,” he told me, and did some of the warmth leach out of his eyes at that? I couldn’t tell. I wanted to study his face, glean more about this new fate of ours, but I had more pressing matters to attend to. The queen was not full and she demanded more meat, now .
I felt like I’d found my feet in the sea of need now, feeding her tiny scraps, one by one, tuning into the rapid thrum of her body with each morsel. I could hear her heart beating, feel her stomach stretching, feel the rush of satisfaction that came from each bloody morsel until finally I stopped. She uttered a querulous little cry of protest, but I shook my head, not sure if she could understand me.
“Too much and you’ll be sick,” I said.
“That’s it,” Soren said.
When he took his hand away, I missed the warm weight of it, but any pang I might’ve been experiencing was quickly washed away at the feel of her . She didn’t like the shards of her shell pressing into her, so I lifted her up, letting the golden remnants fall to clatter against the floorboards, then I nestled her into my arms. She was the size of a cat and she curled up against me like one, her pricking claws keeping a hold of my arm as she settled down.
“Well done, lass,” Brom said with a sharp nod of his head. “Well done.”
“We need to take her out to see our boys,” Ged said, rubbing at his temple. “Cloudy’s being an insistent bastard, wanting to see her.”
“She’ll be their queen,” Brom said. “So of course, they do. Are you feeling up to it? We won’t get much sleep tonight otherwise, not until they’ve had a chance to see her. They’ll be bugling and calling until she comes out.”
“Much like they do on mating flights,” Flynn said, gritting his teeth. “The bloody sods go out of their mind for a queen.”
“As they should.” Soren watched me get carefully to my feet, not wanting to dislodge the sleeping dragon, his hand whipping out to catch me when I wavered.
“Takes it out of you.” Flynn grinned sheepishly. “I damn near face planted with Glacier when he hatched.”
“Would’ve been the shortest career of a rider ever, if your bloody bulk crushed a hatchling,” Ged said with a chuckle.
“That happens?” My voice rose in alarm as I looked from one to the other. “I could crush her?”
“Never.” Brom’s voice, his hazel eyes held mine steadily. “Your days of looking to only your own needs are over now. You’ll be aware of your dragon, of what she thinks, feels, needs, when you’re awake and when you’re asleep.”
“Hope you’re not fond of sleep-ins.” Ged’s grin was impish. “Bloody dragons are up when the cock crows.” A roar of protest could be heard from outside the house. “Worse when they’re hatchlings. If we were back at the capital, we’d have a phalanx of maids assigned to you, bringing you meat and sweet oils at all hours of the day.” He frowned and then looked at Brom. “Who’ll we use here? We can’t leave right away. A hatchling won’t survive high altitudes, not yet.”
“I’ll send word to the palace,” Brom said. “And as for maids?—”
“I’ll do it.” Nadia looked at each rider, swallowing hard. “And I can tell you which of the girls is still loyal to her ladyship, and those that aren’t.” Her tone grew much darker at that.
“You can trust Nadia,” I said. “I do.”
“We’ll do that,” Brom said with a nod. “Now…” He held out his arm for me, but I just stared at it for a second, unable to decipher the gesture. Because only hours ago, people were shying away from me, not wanting to touch the filthy swineherd. I wasn’t that anymore, nor was I Lady Pippa Wentworth, because she wouldn’t merit the attention of the increasingly vocal dragons outside. What I was, I was yet to discover, but this was the first step.
I felt a flush when I wrapped my arm around Brom’s. Men visiting Father had offered me their arm when escorting we ladies into the dining room, so it wasn’t as if it was unfamiliar, but somehow the thick forearm of the wing commander felt different. This wasn’t the arm of a man whose most strenuous activity was raising a wine glass to his lips; this was a dragon rider.
And you will become one too , a small voice pointed out inside my head.
That idea seemed like nothing more than a fairy tale, but it was no more fantastical than the sight that greeted us in the field. Gerald and some of the lads stood around, holding lanterns to light our way as we walked in through the field gate. The boys made furtive little noises as the dragons moved as one, striding with the sinuous grace of lizards in order to get closer.
“Back off, back off, you bloody great gits!” Ged shouted, waving his arms around, but the dragons paid him little mind, their entire focus narrowed down to us.
It was disconcerting. Their heads reared up way too high in the sky to take a closer look, clustered together like a nest of snakes. Heads as long as my body, and then some, swooped in, scaled nostrils sucking in breaths, catching scent of their queen and me.
“How’d you like that, Wraith?” Soren asked the deep purple dragon. “Have you ever seen such a perfect little queen?”
It was then that I felt it, like the sound of a whisper in an adjoining room. I had an awareness that they were having a conversation, but not the content. But it felt like… if I reached out, tried a little harder, like straining your ears as you eavesdropped in a doorway, that I’d be able to catch a snippet of it. But I didn’t. The little queen shifted sleepily in my arms, wriggling until she found a more comfortable spot, before letting out a sigh and sinking back into sleep.
“You are perfect.” My voice was one part assertion, one part vow. “The most perfect dragon that’s ever lived. I would lay down my life for you, do anything to ensure you grow into the queen you are.”
“That’s how they get you.” Flynn appeared at my side, pushing away one of the dragons’ heads when it came snuffling around his fingers, a snakelike tongue flickering out, looking for scraps. “I’m a third son. Was destined for the priesthood, but then…” He reached out and placed his hand on the broad expanse between his dragon’s eyes, the beast’s eyelids fluttering shut at the feel of him. “But then I hatched Glacier. All thoughts of familial obligation went out the window the moment I clapped eyes on him.”
He stared at me intently and in this light, I could see hints of the sapphire blue of his eyes.
“There was only him after that, filling my heart, filling my soul?—”
“He’s very poetic, our Flynn,” Ged said, slinging his arm around his wing mate’s shoulders and then ruffling the other man’s perfectly styled hair, something that had Flynn spluttering. “That speech has got him a place in many a tavern wench’s bed.”
“It’s true!” Flynn spluttered.
“All the best lies are,” Ged replied, before pulling away and running up to the red dragon. The beast put out his forepaw for just this purpose, letting the man get closer to the creature’s thick neck. He hugged the massive dragon with much the same rough enthusiasm and the beast’s eyes closed as Ged’s fingers raked along his scales. But it was a small, sleepy chirrup from the queen in my arms that had them all coming to attention.
That crooning sound started up again as she blinked in the low light, peering at the inhabitants of the field, her tiny wings fluttering almost nervously in response. And the dragons, they threw their heads back, the sound only growing, louder and louder, before they did something I didn’t expect. They all lowered their heads down to the ground, their bodies hunching into an attitude of total obeisance.
“They recognise your charge as their queen,” Brom said, a smile splitting his face and making it look entirely different in this moment, almost boyish. “As they should. All hail the queen-in-waiting.”
“All hail,” each man said.