Chapter 17 #3
For as little time as the dragon had been outside her shell, Ariadne frequently forgot just how old the hatchling was.
Older, by far, than Razer in many ways. She, Emillie, and Madan had discussed the clutch from which Almandine was born, and her half-brother was certain the dragon had likely been in that egg for several thousand years.
During that time, she’d spent countless hours, days, weeks communicating with the siblings and friends in the surrounding eggs until she was left alone, waiting for her own bondheart to trigger her hatching.
“Tell me more,” Ariadne said, still unconvinced that Razer had any good reason to leave behind a hatchling who needed help adjusting to the world. After all, he’d taken it upon himself to help the other young dragons that hatched in the presence of the newcomers.
“He said he’s busy training the others for war.”
Now Ariadne reeled to a complete halt, her face screwed up in disbelief, and her horror caused her to speak aloud for the first time in several minutes. “Excuse me? Are you not allowed to train with them?”
A laugh echoed through her mind, and Almandine’s sides heaved with the gentle rumble. “Think about it. You and Azriel are mates. Training me means putting you in danger.”
“Keeping you from training only puts me in more danger, does it not?” Ariadne looked over her shoulder as though she could physically hunt down the great brute and poke him in the eye for such thoughts to even cross his mind.
“I’m no child, Ari.” Almandine nudged her shoulder with her nose to draw her attention back to the present moment. “I know when we first spoke that it seemed that way, but it’d been quite some time since I’d had anyone to speak to. I can hold my own.”
Ariadne gestured at the dragon’s body. “You are physically the size of a child. You need all the help you can get, and poor Oria can only do so much.”
“I’m big enough to eat you.”
“In comparison to Razer!” Ariadne slammed her hands on her hips and looked the dragon up and down. “Why would he want you to be alone in this?”
Another laugh, and this time Almandine stepped into a particularly long patch of grass to curl up. She watched Ariadne expectantly, the feeling of contentment flooding through the vinculum. When it reached Ariadne, she sighed and crossed to the dragon, where she, too, sat in the grass.
“I’m hardly alone,” Almandine said, setting her head on a foreclaw and looking up at Ariadne. “And the only reason I am as small as I am is because my shell kept me that way. It is not so different from when you transitioned from vampire youth to adult. I know what to do, I just need to practice.”
Scrunching her face, Ariadne did her best to put herself back in that era.
She had been quite young when she went through the change—far younger than most vampires.
It took a mere two nights for her to complete the transition, locked away alone in a windowless room.
When she had been let out, she took from Nikolai’s vein for the first time and was considered a full-fledged adult.
Still, she had been alive and walking around for almost sixty years when it happened.
Listening to her thoughts, Almandine hummed deep in her chest. “Your time in the sunlight is akin to my time in my shell.”
This was not something Ariadne could wrap her head around.
The concept of it simply did not make sense.
Breaking free of the shell was like birth in her mind.
As such, Almandine was but a newborn in comparison to the other dragons—a newborn that needed to know how to defend herself, given an attack.
“Then why is Razer avoiding you?” Ariadne glowered at the sky, where she was certain the blue dragon was avoiding them. Probably with a little flock of other hatchlings around him.
Almandine huffed. “I’m still learning the intricacies of life outside my shell.
Just as you had to learn the subtle differences between the world you once knew and the Society you entered the moment you transitioned.
He has a lot of other things to think about than teaching me how to catch a wind under my wings. ”
When Ariadne had no response to that, Almandine continued, “Besides. I’m annoyingly small and need more help than I wish to admit. He should not need to feel like a father figure to me right now. I fear he would worry too much about me if he did.”
As much as she hated to agree, Ariadne could see no fault in the logic. Everything she learned about the dragons’ development, however, went against all she once believed it to be. She shifted back to lean against Almandine’s shoulder. “Does that mean Razer hatched fully cognizant?”
“I would assume so.” Almandine swiveled her dark eyes up to her. “He would have been in that shell for at least several hundred years. I couldn’t say who taught him how to fight, though.”
That ruined the image she once created of a floppy, childish Razer following Azriel around like a puppy. She shared the pictures she conjured with Almandine, drawing another laugh from the dragon. Even her lips peeled back to expose her long, sharp teeth.
“We’re all a little…juvenile when we first hatch,” Almandine admitted. “It’s hard to avoid when we know nothing beyond our shell and the minds of our siblings and friends.”
Ariadne ran a finger over one of the dragon’s white spikes at the crown of her head. “That is a fair point. Still. He should not be ignoring you entirely.”
Closing her eyes, Almandine shot back a feeling of understanding, then bitter amusement. “It’s almost as though you don’t know him at all. Nothing but snark from him.”
Well, Ariadne certainly knew that to be true, but she had never expected it would be directed at her bondheart.