Hammy watched as Sara put things into her giant rolling suitcase. It was mostly stuff for him. Usually when she packed a suitcase it felt like the end of the world, but this time he knew what was happening. He knew he would get to go with her.

  She closed the case up then sat down on the couch. “I want you to learn to pattern cast the Atmosphere bubble spell before we leave so that no matter where we end up, you’ll be able to breathe.”

  Hammy tried. He really did. His core kept showing him patterns and Sara kept trying to get him to ‘solve’ them, whatever that meant, but none of it made sense. He didn’t think the way humans did. After a while, he stopped paying attention and started bathing himself. She’d figure it out eventually.

  Sara sighed. “It’s OK. ESK1 says I can keep two castings up. You just have to stay near me or it will fade.

  Hammy saluted her and watched her make the face she made whenever he did something adorable. He loved making her make that face.

  “Did Shayla teach you that?”

  Hammy nodded. “She taught me to nod, too. She said my videos were going to break the internet.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a second,” Sara said. “I put on my Hammy hoody, you want to ride?”

  Hammy jumped up and hooked his claws into her thick hoodie and was able to maintain his perch without clawing her. He put a big dose of cheek scent in her hair and on her face to let the pushy dragons know whose human she was.

  “OK, Hammy, I’m going to bring us to the middle of the wyrmcraft, near where they left us. Etta will sense the wyrmhole with her space affinity and they’ll probably show up right away. I have no idea how they’re going to react. Whatever you do, don’t let them catch you. Are you ready?

  Hammy looked up from where he was cleaning his foot. “Let’s go.”

  Sara formed the wyrmhole, making it exit right between two of the crop row planters near the center of the craft where Etta and Bodran had left them, and they stepped through.

  Within a minute, she saw two dragons in the air headed right for them. As they landed, Bodran morphed into Empyrean form, but Etta remained a dragon. Steam escaped her nostrils.

  “Where have you been,” Etta said. Her voice reverberated with some kind of magic, and she did something that made light escape from under her scales.

  Sara locked eyes with the enormous dragon. “I’d rather not say.”

  “You will tell me or I will lock you up,” Etta said. “You’ll be my Imperial pet.”

  Sara’s heart was pounding. She felt tears at the edge of her eyes. It was her adrenaline reaction to conflict rearing its ugly head, but she’d learned long ago that you could stand your ground and cry at the same time. She was not a people-pleaser, not since she’d learned what that meant. She wasn’t a kid trapped in a house with a bipolar mom anymore. It wasn’t her responsibility to keep everyone else happy. She still had that childhood-instilled instinct to fawn in the face of anger, but she was sapient. Her instincts didn’t rule her.

  She let out a breath and relaxed her shoulders. “You were planning to lock us up anyway,” Sara said with an exaggerated shrug.

  “If you don’t answer my questions, slave, I will take your precious Hammy from you and make sure he learns the meaning of pain.”

  Inside, Sara felt her emotions boiling, but she didn’t let it show. She was pretty sure she and Hammy held all the cards. Guess they’d find out soon enough.

  “How are you going to hide him from me?” Sara said. “I can make wyrmholes same as you. But I don’t think you can hide yours the way I do mine. I KNOW the origin and exit of every portal you’ve opened in my presence, and I’ll KNOW everywhere you go from here.”

  Etta stretched her neck out and held it an inch from Sara and Hammy. “You think knowing where he is will be enough? You won’t be able to pry him away, puny, fragile thing. It’s comical that you even entertain the thought.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Sara swallowed. She didn’t want an enemy in Etta. She had to see reason.

  “It doesn’t have to come to that,” Sara said, holding her hands out to her side, palms open. “Think about this logically. We should work together. You can’t kill us. If we work together ...”

  “I could rip your arms off and keep you alive for centuries and suffer no ill effects…”

  *

  Bodran sighed as he watched the connection energies between his bondmates. Etta was powerful as hell, but she had no experience. She’d been obeyed without question her whole life by everyone but her mother, who treated her like garbage. In her world, you either made people obey, or were made to obey. So much of dragon society was like that, especially on The Home World. He needed to teach her a better way, but for now, she needed to see Sara had power or she’d never respect her.

  “Etta, stop. She’s bonded to the wyrmcraft somehow. No one can use it if she doesn’t let them. If you’ll stop threatening her and really look at her, you’ll see she’s changed. She’s become one of us.”

  Etta did as he said. Her vertical pupil was almost as big as the human, but to the Sara’s credit, she didn’t cower as Etta brought her head up next to her so she could peer close.

  Etta was the one who flinched. She changed into her empyrean form, her feet coming down so she was standing about 6 feet in front of Sara.

  “Impossible,” Etta said.

  Bodran shook his head. “I think they absorbed dragon cores while we were away.”

  Etta frowned, “Only dragons can handle dragon cores. They’d be dead a hundred times over if they tried.”

  “They are gods now,” Bodran said. “Same as you and me. They didn’t so much as twitch when you flared your aura. There’s only one way it had no effect on them.”

  “Blasphemy!” Etta said. “Bring out the cores we bought for them. I’ll rip the dragon cores from their souls… I’ll … I’ll…” she trailed off and then screamed in frustration. “This is not how it’s supposed to be.”

  Bodran let her scream. He figured she’d wind down and see reason, but he was wrong. She pivoted and hurled a bolt of fire at them with no warning.

  “Etta no,” Bodran screamed.

  There was nothing he could do. They were all going to die.

  But Hammy was already knocking Sara out of the way. Before she even hit the ground, Sara vanished, and the Hammy was another twenty feet away, licking his foot like nothing happened.

  Etta dove for Hammy but he shot away, then shot back and forth in front of her, almost like he was taunting her. She made to grab him again and her foot slipped. She almost fell. She shot a fireball at him. He winked at her and still had time to get out of the way. What followed was ten minutes of Etta trying to incinerate the cat and failing utterly. The more she failed, the angrier she got.

  Hammy was toying with her, staying out of her grasp by just a hair every time, zipping between her legs, even using her as a springboard. She roared and shot firebolts at him, causing no small amount of destruction to the rows of crop planters. At one point she tripped over her own feet and when she tried to get her hands up to catch her fall, her sleeve caught on her belt and she hit the ground, forehead first.

  Bodran heard stifled laughter coming from behind him. He turned and saw that Sara had been right there, close as an assassin, and he doubted he’d ever have realized it if she hadn’t started laughing.

  Bodran had to admit, there was some humor in the situation, but laughing was the worst thing she could have done. Etta stopped trying to catch Hammy and turned toward them. “I can see that I am not needed here,” she said. A portal opened in front of her and she stepped through it.

  Bodran turned to Sara, “That was impressive, but foolish. Now the Empire has a dragon who can reach us here. You can move the wyrmcraft and probably use your stealth affinity to hide it, but your planet, Earth - that can’t be hidden.

  “That’s … a really good point,” Sara said. “But let’s be honest. My planet wasn’t safe from the Empire to begin with.

  “No,” Bodran said. “But protecting it from one princess was going to be a lot easier than protecting it from an Empire.”

  “Another very good point. What should we do?”

  Bodran pointed at Hammy “You can start by telling me who worships the cat. I can see his divinity growing from one moment to the next.

  Sara’s jaw dropped. “Wait, wait, … you mean that god thing isn’t just a ruse? You’re actually gods?”

  “It depends on how you define ‘god,’ but yes, Sara, dragons are gods, and now so are you.”

  Keyth, who always had an impeccable sense of timing, chose that moment to jog up and bow, first to Bodran, then to Hammy, then to Sara. He took up his position next to Bodran and said, “Princess Etta’s storage link, My Lord. I’m afraid she’s forgotten it.”

  Bodran smiled. “We should begin unloading immediately. She’ll remember if she ever calms down. Once she severs the link, we’ll lose access to it.” Keyth nodded and began pulling cubes of items out.

  He wouldn’t take anything they hadn’t gathered for the purpose of stocking the Wyrmcraft. Etta would have to come around eventually, and he didn’t want to antagonize her more than he had to. He turned to Keyth.

  “Lord Sara, Lord Hammy, please allow me to introduce you to my High Priest, Keyth of Andonth.”

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, my Lords,” Keyth said.

  Bodran started to translate the musical tones to Sara, but she did the most impossible thing he’d seen her do yet. She looked like she was reading the air as she hummed a barely passable, but understandable, “The pleasure is mine, Keyth,” in a version of the native Andonthan language that had been created for species who could only hum one note at a time.

  How the hell had the Earthling learned Andonthan so fast?