Page 38 of Dragon Keeper
He grunted, jumping half a mile. “Riley!”
“Hey. Can we talk?” Riley looked a little ragged, his clothes a little dirty and rumpled.
Sloan frowned. “Are you okay? What’s happened to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Why?”
“You look like you’ve been put through the ringer.” He studied Riley closely.
“I was playing awak.”
Sloan chuckled, shaking his head. The dragons here played this wild game that involved flying and leaping and was verycomplicated. Obviously full contact. And people were very passionate about it. At least some people who were here, because his mate rolled his eyes, pointed Brayden and Riley toward Cade when they had questions, and wandered back to the hives. His mate was not a sportsball person.
“What? It’s fun, man, and I’m good at it.”
“Oh, excellent. Go you. So what did you want? I mean you’re welcome to just come and visit if that’s what you’re after right now.” But really he was kind of busy doing not a whole lot of things, and he sort of wanted to continue doing just that. He’d been organizing. Organizing was important.
He was becoming one of those dragons. Oh my God, he was one ofthosedragons. One of those organizational, spends lots of time at home dragons and…
“Are you even listening to me?” Riley asked, his exasperation clear.
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t there for a moment.”
“I didn’t think so. Listen to me.” Riley pierced him with a stare. “I’m telling you I’m leaving.”
“Leaving. Leaving to where?” He wasn’t sure Riley was allowed to leave. They had too much to learn about this world before it was safe to wander off.
“There’s a town. Not like a city, but a town-town. Bigger than here. Well, they have awak leagues, and there’s a tournament and these dragons I met need someone to be on their team. They’re short a member. Someone got hurt, and they saw me play today. So they asked me to play with their team for a bit, and I fit in really well. So I’m going to go with them.” Riley finally stopped to take a breath.
“And play awak? They have professional awak players?” That was like having professional… oh, he didn’t know. Curling leagues.
“I think professional is kind of a strong term, but we all have matching bands to wear around our ankles so everybody knows which team we’re on. It’s not like I can’t just come home if it goes badly, too.” Riley gave him a furtive glance, and suddenly he remembered that his brother was so young, somehow. Still. “Right? I mean, I can just come home.”
“Of course you can. This is your home. You can come back every night, or come once a week, or come home once a month. I don’t care. You have a place here no matter what.” He needed Riley to know and believe that.
That got him a grin and a nod. “Exactly. This is home. I just— it sounds like so much fun. And I thought, why not?”
“Can we come watch you? I mean, is that a thing? Can you let us know and we’ll just come and see?” He would bet Tyr would even stop rolling his eyes if it was Riley playing.
He thought that the teenagers from up in the mountain clutch liked this game. Maybe this was something they could all do together, make a trip to the next town. Tyr had talked to him about it. It was about three times the size of village, and well, he hadn’t gone and explored over there. “Do you think that I’ve become a homebody?”
Riley gave him this weird, tense-faced look. “Is there any answer to that question that’s not fuckitty?”
Sloan blinked. “Maybe?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, you are one.”
“Hey, I go out and patrol.”
“Sure you do. But you do know you’ve been down in this basement for like a week and a half, right? Like, I don’t even know if you’ve seen Tyr.”
Oh, he’d seen Tyr. He’d seen Tyr a lot, sometimes multiple times in a night. They were having a ball. Tyr was incredibly grateful for his pool, and once he cooled down every evening andthey’d eaten, they spent many, many hours seeing one another. Intimately.
“I’m trying to organize things. You know, this is the first time I’ve had a space all my own.”
Riley shrugged. “Yeah, I’m still… I don’t get it. But anyway, I’ll let you know about the away-games schedule if there is one. I’m not really sure how this whole tournament thing works, but I’ll get back to you.”
“You’re sure this isn’t some scam?”
