Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
“Now, now, Br’ownie,” he would say, clicking his tongue when his dragon nuzzled him for attention too often. “Settle down—we have to teach these youngsters.”
I enjoyed the new class immensely and since I was flying and working out with Ryse every day, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything by dropping the Flight Simulator.
I also spent time with L’eesha every day. She was growing more and more impatient for Hatching Day.
“i am ready now,” she told me. “but the others are lazy and slow! I tell them—hurry up! i am hungry! i need my Auri to feed me and scratch me!”
“We’ll be together soon,” I promised her, trying not to laugh at her impatience. “But you can’t bully the other eggs like that! When all of you are ready, you’ll all hatch together.”
“they listen to me—they are trying,” she told me. “but they are still not fast enough!”
It was a good thing L’eesha was so engaging, or I would have hated to come up to the Hatching Grounds. Whenever I was there, petting her egg and talking to her, Master Yarsmouth was always casting me sorrowful glances and shaking his head mournfully. It was clear he thought I was fooling myself about the egg talking back to me and was certain I was in for a dreadful disappointment.
Though I tried to mute it, L’eesha sometimes picked up on my irritation with the old Master.
“i will bite him!” she vowed. “bite him hard for upsetting my Auri!”
“No, no—you can’t bite anyone!” I told her.
I took my hand off her shell and breathed deeply, as Ryse had taught me. When I felt calm flowing through me, I put my hand back on her shell, sending the soothing emotions into her little body.
The egg seemed to vibrate under my hand, and I heard a soft trilling in my mind. After a moment, I realized that L’eesha was doing a baby version of the deep, humming purr I’d heard adult dragons do.
“feels nice,” she admitted, and I wished for the hundredth time I could hold her in my arms like a baby and stroke her and scratch her eye ridges. I just needed to be close to her.
“Feels nice to me, too,” I told her. “See? Isn’t it nice to be calm and peaceful?”
“yes…very nice,” she admitted. Then, after a minute she said, “i am still going to bite him.”
I shook my head—she was going to be such a handful when she hatched and yet, I couldn’t wait for her to break the shell. I had a feeling that once we bonded, I’d feel love like nothing I’d ever felt before. Love and acceptance like I hadn’t experienced since my brother, Auren, died.
But in all this excitement, as I said, I forgot about Chud Larson…and I forgot the looming threat of the Mating Flight.
39
AURORA
The horns woke me in the middle of the night.
At first, I couldn’t understand what I was hearing. It sounded like the hunting horns I heard sometimes when one of the Dukes or Barons went out to chase a fox. But they were blowing and blowing—echoing through the great stone chambers of the Academy.
Suddenly someone was shaking my shoulder.
“What…who…?” I looked up sleepily to see Jorn-o standing over my bed with a wild look in his eyes.
“Auri, it’s the horns!” He whispered, his eyes wide with fright. “It’s a Mating Flight—we have to hide!”
“Hide?” I still didn’t understand him but somehow the words broke through to me. A Mating Flight! Exactly what I had been warned about!
I sat up in bed, suddenly wide awake. Jorn-o still looked wild.
“The dragons are rising to mate—can’t you feel them?” he asked, his voice trembling.
I closed my eyes for a moment and yes, I could feel them. Usually I only felt a dragon’s emotions when I was in physical proximity to it. But now I felt all of them—all the dragons, all their emotions—rising like a hurricane around me.
And what I felt was lust.
It was a word I’d hardly ever had occasion to think of before. I had to admit that I had fantasies—many of them involving Ryse—and I sometimes touched myself under the covers at night when everyone else was asleep. But I had never felt anything like this before.
It was the lust of five hundred dragons pouring into me all at once.
My nipples were suddenly so hard they could cut glass, and I was throbbing between my legs—aching for something I had never had and couldn’t even name.
“Oh my God and Goddess,” I gasped, stumbling out of bed. I understood instinctively that this wasn’t good. Everyone in the dorm was up and several of the boys were already doing…things I wouldn’t have believed they wanted to do together.
“What…what’s going on? What’s happening?” I demanded.
Jorn-o shook his head miserably.
“The dragons all project their emotions during a Mating Flight. I told you things get crazy around here.”