I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) by Marc Secchia (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

offerings of herbs and spices, he prepared a tangy blend together with the coconut milk and liberally basted the inside of the fish, before husking several of the coconuts and adding neat talon-cut slices to his preparation. Picking up the great fish between his paws and pinching it shut, he flame-grilled the monstrous portion with plenty of attitude intended to disguise his decidedly unreliable control of his fires – flexing the muscles, adding snarky commentary, paying attention to every detail.

Only the best for Aria!

Meantime, the excited Dragonesses added a chorus of encouragement of his efforts, much of which was decidedly blush-worthy.

When the steam and piquant scents combined with char reached what he judged to be their peak, Dragon tried to strip off the skin. Fail. It did nothing of the sort.

Aria popped over for an inspection. I like it crunchy.

I haven’t much experience of preparing ocean fish, he admitted.

Smells fabulous.

Very good! Laying out the monster on a bed of palm leaves, Dragon flipped it open to release a rush of fragrant steam. Oh, by his wings! His stomach vented a great rumble.

I’ll take that as the cook’s own compliment, Aria gurgled. Right. We take turns to feed one another.

He cut her a respectable portion and popped it into her jaw. Aria eyed up the fish, mimed looking at a three-foot section, and to rowdy cheers, played to her crowd by suggesting bigger and bigger portions. Each time she pretended to have decided, she took another look at him – shoulders, chest, haunches and aye, between his hind legs – and increased the size of what she intended to cut for him.

Dragon then picked Azania up and used her to measure his suggested portion, provoking howls of laughter amongst even the males.

She folded her arms across her chest, and teased, “You’ll pay for that!”

“On the contrary, expensive Princess, I expect your ransom to cover any outlay on my part. She’s very valuable,” he explained to Charielle.

“You sell royals?”

“Barbaric custom with a long and sordid history, I know,” he agreed.

His prospective dam-to-be eyed him balefully, and purred, “You had better be pulling my leg, Dragon, or I’ll pull yours right off. Do we understand one another?”

Like dam, like daughter, eh?

“Perfectly,” he said, with his most diplomatic face pasted in place.

Toward midnight, as Charielle Seaspray drew her daughter aside for a private consultation, he sought out Charnal to speak with him. What a shy, gentle Dragon! A little prodding revealed that he was a master perfumer; Aria was wearing a personalised scent he had created for her. The real customers for his magic-infused brews, however, were the males. They were the most fragrant group of Dragons he had ever met, bar none, and it was nothing like the normal musky male odour he was used to, especially in bachelor quarters.

Charnal held nothing against him, he said.

As he chatted with the much smaller Dragons, he had a sense of being a bigger brother among friends. These males would have been the ones excluded by his kin; laughed at and jeered roundly for their soft-spoken ways, yet perhaps for the first time in his life, he felt he stood among peers. They could not believe he was an artist like them. Different aptitudes, but the similarity in spirit was more than clear to him. The males chortled politely at the notion of such a big bruiser having a softer side. Their disbelief, funny on the surface, struck a niggling nerve within. Hide it. No need to antagonise any more creatures here; had he not done enough already?

What a result, though!

Re-joining Princess Azania, he noticed in her eyes how tired she was. Oddly, her weariness seemed to rush over him as he realised he could not even stop dragging his tail about. His final steps were tiredness-drunk.

She said, “So, one love life underway, Dragon?”

“Certainly appears positive,” he grinned.

“She can’t keep her eyes off you, in case some unobservant males have failed to notice the lay of the sands, or however you say that in Draconian.”

“I have to admit, I’m so tired I’m not really seeing straight anymore.”

“Need your Princess to tuck you in?”

“Sounds brilliant. As long as I get a bedtime story as well?”

“So demanding.”

Lying down upon the warm black sand, he offered his paw. She came gratefully to him. He tucked her close beside his lower left chest, curved his muzzle protectively about the nook he had created and slipped his wing down to complete the picture. How many times had they slept like this? How many more times would there be, if she found Azerim and he had Aria? Would that change everything?

What would he not give to guarantee for her the same fortune which had smiled upon him?

So many questions. Would Aria tolerate King and Princess as friends, as his Dragon Rider; might it be possible for the young King to become a Rider, too? Would anyone else want this special relationship he shared with Azania?

Softly, he whispered, “Tomorrow, we go rescue your King from his high tower, where he pines for sight of his Black Rose of the Desert, weeping copious bitter tears –”

“Dragon, you’re so silly. In the tales, Kings are never stuck in towers.”

“That’s what makes this real life, Princess.”

“Aye. Is it ridiculous to admit that I still want to pinch myself, sometimes, when I think about who I am with and where we are?”

“No, it isn’t.”

He snuck a peek at Ariamyrielle. Her fangs flashed in an immediate smile. So happy!

That was the thought that followed him into the hinterlands of his Dragon dreams. He had made someone happy. Just now, at this moment in his life, his paw held this power.

As incredible as the whitest of fires.

* * * *

Dragon woke slowly, with the sense that he