CHAPTER 99
DAKOTA
I’m so excited to return with the bounty I’ve found.
My backpack is heavy with cattle medication, and when I go home, I can look up the medications and see if they can be used by humans.
Even if they can’t, maybe we can still trade them.
It feels like I hit the jackpot either way.
Holding the straps of my backpack tight, I leave the back office in the stable and head out, dodging open stalls and piles of unnamable debris.
Stepping toward the barn doors, I’m almost outside when I hear something heavy moving behind me. There’s a clank and a scrape against wood, and I automatically turn, assuming it’s Murr.
It’s not.
Directly across from me is the biggest bull I’ve ever seen. I cry out, startled, and the thing locks on to me.
It’s a longhorn, I realize—one of those cattle with the enormously oversized horns. The bull itself probably weighs two thousand pounds and it’s almost as tall as I am. Each horn is probably the length of my arm, and he’s got a tarnished ring hanging from his nose.
He’s also far, far too close to me.
I go still, hoping he hasn’t noticed that I exist. I might be a city girl, but even I know bulls are dangerous.
This is my fault—I should have realized there would be more cattle here. I should have checked with Murr before wandering off. I’m too used to being on my own, and now I’m going to get attacked by a bull.
The creature’s big head swings, the horn scraping along one of the wooden stall doors.
It looks right at me and takes another step forward.
Visions of matadors being flung into the air fill my head, and I take a wary step backward.
I don’t want to be in some post-apocalyptic running of the bulls.
If it comes down to me or the bull, I have every confidence that the bull is going to win.
A shadow falls over the ceiling, and Murr—in dragon form—appears over the enormous hole in the roof. He growls low in his throat at the bull, steam pouring from his nostrils. His eyes whirl black, a silent warning.
The bull lows, the sound irritated and chilling all at once. He paws the ground once, staring right at me.
Murr’s growl deepens.
I remain frozen in place. My dragon can probably get to me, but before or after the bull attacks?
The longhorn turns, sauntering back through the barn the way it came.
Its tail swishes, and as it walks away, it drops a series of cow pies on the ground behind it.
It’s like the bull is telling me what he thinks of me being here.
Lovely creature. I tiptoe backward, edging towards the door at the opposite end of the creature.
My knees tremble, my hands shaking as I creep out.
When I’m fully outside, I race away from the barn as fast as I can.
A moment later, I’m scooped up in dragon claws. I’ve never been so damned glad to be encircled by talons. I cling to his scales, and I can practically feel him chiding me for being foolish and running off without him.
“Sorry,” I pant at my mate, waiting for my body to stop shaking with fear. “I didn’t see it there. I should have known there’d be a bull somewhere, right? That’s on me. I take the blame.”
Murr drifts a short distance away and then settles in the field. He doesn’t put me down right away but pulls me in close and rubs his muzzle against my head, as if reassuring me that he’s not mad. That he was just looking out for me.
He sets me down gently, opening his claws so I can step out of his grip. He doesn’t shift back to human form but remains as he is. Probably contemplating going to get that longhorn and eat him for dinner. That it’d serve him right for threatening his mate.
“Oh, leave him alone,” I say, laughing. My hands have stopped shaking and my knees no longer feel like water, so I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. “He was just protecting his territory.”
Murr stares down at me, his eyes whirling even faster than normal.
“What?” I ask, gazing up at him.
We stare at each other. Murr shifts quickly to his human form and moves to my side. He clutches my upper arms, studying my face.
“What?” I ask again.
“Dakota…in Murr mind?” he asks. “Hear speak, no words?”
Did…we…? I replay our conversation in my head. “I was just assuming what you’d do. I know you pretty well by now. I didn’t hear anything. I wish I did.”
“No…speak?”
I shake my head again, sad.
His expression remains skeptical. “Murr know,” he says after a long moment, searching my face. “Know Dakota inside. Know Dakota danger. Not say. Murr know.”
Oh.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t told him where I was.
I’d simply raced off up the hill and climbed over a fence at the sight of the barn.
He’d gone in the opposite direction. Of course, it’s not out of the question that he’d come to find me if I didn’t return right away.
It’s also not out of the question that he’d know I was in danger.
He’s picked up on my scent changes in the past, and I know from talking with him that fear has a particular tang to its scent.
Even so…
“I don’t know,” I confess. “You’re the one that told me that the mental link is broken now that the Rift is closed. That all drakoni can no longer talk in their heads.”
“Maybe no drakoni to drakoni,” Murr says. “Maybe husband to wife?”
He looks so hopeful that I have to give it a shot. “Okay, well, let’s test this. How do we see if we’re reading each other’s minds?”
Murr grins and touches the cape I have on my shoulders. “Dakota cover eyes.”