Claws and Kisses

The wake of raging fury flowing through my veins did not die quickly. As I followed the soldiers to the bottom floor, pushing aside peasant spectators and high-born nobles alike, I found myself taking calm, slow breaths to quelch the rush of emotions my twin had coaxed from me. His words echoed in my head with resounding indignation.

Where did all of your talk about travelling the world and saving the children from our village go, huh?

Where did that dream of getting vengeance for Baba and Mama go, hmm?

All I’ve been seeing is you hanging on the edge of Avel’s every word and sucking up to his little friend group.

No matter how much I detested Rhett’s accusations, there was no use denying them. I had found a home within Avel’s open arms, and had allowed myself to forget why I had come here in the first place. Not for a mate, but for peace of mind. While I had lain beside Avel and drank his water, ate his food—the children in my village had starved beneath the mountain. Mama and Baba’s corpses remained unavenged.

All at once, the funeral around me was too much. The overcrowded stands, the billowing fire below, the stone steps that led further and further down were too much. Dots clouded my vision in a black haze, threatening to drag me under. In the distance, I heard one of the soldiers shouting my name, but I could not hear him over the rush of blood pounding a staccato in my ears. In the crowd of people, I desperately reached out for an anchor, searching blindly for an escape route.

I need air. I need air. I need to leave.

The soldiers clustered around me, but I pushed them away. There were too many people. Too many sounds and shouts for me to focus. My breaths started to come in quick, rushed gasps. I was drowning. I was drowning in a sea of people and there was nowhere to go. I have to leave, I thought over and over again. I have to leave. I have to—

“Wendy.” A soothing voice sounded from out of nowhere. Suddenly, Bear’s fair face appeared before me. Her brunette curls were tied tightly into a wild, loose bun atop her head. The scar on her face proved prominent in the firelight, flashing dangerously at the soldiers who lingered near us still. Her black, oblivion eyes were locked steadily on mine as she gripped my shoulders, pleading silently for me to stay focused on her.

“You are alright.” Her uncharacteristically stern face was a sight to behold. For the first time since I had met the female, she was not grinning mischievously or winking in a suggestive way. Her lips were tightened into a straight line, not revealing any of the emotions she was feeling. “Look at me. You are okay. You are alright. I am going to get you out of here, but I need you to breathe. Can you do that?”

My heart was beating too fast to slow. My body was flushed with the heat and the sweat that came from the anxious chills that swept my body, plunging my limbs into a war of hot and cold. Yet, as I looked at Bear and felt her steady grip on me, I felt my head nodding in a violent, fast shake.

“Good,” she said, her voice direct and solid compared to the shivers wracking my body. The crowd seemed to fade away as she squeezed my shoulders, her eyes never leaving mine. “Breathe with me. In and out. In and out.”

The overwhelming shouts and chatter rummaging the dragons in the stands faded bit by bit, becoming a dull roar in the background of Bear’s firm, fixed presence. My breaths gradually slowed as I followed her controlled breathing. I was so focused on Bear that after a few moments, I realized the thundering stands of the funeral had disappeared. Instead, we stood outside in a meadow. The sun was just setting in the sky, causing the clouds to appear as if they had been set on fire amidst the mountains and the trees.

I broke away from Bear, looking wildly about. Jara was now in the distance, a sparkling diamond in the light of the sinking sun. Bear and I were alone, standing atop a hill in what seemed the middle of nowhere. The grass grew tall here, and swayed lazily in the summer heat. Yellow flowers and crimson buds sprouted every few feet, creating the very image of beauty in the hot season.

“Where . . .” I twisted away from the sunset and the flowers, my eyes seeking out Bear’s. She was no longer looking at me, her eyes on the painted sky above. I blinked rapidly, at loss for words. “How . . . ?”

The she-dragon glanced at me, the sober expression from earlier still clinging to her features. “It’s called misting,” she replied softly, her eyes lowering to the ground as she slowly sat among the tall grass.

I remained standing, not sure what to do with my hands or my feet. It was disconcerting to see Bear so closed off and indifferent. So unlike the spirited woman I had come to think of as my friend. The only thing I could think to say was, “I didn’t know dragons could do that.”

“They can’t,” she replied, words clipped.

I watched her for a moment more before slowly making my way towards her. The grass easily parted as I sat beside her, the moist, rich soil of the ground soaking through my dress and into my backside. At once, the gown seemed ridiculously out of place in the heart of the meadow, where no silk or jewel could outdo the beautiful glow of the flowers and the sloping mountaintops.

“Thank you,” I finally said, breathing out shakily. “For what you did back there.” There was a pause as I bit my tongue, thinking about the panic and apprehension that had overtaken me in the arena. How Bear had swept in, calm and controlled—everything I needed her to be in the moment. I sighed, picking at the folds in my dress as I stared bashedly at the ground. “I don’t know what came over me . . .”

Bear did not bother with a response, and only continued to stare at Jara in the distance. The silence that hung between us felt both tense and peaceful at the same time. For a few minutes, I debated on what more to say to her. It felt as if I should say something. The quiet that hung about the female seemed misplaced, but I did not know how to break the silence separating us.

Fortunately, I did not have to ponder for long. I was surprised when Bear broached the silence, instead of myself. She tugged at a piece of grass, her voice lilting and musical. “I use to get them all the time,” she whispered, almost too soft to hear. “It would take almost nothing to set them off. A loud noise, a flash of light, someone accidentally bumping into me . . .” She smiled bitterly. “It took me about two centuries to get myself under control. And even then, they never really went away. Not until I joined Avel’s horde. The Inner Circle.”

I swallowed. “You mean . . . the little meltdown I had back there?”

“Aye,” she said, her lip quirking up at one side. “When I was a fledgeling, I use to have them two, three times a day, each one worse than the last. My folks didn’t know how to fix me, so they ended up shutting me up in my room half the time and shouting at me to get a grip the rest. I spent the first few years of my life as this introverted, scared little girl. Couldn’t walk ten feet out my front door before I was scrambling to get back inside.”

My heart cracked at her words. It seemed impossible that Bear of all people, with all of her liveliness and splendor, had struggled for so long with something she couldn’t brush away with a smile or a laugh. She was the most exuberant person I knew. How does someone like her come from somewhere like that?

I crossed my legs under my dress, plucking at the grass as she had, my voice low. “Did it . . . Does it have something to do with what you can do? The—the misting?”

She hesitated before nodding, the sunlight catching the amber highlights in her hair as it shifted with the movement. “Yes, the misting and the . . . outbursts, are supposedly side effects of my condition.”

“Condition?” The word slipped out before I could stop it.

The she-dragon fidgeted, her hands curling around the clump of grass she had uprooted from the ground. “This is little known throughout Avel’s Horde, mortal. You would do well not to repeat anything that is said on this hill.”

I started to nod, but stopped myself. The busybody in me was biting at the chance to hear the secrets behind the jovial female, but her business was hers alone. “You do not owe me an explanation, Bear. Your history is yours to keep.”

She smiled in earnest now. “That is why I do not mind sharing this with you.” The dragon leaned back on her hands, her eyes on the sunset. “I would have given anything for someone to tell me about their experience when I was younger. Perhaps . . . perhaps this will help you, in some way.”

Instead of arguing further, I simply nodded and leaned back as she did, my eyes attentive on her.

“My father left my mother when I was young. I don’t remember much about him besides the stench of alcohol that cloaked him like a second skin,” she said, nose scrunching in distaste. “He came in and out of our lives every few months before leaving altogether. My mother had not known him long before she was with child, so it was only when I shifted into a my Drachen form and started spewing fire did we discover that he was a dragon.”

My eyebrows shot to the top of my forehead. “You are half-human?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I know you are unfamiliar with all the creatures that roam the world, but my mother is known throughout the human lands as a fairy. Or, the fae, as the dragons know them.”

Surprise had the thoughts in my head spinning out of control, but I reigned myself in long enough to ask, “You are a fairy?”

“Half-fae, half-Drachen.” Her words were said with cool indifference, but I heard the detestment in her voice. It took me a moment to realize the detesment was not for her mother or father, but herself. She continued speaking, her words flat and emotionless. “I was somewhat of an . . . anomaly, as a child. No one in my village had ever heard of a fairy and dragon’s coupling resulting in a babe. The results were . . .” She sucked in a breath, her nose flaring slightly. “Well, we’ll just say that I was certainly not the village sweetheart.”

I was stunned by her speech. There was a churning of emotions brewing in my stomach. Anger for anyone who had ever made her feel less than she was. Curiosity, for everything I still did not know about her past. A strange sense of pride for the strong, vibrant woman that emerged from the abused child.

“Avel found me when I was at the lowest point in my life. I had left my village after one too many humiliations. Everywhere I traveled, once people found out what I was, they declared me an abomination and proceeded to shun me. I couldn’t hold a job for two weeks before I was getting kicked out, either for my background or the consistent meltdowns, as you call them. I had no friends, no family, nowhere to go except back to a race of people who hated me for my father’s blood.

“Avel and I met by chance,” she said, rubbing her jaw. “It was before the war, before he left his father’s horde to create his own. He was looking for fledgelings to recruit for when he finally left. Instead, he found me in the middle of a beating from a landowner I had tried bailing out of debts on.” That bitter, broken smile returned for a moment. “To get out of it, I misted a few thousand feet away. The farthest I had ever travelled before. Avel saw, followed my scent and tracked me down to where I had cowered in a cave, nursing my wounds. At that point, I had shifted into my Drachen form. It took hours for him to approach, calm me down. He spent the rest of that damn week in the cave with me, healing my wounds and listening to my sob story about my past. He was the first person in years to look at me as if I was a person, with a heart and a brain and a soul.”

Her smile shifted, becoming something entirely good as her eyes flickered to mine as she finished her tale. “Instead of seeing me as an abomination, he praised me for my talents. Told me that as a hybrid, I could do more good in a year than most dragons could do in a lifetime. The fae powers I possessed mixed with the Drachen form I could shift into made me a force to be reckoned with, not a monster to be hated and feared.” She looked directly at me then, her eyes knowing and sincere. “Your mate offered me a home. A place where I was—am treated as an equal. And for that, I will forever be grateful.”

Suddenly, she pulled a knife from the hidden folds of her armor. The sharp tip of the dagger gleamed in the fading light. My eyes widened as she placed the edge over the delicate, pale skin of her wrist. “Which is why,” she gritted her teeth, drawing the knife across her wrist. I gasped as red blood immediately began to flow from the wound, dripping down her arm and splashing onto the dirt beneath us. She lowered the dagger. “I need you to know that my loyalty lies with you now. Avel and you both. I will protect you, no matter what. My life . . . is yours.”

She offered the dagger to me.

My eyes grew to the size of saucers as my eyes looked back and forth between the blood and the blade, unbelieving. “What . . . what are you doing there, Bear?”

The humour that the female usually possessed returned for a brief moment, flaring once more in her eyes. “Trust me, mortal.”

Those words had my resolve corrupting in seconds. With great reluctance, I took the dagger from her, unable to hide the wince that took hold of my features. She nodded in encouragement as I sucked in a breath and sliced my own skin, immediately feeling the spike of pain that laid in the dagger’s wake. I moved to cover my arm with my good hand, but Bear stopped me with a gentle but firm grip.

“Easy there,” she said, a faint smile on her lips. She guided my arm to hers, and pressed the two bleeding forearms together until the crimson red liquid mingled together. The pain began to fade almost immediately once I wrapped it in one of the swatches of my black dress. Bear’s had healed in seconds, due to a dragon’s natural healing abilities.

“What was that for?” I asked, puzzled and a little discombobulated.

“Proof,” she replied, rolling to her feet to stretch her limbs, the serious, pained hybrid gone and the mischievous vixen back. “Proof that you could tell me to jump off a cliff, and I would do it.”

I frowned. “Bear, what did you just do?”

“Relax, sweetheart.” She smirked at me. “Avel is going to be irritated I messed up his little ritual, but he’ll get over it. We were bound to do it sooner or later anyways.”

“Bear,” I hissed, suddenly feeling a tightness in my chest. A strange, foreign pull that I had never felt before. “What did you do to me?”

She harrumphed. “You are no fun.” She stopped stretching long enough to peer down at my struggling form, which was trying to scramble off the ground and stand upright. Her smirk broadened. “It’s a bond, babe. A Drachen bond. After you and Avel mate officially, everyone in the Inner Circle will have to create one with you. It’s like a . . . permanent pledge of loyalty. We all have one connecting us to Avel.” She began to walk, her hips swaying as she threw a wink over her shoulder. “I’m just speeding up the process. You’re welcome.”

I followed after her, vexed and awed at the same time. “Bear!”

Her laugh rang through the hills, and it was the last thing I heard before we were misting back to Jara.

I have to be honest: I had a completely different plan for this chapter, but Bear apparently had something to say so I rolled with it. *shrugs* What are you gonna do, right?

Hello, loves! How are all of you doing? Apologies for the late update. Your heroic, brave author had her wisdom teeth pulled out on Tuesday, and foolishly thought she could finish writing the chapter after her surgery. As you might guess, that is not what happened! I was very loopy and could not tell left from right, and soon figured out that writing was not going to be on that day's agenda. So, here we are!

Anyways, what did you guys think of this chapter? Bear is a hybrid mythical creature. If anyone of you saw that coming, give yourselves a pat on the back! I just barely hinted at it in the way she moved like a ghost from time to time, but other than that, the she-dragon kept herself in check around Wendy and it was impossible to tell otherwise. Thoughts?

Also, I do not have them myself, but I was trying to describe Wendy having a panic attack, and was insinuating that Bear used to have them as a child. Did that come across clearly? I just kind of typed 'panic attack' into google and hoped for the best. I'm sure you will tell me anyways, but please let me know if I was totally wrong and my panic attack information was incorrect.

Alright, that is all for today folks! I hope you enjoyed and are excited for the coming adventures!

~Elaine