Maggie
He is infuriating.
This was supposed to put him off. Take Driok and his ego out of his comfort zone. Make him feel like a fish out of water, like I did when I first arrived here.
Instead he’s taking it all in stride, his very long stride, given he’s seven foot plus of huge, scaly male. One with a large tail I kept tripping over as I followed him through the jungle-like plants until he found a particularly useful cave.
One which looks like it might have been used as a dwelling of some sort before, given there’s a hearth, blackened by soot and what looks like shelves carved into the rough stone wall. Proper cave…alien stuff.
Am I regretting my life choices at this moment? Yes.
Is it worth getting one over on Mr. Possessive Warlord? Also yes. Do I intend calling a halt to his experiment as soon as possible? Yes, yes, and yes.
But for the time being, it’s rather interesting to watch Driok as, muscles bulging, he collects firewood, finds a bunch of furs from somewhere, and makes up a sort of bed in one corner.
I take in the glorious expanse of his butt as he does so. Out of all my collection, Driok’s bottom has to be one of the best.
Not that I’m going to tell him.
I simply snap a couple of images for my gallery and stow the comm device back in my pocket before he turns around, none the wiser.
“What are we going to eat?” I query. “I had rations in the bag you decided I shouldn’t bring.”
“And my warriors, which you wouldn’t let me bring, had a food dispenser,” Driok says, lifting his chin and looking out into the forest. “I will have to find sustenance as my ancestors did.”
“Find an old food dispenser and get it working?”
Driok fixes me with a disdainful gaze.
“I will hunt, little mate. I will bring back my catch for your approval.”
“I am not eating a dead thing.” I slide off the ledge I’ve been sitting on and dig in my pocket where I have stowed a protein bar, given I get peckish all the time. “After all, how do we know if it’s good for the baby?” I raise my eyebrows at him.
I’m surprised how easily the words about my pregnancy come out. I’d half expected them to get stuck in my throat. For it to be a subject we cannot speak about. For it to be the elephant in the room. But instead it was so easy to mention in an almost throwaway fashion.
Driok’s eyes grow dark and his hands twitch, the huge scimitars of his claws extending.
“Meat is good for a sarkarnling,” he growls.
I take a bite of my protein bar, and Driok does a funny little hop from foot to foot which I can’t quite fathom.
“Just random meat from the forest? It could be poisonous given I’m a human.”
I honestly think Driok has grown a foot in height as he bristles with scales…and…oh dear lord…are those spines coming out of his back? I might possibly have pushed things too far. But, in for a penny, in for a pound…
“I could eat something here and it might kill me.”
“No,” Driok rasps, the word barely making sense given the size of his fangs. “Whatever I hunt for you will be safe. There is nothing here which you have not already eaten.”
He takes a step backwards, out of the cave, and in that weird mind-bending way, he becomes his dragon form. One beat of his wings, and he’s in the air, the down draught nearly knocking me off my feet.
I dread to think what he’s going to bring back, given he’s now the size of a lear jet and almost as dangerous.
I might possibly be regretting teasing him a little too. Sarkarnii always go big and I bet Driok, for all his growling and ego, will be the same.
In fact, all of this is probably one of the worst ideas I’ve had. But it has got me out of the Sarkarnii base. It is far more interesting than being stuck in a tin can with more enormous males than I can shake a stick at (and have done).
The cave entrance is set on a little bluff, slightly above the tree line. I sit on a rock and contemplate the strange discordant peeps and cheeps, along with the occasional deep boom and low howl coming from the canopy. It’s as if all of this has been missing from my life.
After everything which happened to me and which ended my legal career, all the stuff I have shoved to the very back of my mind and locked into place.
A therapist would have a field day with me, but I’m not only British but from Yorkshire.
What I’ve locked into my head stays there unless you happen to be a Bronte sister.
I used to walk the moors like some pathetic ghost. The endless sky, the scent of the heather blooming, the squish of the peat beneath my boots. It was enough. Admittedly, I have other more inappropriate coping mechanisms, and my little pooch of a stomach is evidence of one of those gone wrong.
As is the rapidly descending, massive dragon, holding something in his jaws. Driok is back. The Sarkarnii who thinks I’m his wife, or mate as they call this sort of joining.
He doesn’t know how wrong he is.