Page 30 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Alashiya didn’t seem at all concerned by this, only a little uncomfortable as she quietly ate her stew. It was Taevas who found it alarming. Possessiveness was a roar in his blood, yes, but it was a deeper concern that made him want to hunt Monty down and handle him right then.

Trying to find his usual cool pragmatism, Taevas asked, “Does he harass you?”

Alashiya didn’t answer him directly. “I avoid him whenever I can.”

“So that’s a yes.” Fire, icy cold and infinitely dangerous, surged up his throat to lick at the backs of his fangs.

He wouldn’t dare if she had a mate, the beast in him growled. He wouldn’t even look at her if this were my roost, if she smelled of me, if my ash were laid.

Sensing there was far more to the story, he grated, “What happened at the store, Shiya?”

She eyed his untouched dinner with pursed lips. “You should eat. You’ve hardly had anything since you shifted, and nothing at all before that.”

“Tell me.”

“Monty likes to pick on me,” she explained with a sigh.

“Sometimes I think he believes if he does it long enough, I’ll eventually cave.

Or maybe he does it because he just hates me.

I don’t know. But he was doing it when his client came in, and the client started talking to me, which made Monty worse.

He gets nastier when he sees other people, men especially, being nice to me. ”

I bet he does, Taevas thought, fists clenching.

“He was rude to his client about it, which didn’t go over well,” she continued. “They started to argue, so I left.”

“You will not approach Monty without me again.” Taevas waited for her to meet his eyes before he repeated, slowly and with every ounce of authority he possessed, “You will not, Alashiya. That’s an order from your Isand.”

Alashiya lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. Dragging her bread through the stew, she replied, “I can handle him. It’s the dragon I’m not so sure about. He gave me this awful feeling.”

Taevas went still. “What dragon?”

“The client.” Apparently fed up with his disinterest in eating, Alashiya set her stew aside and leaned over to grab another piece of bread from under the cloth. Tearing it in half, she stuffed it into his hand and guided it to the bowl. “Eat, Taevas. You haven’t had anything for days and days.”

It wasn’t the time to explain to her that dragons could go a very long time without meals.

They were designed to be able to fly for weeks at a time, never touching the ground or stopping for water, let alone food.

It wasn’t without consequence, of course, and usually involved a dragon gorging themselves to replenish their resources when they landed, but it was a system that worked well enough.

Since he’d spent the last few weeks more or less immobile rather than burning through his fat stores in flight, Taevas didn’t need the meal she’d made him. He wanted it, though, as soon as he got his answers. Alarm bells clanging in his mind, he asked, “The client was a dragon?”

“Yes. I thought that seemed strange. We don’t get dragons here. You weren’t kidnapped by a dragon, were you? I don’t know what a kidnapper looks like, and I don’t want to assume your own people would try to hurt you, but… I don’t know. He felt wrong to me.”

She pulled her bowl back into her lap and crossed her ankles in front of her. At another time, he would’ve admired how at home she looked, sitting beside him, enjoying a bit of dinner by the nest.

His heart lurched painfully. He also didn’t want to believe his own people would attack him, but being Isand meant he had enemies, and many of them had been gunning for him since he was a teenager.

Jaak had a lot of friends, after all, and some still wished to return to the old ways — and it was a dragon that had tangled with him above the summer storm clouds the night he crashed into Alashiya’s barn.

But what Taevas found most upsetting was the fact that she’d been so very near danger. Of course he knew that he’d put her at risk just being there, but he hadn’t dared to think his enemies would find her so quickly, let alone when he wasn’t at her side, protecting her.

Wracking his mind for the most likely suspects, he demanded, “Did he say his name?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

Nervous energy made his tail rattle menacingly beneath the blankets. “Tell me everything, Shiya. Every single detail.”

“Only if you eat a little,” she haggled.

Dipping his bread into the stew, he growled, “Fine.”

She looked very pleased with herself when she watched him shove the bread into his mouth.

It vexed him further that it was, of course, delicious, and he couldn’t hide his pleasure from her.

A dimple appeared in her cheek when she gave him a smug smile.

“I was going to mention it to you anyway because it’s not normal for dragons to pass through here.

I’d never even seen one before you. I always heard the land is too flat, so your folk avoid it. ”

Taevas was too busy with his stew to answer properly, so he merely grunted.

It was true. His people had traditionally settled in mountain ranges, since takeoff and landing required a leap.

They only tended to compromise on that when it came with large economic trade-offs, which was why they took New York’s harbor and the Great Lakes.

In the flat places, they built skyscrapers and perches from which to leap off and land, which solved the problem well enough.

Nodding at her to continue, he tore another piece of flatbread in half and returned to his stew. It was rich with spices and drenched with a garlicky yogurt sauce that made him want to lick the bowl clean, dignity be damned.

“Like I said, I didn’t get his name. But he was a big guy.

His skin was light blue and he had dark hair.

His clothes looked new and expensive, so I figured he was another one of those bored rich people who come through every summer.

Oh, and his horns had metal on them.” Alashiya soaked up the last of her stew with a small corner of bread, her eyes lowered.

“He wasn’t unpleasant, but something about him didn’t sit well with me. I don’t know what it was.”

The description meant little to him. There were many blue dragons in the world, and even more big ones.

The only unique detail she’d offered was that he had gilded horns.

That was a sign of a noble birth which had more or less been destroyed by the war, when metals couldn’t be spared for something like vanity or a display of rank.

Afterward, it was seen as a mark of an old-timer, someone who was stuck in the past. The only people he knew who still sported gilded horns were either on the old continent or those few who still clung to the old ways.

It didn’t mean anything necessarily, but it also didn’t bode well at all.

Of course, it was possible it was just a coincidence. Dragons weren’t confined to the Draakonriik. They could live anywhere and do whatever they liked, including hiring someone to take them on a hunting trip in the Shifter Alliance.

But the odds of a dragon appearing not long after Taevas landed on Alashiya’s land weren’t great. He’d never met a dragon who liked to hunt on foot. They were aerial predators. Most would find a walk in the forest about as pleasant as Taevas had.

But if a dragon lost something in the woods…