My mate.

I focus in on her, letting her noises wash over me and fill me with peace. She eventually stops and says something to me, the curious note in her voice telling me that her chant has finished and she is asking a question.

And the question…it sounds like my name.

I forgot I had one.

6

SASHA

When I finish singing the nursery rhyme to the dragon, the curls of smoke have stopped pouring from his nostrils.

Thank God.

It’s taken every ounce of courage I’ve had to remain calm and collected in the face of his— I don’t know, whatever fit he was having. His eyes had gone completely black, and smoke was coming from his mouth and nose, as if he were barely holding it together. The claws wrapped around me were tight. Blood and gore dripped from his muzzle, a reminder of what he did to that other dragon, who lies in a pool of blood entirely too close by.

This is the stuff of nightmares, but I can’t be upset that the other dragon’s dead. I’m too relieved that I lived. I suppress a shudder, thinking of the drowning feeling, of being underwater and too afraid to surface. I stayed under longer than I’d realized, because I must have blacked out. I woke up in the dragon’s claws, confused and lungs heavy.

It didn’t take long to realize he was on the verge of losing his shit, either, and so I had to think of what to do to calm him. The only thing that sprang to mind was singing, and so I started to hum the first thing that sprang to mind—Ring Around the Rosie. A song about ashes and death seemed appropriate enough.

The song worked, or maybe it was just the tone of my voice. Either way, the smoke has stopped and his eyes have gone from that awful, empty black to the whirling gold on gold again. I stroke his scales, doing my best to calm him. “You doing okay, dragon? Do we need to talk about the attack?”

His gaze fixes on me with uncanny awareness, and my skin prickles.

“Is it something I said?” I whisper, doing my best not to glance over at the nearly decapitated red dragon a few feet away. I don’t want to call his attention back to it, just in case his mind snaps and his eyes go black again.

But the dragon very gently, very carefully sets me down on the ground. I gaze up at him uneasily, wondering if this is a bad sign. A moment later, he’s human again.

Naked, but human.

He puts a hand to his chest, gazing at me with those odd, golden eyes. “Dakh.”

Oh my goodness. “Is…is that your name? Dakh?” I move forward and tap his chest, deciding to pointedly ignore the fact that he’s naked. “Dakh?”

He makes a gesture with his head that might be a nod. “Dakh,” he says again, and the way he pronounces it is fascinating. There’s so much more flavor to it when it comes from his mouth than from mine. It sounds a bit resonant, deeper, more vibrant. Having a name to put to things makes him more human.

“Hi, Dakh,” I say softly. “I’m Sasha.”

“Eyhm-sa-cha,” he mimics.

“Er, not quite.” I tap my chest again. “Sasha.” I want to say just Sasha, but I suspect this will derail into my name becoming “JustSasha,” and I don’t want to confuse him more.

“Sa-cha.”

I shiver, because he says my name in that deep, sonorous way he says his own. “That’s right. Sasha and Dakh.” I point at myself, then at him. “Do you know any other words? Can you speak anything else?”

“Dakh,” he murmurs, and then reaches to touch my chest. “Sa-cha.”

“Okay then, baby steps. We’re doing good with names.” I give him a bright smile. For some reason, I feel ridiculously pleased that we’re communicating, even if we’re not going beyond names. I study him, noting that his human form is just as spattered with blood as his dragon one was. “Are you…are you okay? Are you hurt?” I realize he won’t understand what I’m saying, so I point at my black eye and my bad arm. “Ow.” Then, I gesture at him. “Dakh ow?”

His heavy golden brows go down, and he moves forward, reaching for my bad arm. I have it splinted and wrapped, but everything’s kind of soggy and turned to crap since my dunk in the tub. “Ow?” he asks, a dark look on his face. “Sa-cha ow Dakh?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” I bite my lip. “I’m sorry.”

“Sa-cha ow?”

Oh dear. I’m afraid we’re getting stuck on the wrong things. I don’t want him to fixate on my wounds, not while he’s covered in blood and potential injuries of his own. I shake my head and take him by the hand, leading him to the tub of water. “Come on.”

There’s not much water left in the tub, and what is left is pretty filthy, thanks to my full-body dunk, but with a discarded scrap of my jeans and a bit of water, I start to wash the dragon. Dakh remains still so I can clean him off enough to see that the blood covering him isn’t his. He’s got a few small scratches, but other than that, it’s all gore from the other.

I force myself to keep smiling, though I’m a little disturbed as I hand the makeshift towel over to him and indicate that he should finish washing himself. He swipes at his chest absently, his gaze focused on me. All that blood. He killed the other dragon. I don’t know if it was necessary or if he just enjoys killing. I wish I could ask. Actually, there’s a lot I wish I could ask, but there’s too much of a barrier between us.

Mostly, I want to know why he’s picked me for his captive and if he’s ever going to let me go.

But there’s no sense in stressing, I guess. I’ll have to take things one day at a time, and today, at least for now, his eyes have calmed back down to the gold on gold. As long as they’re not black, I can relax.

And since he’s human and in a good mood, I feel like I need to ensure it stays that way. So I keep a bright smile on my face and gesture at the stewpot full of cold, leftover stew. “Should we eat?” Eating’s actually the furthest thing from my mind, with a gigantic dead dragon on the other side of the room, but I don’t know what else to do.

Stew it is.

DAKH

Night falls, and as it does, my human struggles to keep her eyes open.

It has been a long day for both of us. Despite her soft touches and pleasing voice, I have remained on alert, worried another dragon—male or female—will come by and view my unclaimed mate as a threat or a prize to be won. Either one will spur an attack, and my mate’s hair still smells of char from the last dragon. She cannot be safe until I claim her and give her my fires.