Reaching into his pack, he extracted his notebook, flipping through it absently as a distraction while his mind adjusted. His eyes slid over drawings of his wrecked plane, landscapes on the island, birds - he’d drawn the outline of the mystery birds high overhead. He could see much more clearly now that they were the same shape as the large beasts he’d just witnessed gliding past his wall. He flipped a few more pages and there was his drawing of the constellation. The stars in the shape of an elegant curving dragon, similar in shape to the silhouette of those he’d just seen. With the book in his upturned hands, his tattoos were visible on his inner forearms. The tattoos taken from his mother’s artwork.
He hadn’t seen it before. He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t seen it before. There it was. Those same shapes were represented in the tattoos. The same outline, the pinpoints of the stars, obscured by the colors of cosmic space dust and tropical flowers.
Had his mother seen these images in books? Or had she actually been here before?
His heart began thumping harder. Something in him whispered that she had.
But when? His mind raced, trying to remember all the places she’d described to him when he was young.
She said she planned to explore this region, not that she already had. She’d always referred to them as mythological or legendary places. And while she had talked about the legends related to this area, she hadn’t told him that she had in reality been here before.
She must have been here before his birth, or while he was too young to remember? It was like she was leading him to these fantastical places without making it real. Why? If she’d been here before, why wouldn’t she just bring him back with her? Why mask it?
He let a thumb slide over the colorful image anchored into his flesh. Most of his tattoos were facsimiles of her semi-abstract art.
Pulling off his shirt, he inspected each one within his view. Without a reflective surface, he couldn’t see the ones adorning his back and shoulders. One of the ones on his abdomen he could recognize as an obscure representation of the shape of the island and its citadel. The first view he saw on approaching the harbor.
Christ.
What else was hidden in her art?
He was excited to suddenly see into the thought of her art though felt pretty damned stupid for not having seen it before now. She was a deliberate and thoughtful woman, of course there was meaning hidden in the images.
He knew this of her. Now, he realized, there was so much more of her he didn’t know. And likely wouldn’t ever. Especially from his father - he never spoke of her, not since she disappeared. Unless Jori pushed on a subject, but even then it wouldn’t be long before he shut the conversation down and walked away. And that’s basically what their relationship was like - since she disappeared.
Before she disappeared, the three of them were very close. He was a happy kid. After... It was like he lost both parents at once.
Jori stared at the images he’d drawn in his notebook and tried to correlate them with the images on his skin.
He was trying to shift his way of viewing his past from the eyes of a child and adolescent to how he thought now as an adult.
What did he really know of his mother?
Kymri hated being confined, but the shamans had insisted she stay abed for at least a couple more days to allow her body and her magic to recover. The only reason she obeyed was because of the newly realized life growing inside her. Propped up in her bed she painted her nails with the vibrant metallic hot pink nail polish and glanced through several fashion magazines smuggled from the continent.
Marli was still missing and the council were growing more and more tense. They refused to let her participate in the search patrols. Reluctantly, she had to admit to herself, after that last round, she probably wouldn’t be able to do a proper job of it.
Kolina’s presence was sparse. Security around the queen tightened even more than it was before.
Now the guards were trying to determine if Jori had any connection to the dragons. The male dragons had been quiet for so long, she had to admit, she’d grown a little relaxed in the last decade, but she would never say that they’d grown careless.
At least she hadn’t until now, when her compassion and her ‘heat’ kicked in.
The island was facing an ‘intruder’ and a missing dragoness. She was pregnant and relieved of duty.
This was not a good time. Everything was falling apart all at once, and she didn’t know what to try to fix first.
Obviously, the pregnancy couldn’t be fixed. Not until the child was ready to emerge.
As much as she had bonded with Jori, a bond which was still not yet complete, she didn’t know if she could fully trust him. How could she know he was genuine, and not just infiltrating? If that were the case, then he’d done a mighty fine job of fooling her and twisting her around his finger. She’d gone full in for him and was teetering on completely loyal mate devotion and utter humiliation.
She was a guardian commander for dragonsakes! This was so far below her; it was no wonder she’d been removed from command. She deserved it.
Her people really were at risk, and she hadn’t been able to see it, she was so lost in lust and hormonal shift.
And her mother! Her mother was gleeful for its consequences.
Kymri never in her life would have thought that her mother wanted grandchildren. Never. She’d barely been a mother to her, how could she have guessed? Was she desperate to make up for lost motherly bonding, she was hoping to do it with Kymri’s offspring?
She dropped back on to her pillow, blowing out her breath, staring up at the ornately carved beams supporting the arched ceiling.
She still felt like her uterus harbored a stone.
She was in such a mess.
She couldn’t even go to her best friend Marli because she was still missing, and it may be her fault.
She’d let down her guard.
If she’d been facing one of her subordinates, she not only would have had them relieved of duty, she might have even banished her.
Perhaps that’s what she should do. Leave. No longer fit to serve her queen and people.
If she bore a dragoness, she could give her to her mother. But her dragon didn’t like that idea.
If she bore a male child… then what?
Her breath lodged in her chest. Then what? Her mind seemed to go blank. She didn’t know.
Her dragon didn’t like the idea of sending away a male child either. And she knew he wouldn’t be welcome on the island. He wouldn’t be forbidden, nor would he be welcome.
Male younglings were sent away to live with their fathers, given to a tribe that takes male children or abandoned ones.
Her dragon growled.
Normally Kymri’s dragon was silent on things, lately, with the excess hormones driving her natural instincts, she was become more proactive in Kymri’s choices.
How long had it been since she actually took her dragon’s wishes into account? Maybe she should be asking why her dragon had sunk to the back of her consciousness for so long?
Maybe because she’d become such a damned control freak, she’d been shutting her dragon out. And now in matters of dragon importance, her dragon was making her wishes known.
Maybe it was time to listen. Maybe this is why she was so out of balance with the coming of her heat.
Her mother, and the archival books, had said that metal dragons sometimes did this when out of balance, allowing her ambition to silence what never should be. She wasn’t in true union with her dragon. She used her warrior nature but repressed everything else to her will. Apparently, her dragon had had enough of that, when faced with the opportunity to complete her dragon duty by having offspring. No matter how hard she’d tried to deny it and take control of her own life, her body and her instinct had decided otherwise.