There was no way he could really mean that he thought of her home as his now. That wasn’t how the world worked.
It wasn’t just some empty cliffside. It was where she’d grown up. It was where she worked, looking after huge sections of the West Coast with her radar and the data only she truly knew how to interpret. What was he going to do? Kick her out?
Paloma jumped from article to article, her dread growing into bigger, tighter knots of unease. Dragons: The Definitive Acquisitive History didn’t soothe her worries at all. Neither did the markedly less academic article Caught in Claws: How One Man Found Himself Mated Before He Even Knew Her Name!
The more she dug, the more she found: lists of tips for dealing with domineering dragon partners; guides to spotting the signs of a dragon’s Choosing; a surfeit of pieces detailing the gruesome reports of just what could happen to someone who trespassed on a dragon’s territory.
And countless posts, some of them satirical but many of them serious, about what to do if you suddenly found yourself in the crosshairs of an unmated dragon.
The thread binding everything together? Dragons want, dragons take. End of story.
Outright panicking now, Paloma quickly scrolled back to the article on MDD, looking for any hint that her fear might be unfounded.
…the dragon’s need to roost takes precedence over all things, including eating, sleeping, and drinking. Even when the dragon is not suffering from MDD, many feel the compulsion to find one soon after puberty. It is a deeply personal as well as instinctive decision with much cultural significance related but not limited to the drive to mate and procreate.
The alignment isn’t easily undone. For non-MDD sufferers, it is a great source of cultural stigma to “give up” a roost — statistically, one in three dragons report getting into a life-threatening altercation over a roost at least once in their lifetimes — but for those afflicted with MDD, losing a roost has more severe consequences. After losing a roost, a dragon previously recovered from MDD is 88% more likely to regress than those who don’t.
Paloma wheezed.
Setting her tablet on the bed, she stood up and began to pace. 88% more likely to regress?
What did that mean? That if Artem decided he wanted to stay, she couldn’t kick him out for fear that he’d go back to flying until his wings gave out? That couldn’t possibly be right.
Was she glad that she’d saved Artem from being shot down by a Patrol sniper? Yes. Did she wholeheartedly reject the idea that he now claimed her land as his own? Also yes.
She fisted her hair and pulled, hoping the sharp sting at her temples would help ground her as she tried to sort through her panic. She didn’t know what to do. Her need to take care of her land, her father’s legacy, butted up against her desire to keep Artem safe. She was the one who inadvertently turned Patrol on him, after all, and she was the one who lured him to her home. It wasn’t his fault she found herself with either an unwanted roommate or a very large, very scary landlord who could kick her out at any moment.
Her only hope was that he didn’t actually think of her land as his roost. Maybe if she found him another place to stay, perhaps on a nearby ridge or closer to the Empire Estate. Surely, Harlan Bounds wouldn’t mind a dragon for a neighbor. He hardly ever left his estate anyway. Besides, being a vampire and only active at night, he and Artem would probably never even see each other. There were plenty of good mountaintops around. Artem didn’t really need hers, right?
But if he does, he could go right back to roaming. Paloma’s stomach knotted up with a painful, anxious feeling. Would dooming him to that existence be any different than calling in Patrol herself?
“Just talk to him,” she muttered, stopping in front of her door. “Go see if he’s awake and talk it out. If you can find him a new roost, it’s an easy fix. Don’t stress. Stay calm.”
Disregarding the fact that it was well past the time any day-dwelling creature would still be up, Paloma slipped out of her bedroom and tiptoed down the darkened hall to the living room.
Peering around the corner, she found Artem exactly as she’d left him: sprawled in a heap of blankets and pillows on the floor between her worn couch and her feed screen.
She offered him her father’s bedroom, despite the distinct twinge of discomfort it gave her, but he refused. After eating two dozen eggs and at least twice that number of pancakes — not to mention three full pitchers of water — he asked for her help building a temporary nest in her living room. Although she thought it was a strange request before, Paloma could see why he refused a normal bed.
Even with every spare bit of bedding and all the pillows except for the old, flattened one she left on her bed, it was barely enough to fit him.
Artem stretched out across the cushions on his stomach, a throw blanket haphazardly draped across his lower back and thighs. His wings were spread out on either side, each finely wrought bone and inch of his tissue-thin membrane gilded by the moonlight spilling through the living room windows.
He had one of her pillows bunched up under his arm and pressed close to his face, his nose buried as deep as it could go. With one leg hitched up, he revealed a muscled thigh and a swath of smooth skin. Her eyes traveled the length of him involuntarily, tracing the path of bone and muscle, cataloging the differences between them. Aside from his huge, claw-tipped wings and strange, talon-like feet, he wasn’t too different from a human man.
A beautiful, beautiful human man, posed like a melancholic spirit in a Renaissance painting.
A flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye made her jump. Artem’s tail snaked across the pillows to curl around a bunched section of a blanket and began to drag it closer. Before it could pull the blanket close enough to touch his side, it released its grip with a strange little rattle. She watched, fascinated, as his tail did it again and again, going in different directions, clearly seeking something that wasn’t there.
Maybe it’s a dragon-related sleep thing? Like dogs running in their dreams.
Drawn in by curiosity and the still driving need to talk to him, Paloma crept out from the hallway to stand beside the couch. She curled her fingers into her palms. Was it weird to watch her… guest sleep? Definitely. Could she stop? Paloma rocked back on her heels, a strange sensation of heaviness settling in her stomach.
She needed to talk to him, but she also just wanted to look at him. It was strange and exciting having someone else in her space. Of course, it helped that he was nice to look at. Artem was gorgeous. Every line of his body was finely made, and his confidence in his skin fed the curious part of her that wanted to look her fill until she understood what made him so alluring. If he didn’t care if she looked, was it still wrong?
Of course it was. She knew she should leave. He clearly wasn’t waking up any time soon, and she would rather be caught dead than standing there mooning after him in the dark. She wasn’t the most social being in the world, but even she knew a normal, apparently well-adjusted person like Artem would think that was weird.
Shifting to creep backwards and think about her recent life choices in the privacy of her room, Paloma barely stifled a shriek when something wrapped around her ankle.