“All around the world. I’ve been in North America the last few years, but before that, I spent a few decades in Europe—” But something about Seth’s expression stopped her. “What?”
“Such strange words,” he said, a slightly guilty smile flashing across his face. “My apologies.”
“I don’t know how to say them in Draconic,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “There aren’t words for them. I suppose they didn’t exist, when the language was actually spoken.”
Seth looked like he wanted to question that, and Lana felt another ripple of intense curiosity move through her. There was something she was missing here. It could be the language barrier, she supposed… maybe her memory for vocabulary really wasn’t as good as she was giving it credit for, maybe Seth was being polite and she actually sounded like a raving lunatic. But she had a feeling something else was going on here. Something big. Something strange.
Something that her irrepressible curiosity was making her absolutely determined to get to the bottom of.
Chapter 4 - Seth
They traveled slowly up the mountain as the day wore on. Seth could tell that his squad was restless—they were accustomed to traveling much faster than this on four paws, and they didn’t like that Seth was staying in his human form. But the alternative—leaving Lana to walk by herself, surrounded by wolves she couldn’t communicate with—seemed unforgivably rude. And there was the small matter that he was desperately, fiercely curious about her. Were all dragons this absolutely bizarre? From the strange way she spoke to the even stranger things she said, Seth couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so curious about a person. Then again, it wasn’t like he met new people very often.
He’d tried to keep his fascination from his pack, when they’d talked earlier, sticking to business. He’d sent a couple of messengers off, one back to the pack to report what had happened last night and why the patrol would be a few days late home, and one ahead to the Plateau to get word to the dragons about why they were escorting one up there. With tensions as high as they were, it was best to communicate their intentions as clearly as possible. After all, the Plateau had marked the division between wolf and dragon territory for as long as anyone could remember. Half a dozen wolves marching up there unannounced would likely be cause for concern, especially if they had a wounded dragon with them.
Seth had hoped Lana would explain exactly what she’d been doing so far out into the forest on the walk, but it was becoming clear that talking with her was only going to raise more questions than it answered. He could feel his packmate Elza’s eyes burning into the back of his neck as he walked, and he took a deep, steadying breath, trying not to let her get under his skin. Elza had more reason than most for the rage she bore against the dragons. Her soulmate had been among the first to go missing, nearly six months ago now. He’d been on a routine patrol just like the one Seth was leading… a patrol that had never come back.
Officially, they had no idea what was causing the spate of disappearances. But the general consensus among the pack was that the dragons were to blame. Their pack knew how to handle the beasts that haunted the Fog and were familiar with the dangers common to their ancestral territory. Dragons, on the other hand… dragons remained a mystery, something that seemed quite intentional on their part. And with two dozen wolves missing, presumed dead, just over the last few months… well, the grief-stricken families of the wolves left behind knew who they blamed.
All of this preyed on Seth’s mind as he walked beside the short-statured dragon, listening with a mixture of curiosity and confusion to her awkward, halting way of speaking. She seemed to be getting more natural with practice, but she still spoke like nobody he’d ever met. Seth kept his eyes on the trail ahead of him as much as he could, self-conscious about the way his gaze kept straying to Lana’s pretty face. She looked all of twenty-five, maybe even a little younger… but when you looked into her eyes, you knew you were looking at a creature far more ancient than that. Dragons simply didn’t age the way wolves did. Their lives ended only by accident, hundreds or even thousands of years after their birth. He’d always felt that there was something so…unnaturalabout that. It certainly made his pack uncomfortable.
“I have to ask,” he said, trying to focus on the discomfort to brace himself against her undeniable charm. They’d be at the Plateau soon—if he wanted to get any information from her, he was missing his chance. “Our missing wolves.”
She looked at him blankly. “Missing wolves?” If her confusion was an act, it was an incredibly convincing one. Then again, she’d had a long, long time to perfect the art of deception, hadn’t she? Her whole species had.
“Over the last six months, dozens of us have gone missing.” He braced himself. This was hardly the most diplomatic way of going about this, but what choice did he have? “Many among us think dragons are responsible.”
“For disappearing wolves?” She blinked, clearly shocked. “Which dragons?”
There it was again—one of those bizarre questions that made him wonder whether she was having trouble with the language. He gestured to the mountain peak above them, wreathed in cloud and mist but becoming visible through the canopy as the trees thinned.
“I don’t know,” she said with a helpless shrug. “I travel. I am not—I don’t have many dragon friends. There aren’t many.”
He frowned. The dragons of the mountain numbered a hundred at least, maybe more—the dragons had always been evasive about their exact numbers, and hidden away at their mountain peak, it was difficult to make accurate guesses. Was Lana pretending not to understand him to avoid the question?
That was what Elza thought was going on, she’d made that much clear. Her theory—which she’d shared with him in no uncertain terms that morning as they’d hunted for their meal—was that Lana had been lying in wait, hoping to ambush a patrol, when she’d gotten caught out by one of the beasts from the Fog instead. Seth had heard her out, agreed that it was possible, but unlikely—and he certainly wasn’t going to level such a serious accusation at a near-stranger without proof. Something like that could be enough to tip their two communities over the edge from uncomfortable tension into all-out war. And though the wolves of the valley may possibly outnumber the dragons, Seth knew the losses they’d sustain in any kind of violent altercation were unthinkable.
They had to coexist here. There was nowhere else for either of them to go.
It was late afternoon when they reached the truly difficult part of the journey, where the winding path grew so steep that it was necessary to climb in some places. He could sense his pack’s reluctance as they shifted into their human forms behind him, and he sighed a little at the looks of outright hostility on their faces as they sized Lana up. For her part, she put up a brave front, giving all three wolves a bright smile that none of them returned.
Worry continued to gnaw on him as they climbed. Something was wrong here. They were taking Lana back to her people, to the dragons of the peak. But she didn’t seem to understand that at all. She looked to him every time they encountered a fork in the trail, as though the path to her home wasn’t obvious. And then there was what she’d said about traveling. Where was there to travel, here? On foot, a wolf could circle the whole valley in three days, following the ancestral trails that circumnavigated their ancient home. Beyond that lay only Fog. With wings, the valley must seem even smaller. So what did she mean when she said she was a traveler?
Was it possible that she spent most of her time in the Fog? That sent a chill down his spine. It would certainly explain why she was so strange, so addled… had she gotten lost out there somehow? Flown out far enough that the strange magic in its depths had taken hold of her mind, done her the kind of damage that couldn’t be healed? The very thought of it hit him harder than he’d imagined possible, setting off a twisting ache in his chest that made him grateful his pack wasn’t sharing his thoughts right now.
Seth tried to set aside his worries. Whatever was going on with her, they’d find out soon enough. Once they reached the Plateau, they’d have more answers. The dragons would come down to meet them once they saw them arrive. It was possible they were there already, waiting for them, if they’d responded early enough to the messenger he’d sent on ahead. This could even be an opportunity for diplomacy. The dragons should recognize that he’d risked a lot by bringing the lost woman back to them—perhaps that goodwill could be leveraged, somehow. He had to try. His pack was counting on him.
The sun was just beginning to set when they made it to the Plateau, all of them breathing hard with the exertion. There was a good reason this place was considered the border between wolf and dragon territory—practically speaking, anything above this area was inaccessible to wolves, unless they brought along specialized climbing equipment, and for dragons, going far below this line was difficult, as the thick canopy of trees made it hard for them to land. There was an ancient agreement that the waterways were neutral territory—the river that emerged from somewhere high in the mountains and poured through the slopes and valleys to a great lake to the south. The pack tended to avoid the shores of the lake when they could… after all, it was there that the dragons hunted.
And it was close to the lake that the first patrol had disappeared, Seth remembered, a chill running down his spine. On the part of the ancient trail that ran between the lake and the Fog—a place every patrol hurried through as quickly as they could.
Lana seemed completely oblivious to the unease in Seth and his packmates. She was striding across the Plateau, clearly fascinated by the view from up here, moving back and forth along the cliff’s edge to get a better view of the landscape spread out before her. Seth and his wolves exchanged glances—he couldn’t help but notice the way his people stood close to him, Elza in particular clearly on edge.
“Where’s Xanthe?” Victor murmured under his breath, scanning the area worriedly. No trees up here, on this windswept plateau clinging to the side of the tallest mountain of the five peaks that loomed above their home. “She’d have beaten us here even if she was crawling. Where is she?”
“In the trees, maybe.” That was Josef, always looking on the bright side, balancing his brother’s dour outlook. “It’s windy. Maybe she got the message to them then went and found somewhere warm to wait—”
“Or she got the message to them and they took her,” Elza growled, arms folded across her chest and expression mutinous. “We should go. We got her here, didn’t we?” she said, nodding to where Lana was staring out across the valley at the Plateau’s edge. “That’s more than they’d have done for us.”