Mate To The Dragon

Prequel - Part One

It hurt to breathe and the massive black bruises on my chest made me guess that I had a few broken ribs. My lip was busted and my nose felt broken too.

Then there was my shoulder. It was a wonder my arm was still attached. There was a gaping hole that sent pulses of agonizing pain through my entire body.

"I thought I told you not to move?" A voice asked.

I glanced up at the boy who I quickly realized wasn't much older than myself. His smile was kind and hopeful like before but his brown eyes were full of pain.

I looked back down at my wounded body. "I'm sorry, I needed to see," I croaked out.

He shook the water from his hair and took off his cloak, laying it out to dry near the small fire in the corner. "Well I managed to find the last few ingredients I needed so I can fix up your hands and feet, and your face too," he said, dropping a cloth bundle onto the ground beside me.

"Is there any way you can fix my shoulder or my leg?"

He sighed. "I'm afraid I don't know how to mend a broken bone. And I did everything I could with your shoulder. Cold iron is tricky and I don't know much about it. But if you and your dragon are injured then you're going to heal like a human, that much I do know," he murmured.

I nodded slowly, swallowing the thick lump in my throat. "Thank you for helping me."

He shrugged, pulling the animal skin back over me before moving to mix herbs and various other ingredients from his bundle in a small wooden bowl. "It's the least I could do considering it's the witches from my clan that are helping the wolves―I mean not by choice but still, without them the wolves never would have been able to make cold iron weapons like that."

"If they didn't have those weapons then there's no way they ever would have been able to kill the dragons," I muttered.

He nodded absentmindedly. "I didn't realize exactly how deadly they were until I saw you―or your dragon anyway. If a single arrow can take down a massive dragon that easily then I wouldn't be surprised if the wolves completely wiped out your race in the next few years."

Tears ran down my burning cheeks as I realized how true his words were. An arrow took my father's life and a spear almost took mine. Mitalonys hadn't spoken a word but I could feel his pain, hundreds of times worse than mine.

"This is going to hurt," Kellan warned.

He took my hands in his and put a gray-green paste on my palms. I hissed and tried to yank them away but he held my wrists tight. "That wasn't the painful part," he mumbled and his grip on my hands tightened further.

I took a deep breath when he closed his eyes and started muttering something foreign. My jaw fell open at the sudden searing pain that streaked through my palms. If it weren't for his iron grip I would have ripped my hands away and probably punched him.

The burning started to fade and I sighed heavily as he washed off the paste with a small cup of warm water. The skin was completely healed. Scarred and red but no longer torn or bleeding.

He smiled a little. "Ready to do your face?"

***

"Nope no get it away," I growled.

"What! Why? She's not gonna hurt you," he scoffed.

My gaze flicked back down to the snake slithering onto my blanket. My skin was crawling and it took all of my self control not to run screaming from the cave.

"Kellan why do you have a snake?" I asked.

"Because she's my dæmon. Now why are you afraid of snakes?"