Page 31 of Scaled Hearts

I breathe out slowly and lower my hand from my mouth. I know getting frustrated with a dragon is stupid, but now I’m down a hoqin and I still need to get back to the camp once I arrive back on Kaynvu. Walking would take an entire day that I don’t have the luxury of wasting.

He opens his mouth, his hot breath rains over me while his long tongue dives between his teeth to pick them clean.

“How are we supposed to get to my boat now? Or back to my sister?” my teeth grit together. “I needed that hoqin to travel, Angurus. I don’t have wings like you, and I told you the orcs can’t see us coming!”

He slowly shuts his mouth, clearly picking up on my tone. Rising to his full height, he towers over me like a mountain. I do my best not to look like it terrifies me, even though he can squash me with one foot.

“I told you, Kelly. We aren’t traveling that way.”

I let out an annoyed sigh. “Then how are we getting back to Kaynvu?”

His tail whips behind him, cutting down a few trees in the process. They land a few yards away from us in a small heap that shakes the ground.

I don’t have time to argue or run away before I feel a pair of sharp claws coming around my waist and tightening around me. Angurus picks me up from the ground and lifts me high in the sky. Sitting back on his hunches, he holds me up to eye-level.

My stomach drops at how far down the ground is from here. I can tell that my heart is hammering in my chest, because I’m starting to sweat at my brow bone.

Angurus lets out a deep laugh that rumbles out of his chest.

He curls his arm back and sets me down on his back, right at the base of where his neck and shoulders meet. I’m caught between two of his spine horns, sitting between them almost like a saddle.

His large wings expand on either side of me, stretching as the wind catches under them like sails.

My heart lurches.

“A-Angurus, wait—!”

He lifts off into the air, flapping his large wings in order to take us up through the trees. I suck in a lung full of air, a scream leaving me right when my hands find the horn in front of me. My arms wrap around it while my thighs tighten over his body, gluing me down to him.

When he reaches over the tree line, he flattens his wings and glides over them. I’m too scared to look to see where we’re going. I hunker down into him, the wind whipping through my hair and tangling it together.

I hope that he heads for Kaynvu, because if not, I’m screwed. I’ll have no idea where I am if he decides to take me somewhere else. And by doing that, Kara might as well be dead.

Angurus steadies himself out, coasting against the winds that breeze across the water.

I peek my eyes open, seeing the bright blue ocean underneath me.

At least he’s not taking me to another part of his island.

I slowly sit up, gaining a little more confidence since he doesn’t seem like he’s trying to buck me off. It’s still scary being unguarding and hanging onto the horn of a dragon while there isn’t anything underneath me to catch me if I fall off.

Well, besides the ocean. But who knows what lay in those waters.

I twist at my waist to look behind us at the island that grows smaller and smaller the farther we travel away from it. Judging by the angle of where the volcano is, I can kind of tell that it is the same view of what I’d been looking at when I arrived.

Which means that there’s a high probability that Angurusisactually following through with his word.

Relief rushes through me, making me smile. I subtly stroke my hand over his horn and turn back around to admire the view of the ocean meeting the sun.

It really is gorgeous out here. I can see why dragons are fond of flying. If I had this kind of view whenever I wanted it, I’d never stop flying around.

I wonder why Angurus had holed himself up in that cave instead of being out here enjoying the freedom. I know that he’d said he was antisocial because of the other dragons living on the island, but why limit yourself to living there anyway?

If I were in his position, I’d pick up and move at the first chance I got instead of hiding in some musty cave waiting for travelers to stumble upon it, however many decades it took to discover the island.

I tilt my head back and close my eyes. The breeze is warm and inviting, something that I never thought I could feel being this high up in the sky.

I let myself take it all in. Chances are that once we reach Kaynvu, this feeling will leave me as soon as we touch down. My worry for Kara is astronomical now that I’ve been away from her for longer than I planned.

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