Dragon Chases (Dragon Breeze Book 2) Read online

  Lyrian lifted Anarian out of the carseat. The baby woke up now, and started crying.

  Brad couldn’t help thinking of all the things he didn’t have to care for her. No diapers. No clothes. Nowhere comfortable to sleep.

  He and Lyrian would manage, they understood what was going on. But the little baby had no idea. She deserved better than this.

  When they figured this out, he’d make it up to her. Somehow.

  Right now, he needed to take stock of their situation. He stared around the cave. It was lucky Lyrian had known it was here. Hopefully they could hide until…

  Until what? They couldn’t just stay here permanently. In fact, staying even for a short while was going to be problematic. They had no food, nowhere to sleep, nothing.

  For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do.

  Lyrian didn’t seem fazed at all. She settled herself down on a rock, leaned her back against the rocky wall, and attached Anarian to the breast. Brad spared a moment to be glad they didn’t need bottles and formula.

  Lyrian heaved a sigh of relief. “At least we’re safe here,” she said.

  Brad wished he could be so certain. “What if that dragon follows us, like she followed you to Henry’s house?”

  “If she does, I can deal with her. Just so long as she’s alone.” Lyrian’s voice was confident. Certain.

  Brad wished he could be so sure.

  He also wished, even though he felt a little foolish for doing so, that he didn’t have to be relying on Lyrian to fight for him.

  He should be the one defending her, not hiding behind her.

  Trouble was, he had no experience fighting dragons. And he was pretty sure the internet wouldn’t help him with this one, even if he had access right now.

  “What if she isn’t alone?” he probed. That was his worst fear. One dragon, they might be able to handle, between the shotgun and Lyrian’s magic. But two? Or even worse, more?

  Lyrian’s face fell at that. But only for a moment. “Then we run, back to the town,” she said firmly. “They won’t attack us there. And if worst comes to worst, we go to where Verrian might be anyway, even if we do risk leading the dragons to him.”

  Brad wished it was that easy. “We don’t even have the map. How can we even find him?”

  Lyrian’s face fell at that. But then she stared at him stubbornly. “Then tomorrow morning we go back and get it. If we’re ready for the Trima dragon, we can get in and out without her seeing us, I’m sure.”

  Brad stared at her. She sounded so certain.

  How could she sound so confident when everything was so out of control and unstable?

  Brad had thought he had a solution to everything. Until a few days ago, he’d never had a situation where he didn’t know exactly what to do. Well, except for the first time Lyrian had shut him out. He hadn’t known what to do then.

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. What he hadn’t known how to do was convince her to talk to him.

  He’d still had a solution. He’d left.

  It had been a valid option, even if it hadn’t been his preferred one.

  Now he struggled to even think of possible options.

  Lyrian though, she didn’t falter.

  Then again, maybe these were normal decision for her, like deciding what to do if a man’s heart stopped was simple and logical for him.

  “Hopefully she won’t find us here.” This time, Lyrian’s voice wavered a little, and the look in her eyes wasn’t certainty and strength, it was fear and nervousness.

  She was no more certain of this than he was.

  For some reason, that made Brad feel a little better. Not quite so helpless. There was something he could do. He could help Lyrian feel more confident.

  With that aim in mind, he sat down on a rock beside her and said, “You ran her into a ditch, I bet she’ll be thinking twice about coming after you.”

  Lyrian shook her head. “It was nothing. We’re just lucky that my magic is less obvious than hers. If we hadn’t been in the middle of the human town, she would have used her lightning magic. I can blow away a lot of things, but not lightning.”

  So much for that. He hadn’t helped at all. In fact, he’d only made things worse.

  Before he’d started talking, she’d seemed confident that she could defeat the other dragon. Now she didn’t.

  How could he help her feel that certainty again?

  “I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” he said, his voice firm. “You seem to have known exactly what to do every time we’ve dealt with her so far. You’ve kept us and Anarian safe. I’m sure you can do it again.”

  He was rewarded with a weak smile. “So far, yes.” Lyrian agreed. “That’s what a princess does.”

  “Princess?” Brad blurted out. he stared at her. She’d said dragon earlier. Now she was a princess?

  To his surprise, Lyrian blushed, and shrugged her shoulders a little. “Yeah, I’m… kind of a dragon princess. I’m supposed to know what to do to protect my people. Unfortunately, I failed. We all failed.”

  Brad couldn’t help staring. He knew that he should ignore her revelation. Or at least not be stuck on it. They had far bigger problems to deal with. It really made no difference that she was a dragon princess.

  Except it did.

  He suddenly wasn’t just protecting the woman he loved and his baby.

  He was protecting a princess.

  That idea stirred a vein of nobility somewhere deep inside him, probably one that stemmed back to a knight ancestor or something. He could do this. He could be her protector. That would be a worthy job.

  He wasn’t bothered by the fact that she was more powerful than he was. He’d never felt threatened by a woman in power. In fact, they’d always kind of turned him on. The way they always seemed so in control…

  Trouble was, Lyrian wasn’t in control. She was as out of control as he was. Sure, she always seemed to save the day, but that was more good luck than good management.

  And, it was one thing to like a strong, independent woman while he was confident and secure in his own job. It was quite another to feel comfortable if he walked away from that and didn't have his own role. It wasn't like he was even any good at protecting Lyrian. No, he could add nothing useful to her life. He'd just be a dead weight.

  He couldn’t do this. No matter how much he wanted to be her protector, he was going to fail. He couldn’t go up against a clan of enemy dragons with just a shotgun.

  Reluctantly, he realised that the only way he could help Lyrian would be to find her brothers. That needed to be his mission, much as he wanted to jump in and save her, it wasn’t the practical solution, the sensible one.

  Boring as they were, practical and sensible were necessary too. He looked over at Lyrian, the dejected expression on her face melting his heart. He might not be able to face down a dragon with a sword for her, but maybe there were other things he could do.

  Brad knelt down beside her and put a hand on her knee. “You didn’t fail,” he said softly. “You are doing a fantastic job. I bet it’s not easy, being a mother, a dragon, and a princess. But I also reckon no one could do a better job than you are doing.”

  Lyrian stared at him, tears welling up in her eyes. “It’s kind of you to say it, Brad. And I know you mean it. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.”

  “Nothing ever is,” Brad said softly. He certainly knew all about that feeling. He hesitated for a minute, he didn’t normally talk about his own failures. Even admitting to them was hard. But his need to help Lyrian was greater than his own fears. “You know I’m a surgeon, right?”

  Lyrian stared at him, then nodded.

  “Well, one of the realities of being a surgeon, a healer, is that sometimes, you fail.”

  Brad’s voice choked a little. He hated thinking about his failures, the people he hadn’t been able to save, but that didn’t mean he ever forgot any of them. Not a single name. That was one of the downsides to having an excellen
t memory.

  Lyrian put a hand on his knee, offering silent support.

  She wasn’t the first one. Doctors did stick together. All of them knew the pain of losing someone in the operating theatre. But their sympathy had never helped him one little bit. Brad had always born it with good grace, and thanked them, then retreated as quickly as he could, embarrassed.

  It didn’t feel like that with Lyrian. He could almost feel the sympathy envelop him like a warm hug. She wasn’t just going through a motion, she truly cared.

  “There are many people I couldn’t save,” Brad said, his voice low. “And after each one, you analyse the situation, think of all the things you could have done differently that might have changed the outcome. Sometimes, nothing you could have done would have made any difference. Those are easier to let go.”

  His voice lowered again. This was the part he’d never admitted to anyone before. “And sometimes you wonder if you’d taken a different path, done something different, if you might have been able to save them.”

  Lyrian’s hand on his knee squeezed a little, and the gentle encouragement helped Brad continue. “I can’t go back and change any of those times. I can’t go back and save those people. I know I did the best I could with the information I had available at the time, but it doesn’t help.”

  “So why do you keep doing it, if it hurts so much?”

  Brad looked up, his eyes meeting hers. “Because if I don’t, then people who I could have saved would die,” he said simply.

  He’d intended the story to help Lyrian understand that sometimes, your best was all you could do. But she was staring at him with a different understanding in her eyes.

  “That’s why you had to go back to America,” she said softly.

  Brad hesitated, then nodded slowly. “It was,” he said.

  Lyrian’s eyes were sad, a sadness that was echoed in Brad’s heart. “Your people need you as much as my people need me.”

  Brad hesitated, but no matter how much of a big shot he thought he was, it wasn’t really the same. No matter which way he looked at it, it wasn’t on par with being a princess. Lyrian wasn’t just responsible for the life and death decisions of one person, she had a whole community, a whole clan to care for.

  If something happened to her, he was pretty sure no one could replace her.

  “Not quite. A surgeon is important, but I’m not the only one. If I leave, there are others who will take my place.”

  Another thing he didn’t usually admit. Lyrian really was bringing out the best in him. Or maybe the worst. He wasn’t sure which it was.

  “I bet they’re not as good as you.”

  Her blind faith in his abilities both touched and surprised him. She’d never seen him operate. Knew nothing about what he did or how well he did it. But still, she believed he was the best.

  The trouble was, it only rammed home to him that he wasn’t.

  He’d always wanted to believe that he had something special, something that set him apart. But somehow, standing in front of Lyrian, as she fed their baby daughter, he didn’t feel special at all.

  He felt wholly inadequate.

  He might be good at one, specific thing, but there were a whole host of things he wasn’t good at. And suddenly one of them, protecting her and their baby, was far more important.

  Chapter 5

  Lyrian was glad Brad was opening up to her and telling her a bit about himself. The trouble was, all it was doing was convincing her that any relationship between them was doomed to failure.

  Oh sure, he’d said his people could manage without him, said that someone would replace him. And maybe it was true. If something happened to her, then her brothers and sisters would fill in any spaces, but that didn’t mean her people didn’t need her. It didn’t mean there weren’t things she could do better than her brothers and sisters.

  That was part of the reason her mother had chosen different fathers for all her children, so that they would have a range of dragon abilities, and be able to connect with each segment of the clan. The wind dragons looked to her to champion their cause specifically, just as the fire dragons looked to Taurian and the metal dragons looked to Warrian.

  And the lightning dragons had looked to Sarian, until they’d followed Ultrima and left.

  Lyrian heaved a sigh. No good plan ever worked quite the way you expected.

  Brad might plan to leave his job, he might even be convinced it was the right thing to do, the thing he wanted. But would it end up that way? Or would he resent having given up everything that had been important to him for her.

  Because she’d had a baby.

  Would he even be considering this if it weren’t for Anarian?

  Lyrian bit back a sigh.

  They weren’t just two people who met and had an amazing week together, followed by a beautiful baby.

  They both had important roles to play in their own respective circles.

  She could no more ask Brad to give up his job as a surgeon than she could ever give up being a princess. It wouldn’t be fair, to him or his people.

  Or to hers.

  She had a job to do, just as much as he did. She needed to grow up, and accept her responsibilities and her failures, just as he did.

  Lyrian straightened her shoulders, disturbing Anarian at the breast. The baby gave a gulp, and rooted for the nipple again.

  Of course, Lyrian had two responsibilities now—her clan and her baby.

  Then again, so did Brad.

  How were they ever going to figure this out?

  Did any of it matter right now? She wasn’t a princess if she didn’t even have a clan.

  That was the first step, to find her brothers, and hope they knew how to find her clan. Of course, since they were apparently still with the humans, then it was possible they had no more idea than she did on where to find her clan.

  Lyrian shook her head. She could make guesses all day, but none of it would help any. What she needed was answers. Concrete answers.

  Which meant they had to go back into the human town and get the map they had left at the pub. That was the only clue she had to Verrian’s whereabouts.

  “What do we do now?” Lyrian asked, her voice quiet.

  Brad must have been thinking the same thing, because he answered her with a sigh.

  He was silent for a long moment, and Lyrian’s heart skipped a beat. She shouldn’t have started talking about his responsibilities. What would she do if he said he had to go back to them now? How would she manage any of this on her own? She didn’t know anything about maps, or finding a specific human in amongst all the others. Especially not now that the Trima dragons knew where she’d been hiding all this time?

  But before Lyrian could do anything more than panic, Brad took a deep breath and looked up at her. “We can’t go back into town tonight. They’ll be looking for us. Tomorrow morning, early, we’ll go into the pub and get the map. Then we can find Lisa. Until then, we’ll have to hide out here and hope that no dragons find us.”

  It wasn’t an ideal plan. Lyrian would prefer have something she could do right now rather than sitting around waiting. But it was better than no plan.

  Lyrian usually wasn’t the planning type. She liked to be able to make things up as she went along, it made it easier to adapt when things changed. But today it made her feel good. Today it enabled her to settle back on the rock and feed her baby without stressing. “Can you get Anarian’s rug out of the car?” she asked Brad.

  He brought the sheepskin over, and once the baby had finished feeding, Lyrian laid her down for a nap.

  “I wish we had a sheepskin that big for us,” Brad said, frowning a little. “I’m sorry, Lyrian. It’s not going to be terribly comfortable out here.”

  Lyrian stared at him, at his serious expression, and gave a laugh.

  “What?” Brad demanded.

  “You humans are so soft,” Lyrian teased. “Dragons are used to sleeping on the ground.”

  She ignored t
he fact that she’d become used to sleeping on a mattress at Henry’s. Just because she’d become accustomed to comfort didn’t mean she couldn’t get by without it.

  She could do something to make it a bit more comfortable though. “Come on, I’ll show you how dragons make beds.”

  Brad gave a grin, and followed her. “I guess it’s kind of like camping,” he said. “I was never big on that either.”

  Lyrian looked around for a bush she knew had soft, springy leaves, and began breaking off small branches. “Here, help me collect some of these.”

  Brad’s expression was doubtful, but he helped her anyway.

  While she gathered the leaves, Lyrian considered her options. Usually she’d have a skin of some sort to put over the branches, to make it a little more comfortable. But she didn’t have that here. What could she use instead?

  She wished she’d thought more before leaving Henry’s. There were so many more things she could have brought with them to make this more comfortable. It just hadn’t occurred to her that they’d be sleeping outdoors.

  Once she’d laid down the branches in a pile though, Brad headed to the ute. He pulled out his bag, and took a few t-shirts, and laid them over the branches. “It’s not much,” he said apologetically. “But maybe it will help a little.”

  It did. After she’d finished, Lyrian glanced over at Anarian, who still slept soundly on her sheepskin. Later, when they were planning to sleep, she’d move it onto the bed so that Anarian could be comfortable and close. But there was no point in disturbing her sleep now.

  She lay down on the makeshift bed to test it out, and Brad lay next to her.

  He put his hands behind his head, and stared up at the rocky outcropping. “It’s not too bad,” he said, though his voice was a little doubtful.

  Lyrian wriggled a little, pushing down a few branches that poked into her skin, and tried to ignore the way Brad’s closeness made her stomach do flip flops. That wasn’t so easy to do.

  Now she was regretting not putting the branches into two piles, with a gap between them.