12. TWELVE

twelve

NOT DEAD

Cole stretches himself awake next to me. When he opens his eyes, the color drains from his face. He scrambles away from me, whipping his gaze around the room and rubbing an eye with the heel of his hand.

“Kat! What the—” he pauses. His eyebrows knit together, his voice dropping to a whisper, “I—is this real? Are you really here?”

I nod, a smile spreading from my lips.

Hesitantly, he reaches out a hand to twirl a strand of my hair around his finger and tucks it behind my ear. His breath catches, realizing I’m not a figment of his imagination as his skin touches mine.

“I—I thought you were dead? I was told your house caught fire.” His voice is hoarse.

I grab his hand and rest it on my chest. My heartbeat dances underneath his touch. “Not dead,” I whisper.

Cole pulls me tight into his arms, crushing me into his broad chest. “I can’t believe it…I thought last night was a dream or a hallucination. I’ve missed you so much.” He looks around the room. “Where’s your mother? How did you get here?”

My throat tightens enough for my voice to come out strained. “She’s…dead. She was trapped in the fire. I tried to get her out but it all happened so fast…”

He brushes comforting strokes down my arm, rocking me gently until my emotions settle to a controllable level. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I’m so, so sorry.”

I nod, chewing my lip and trying to divert my attention to something else before the wave of despair takes over. Daeja pops her head up from the chair, and Cole freezes. He snatches a sword by the bed.

I throw an arm out in front of him. “Stop. She won’t hurt you.”

“She?”

“Yes, Daeja. She’s been with me since our house burned down.”

He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“You’ve named it? Kat!” His voice drops to a whisper, “It’s a dragon. If we were even rumored to be in the same area as her and not report it, we would both get the noose. Not to mention she could turn on us at any moment. She could torch this whole place to ash in seconds.”

I wrap my hand around his holding the sword. “She’s not like that, she’s just a baby.”

Daeja jumps down from the chair, her nails scraping against the ground as she stretches her front legs. A stretch rolls through her spine and shakes the tip of her tail. She leaps into my lap with a weary glance pointed at Cole.

Cole flicks his attention back and forth between the two of us. “And how do you know that? How in the world did you end up with a dragon?”

“I found her egg by the river.”

“So she hatched with you? As she gets older she will become more and more dangerous—”

Daeja hisses.

I pat Daeja’s head to quiet her and toss a look toward Cole. “She’s not like the others. The last thing my mother said was to find you and take her back to the Dragon Lands.”

His grip on the sword relaxes. “Your mother said that? Kat…your mother…”

“I know, I know. But Cole, you should have seen her. She spoke to me with such clarity and conviction. It was like she was herself again. If it weren’t for her, I would have died in that fire, too.”

“I know you loved her.” He tries to grab my hand, but his gaze flicks down to a glaring Daeja and drops his hand. “You did everything you could for her.”

“Not everything. I need to do this one last thing. Please…I need your help. I have no idea how to get there from here. You could come with me? We could set her free at the border, and then we could run away together. We could go anywhere and live the life we’ve always wanted to.”

His eyes soften. A sad smile spreads at the thought. “I can’t leave this squad. I’m their captain. At this rank, leaving it would have deadly repercussions.”

“Even if we left for just a few days?”

“I’m not sure it would only take a few days.”

My face falls, my words as soft as a breath. “I can’t do this without you...”

The words land gently as if they were snowflakes on water.

Cole chews at his lip, a muscle in his jaw feathering as he considers. Breath by breath, the tension slowly melts away. His heavy sigh finally breaks the silence. “I’ll need time to think of something. But she can’t stay here. There’s too many people that could see her. We need to keep her out of camp.”

“Well then, where can we stay where we won’t be seen by your squad?”

He shakes his head, daring to reach across to grab my hand, his grip on me firm. “Not we, Kat. Her. I need you to stay. I’ve lost you once…I can’t bear to lose you again.”

“She’s a baby, and she can’t protect herself,” I argue and look down at her curled in my lap. A purr rumbles in Daeja’s chest as I caress her under her chin. “If we kept her here in your room couldn’t we hide her in that trunk?” I point over to where it sits by the wall.

“No, we store a lot of our correspondence in there. If we were to be audited or invaded, my room would be the first they checked. Keeping her here would be even more dangerous than out in the forest.”

“Well, I can’t leave her. Where she goes, I go.”

He searches my eyes for a few moments in silence. Begging me. When I don’t relent he sighs in defeat. “Then we need to go now. Before too many people are up and asking where I am. You can stay near the lake, and I’ll reassign patrols to focus on the forest north of the outpost.”

We both stand. I wrap my cloak around me and raise Daeja to slip behind my neck, pulling my hair forward over her. Cole moves for the door as I gather my things. He brushes the opening apart an inch and looks around before we exit and turn left to the forest behind his building. We slip between the gaps of the crumbling wall.

“Hey!” Quick steps approach us from behind.

Cole’s hand tightens around mine before he drops it.

We’ve been caught.