He knew only that the rasp of his scales against his cock hurt, and it felt so, so good.
He couldn’t bring himself to rest on the next day. The Red Heat barely faded with the morning, leaving him to continue his aimless pacing, dragging his underside over the floor. Without thinking, he clawed chunks of stone from the walls and scattered sand with his tail.
This was no lair—it was a cage, a prison, a tomb, and he needed to leave, to get out. He needed to be free, to roar his mating call into the sky and hear it echo off the mountains.
Falthyris snapped his jaws and shook himself hard. He wouldn’t go, wouldn’t surrender.
A fresh ache pulsed through his cock, strong enough to make his knees weak. The Lord of the Shimmering Peaks would not submit to such base urges.
But with nightfall came a resurgence of the Red Heat, which quickly built to a new, terrible climax. Falthyris’s body trembled as the Heat forced its way ever deeper. Whatever subtlety it had possessed the first couple nights was gone now; it had already gained enough power to no longer require subtlety.
He thrashed his tail and swung his claws, gnashed his teeth and spewed licks of fire, but his fury was impotent. The Red Heat pressed its invasive fingers deeper into Falthyris’s mind, tightening its hold on him.
“No,” he growled, “I do not yield.”
Yet when his tongue flicked out, he tasted a new scent on the air, one even more difficult to ignore than the Heat.
Female.
He shuddered again, his every muscle going rigid, his claws slicing into stone. Whatever resistance he would’ve offered the comet was swept away on a wave of crimson heat.
Falthyris the Golden, the Conqueror, Scourge of Sands and Lord of the Shimmering Peaks, surged forward to claw his way out of his lair, kicking up sand and shattering stone. There was room only for a single conscious thought in his mind as he burst into the night air.
Dragonsbane has finally won.
3
Elliya dropped to her knees onto the soft grass growing along the riverbank. Setting her stone headed spear down, she bent forward and plunged her hands into the cool water, drinking handful after handful, relishing the relief it provided her dry mouth and parched throat. Rivulets ran down her neck and the front of her robe, soothing her heated skin. Though the sun had set some time earlier, the air still held a hint of the day’s stifling warmth, and she’d been traveling for a long while.
Once she had drunk as much as her belly could hold, she sat back on her heels, tilted her head back, and looked up at the night sky. The desert breeze wafted over her, caressing her skin and flowing through the loose strands of her hair.
The Blood Moon hung low in the sky, and the Red Star burned above it, impossible to miss amidst the other stars that twinkled in white and palest blue. Traversing this land—where the Forsaken Sands butted up against the Shimmering Peaks—with the Red Star overhead had been as surreal as it had been frightening.
Elliya had seen a great many animals over the last few days, most of which had been familiar to her. Their behaviors, however, had been unnatural. Creatures that usually emerged from hiding only in the depths of night had been out in broad daylight. Creatures that usually remained solitary had been gathering in frenzied groups, mating as though maddened.
And they were maddened. That was the power of the Red Star, that was its curse. She’d seen normally docile beasts battling one another viciously, had seen territorial battles between creatures that typically ignored one another, had seen blood. A time or two, she herself had caught the attention of uncharacteristically aggressive animals. Her escapes had been narrow.
It had required all the skills she’d learned over her years of hunting to make it this far without incident, and using those skills had felt so strange without the other huntresses. But a dragon was not the usual sort of prey she and her sisters hunted. According to the old stories, claiming a dragon required a particular subtlety, required seduction. A group of huntresses could not accomplish that, not when dragons took but one human mate.
For the first time in her life, Elliya was competing with her tribe sisters. For the first time in her life, she felt so impossibly distant from home.
No, it is not just a feeling. I have never traveled this far from home.
Four days. That was how far she was from her tribe. She’d never spent so much time alone. For four days, she had followed the rocky foothills at the base of the Shimmering Peaks, walking beneath a scorching sun, steering clear of the beasts that prowled above and below as best she could.
As lonely as she was without her tribe sisters, excitement still thrummed through Elliya. Not only had she evaded Dian’s clutches—at least for a time—but she was participating in the rare hunt for a dragon. Most of her people had lived and died without ever seeing the Red Star, without taking part in the Crimson Hunt, but she was amongst the fortunate.
Lowering her chin, Elliya took in her surroundings. The river ran through a rocky canyon that was lush with vegetation. Tall rock formations stood on either side of the canyon—and some within it—all of them layered with the stripes of slightly varying color. They looked down upon the water like silent sentries posted outside ancient tribal lands.
She’d scouted this spot thoroughly, had searched for signs of dangerous predators and animals that wouldn’t have been particularly threatening under normal circumstances, and she’d found nothing. This would be a suitable place to rest for the night so she could resume her hunt at dawn.
She removed her sandals and wiggled her toes in the grass. Just because she was alone in a dangerous world under dangerous conditions did not mean she had to forgo life’s little pleasures.
Just as she opened her waterskin and dunked it into the river, a great roar tore across the heavens and reverberated through the canyon, powerful enough for Elliya to feel its vibrations in her bones.
The little hairs on the backs of her neck and arms rose, and cold prickles of fear raced across her back. This was a sensation she had never experienced to this degree—a deep-rooted instinct to flee, to hide.
I am a huntress. I will not run, and I will not hide.
After corking the waterskin and dropping it onto the ground, she took up her spear and leapt to her feet—only to freeze when she caught sight of a massive beast soaring through the sky. The beast’s immense wings swept down, launching the creature higher, and its jaws parted to spew a jet of flame into the night air.
Elliya stood motionless, eyes wide, fully aware of what she was seeing but unable to comprehend it.
“They are real,” she breathed.
She’d always believed the stories were true, had always believed the legends her people had passed down through the generations, but hearing a story and seeing the reality with her own eyes were two starkly different experiences. Until now, dragons had been like the sun after setting—she knew it was still there somewhere, knew it existed, but during the coldest, darkest stretches of night, the sun was little more than a phantom memory, out of reach and difficult to imagine.
Another deafening roar shook the canyon, snapping Elliya out of her stupor. The dragon spread its wings and turned away, continuing in a slow, upward spiral.
She needed to act. Now. Needed to lure the beast to her.
And hope that it was male.
But how? How could she hope to bring the dragon close enough?