Page 1 of Waking Her Dragon

1

“We’re about ten seconds away.”

“Yep.”

“Are you ready for this?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You know it’s not polite to answer a question with a question.”

“And you know I think it sucks when you ask questions you already know the answers to.”

“Are there any other kind? After all, I am the first Dragon Queen. I walked the earth when it was new… unpolluted… beautiful. I…”

“I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot pole. It doesn’t matter how wide you opened the door. I’m not gonna fall for it.”

Turning towards the opposite end of the portal, Sydney Kavanaugh tuned out Drakara, the Dragon Queen with whom she shared her soul, and tried to think. She had to focus. Had to be sure everything was straight in her exhausted, sleep-deprived mind. Carrick would want the facts, and just the facts. It was how he operated.

Yes, he cared how she was feeling and how worried she was. Of that, there was no question, but when it came to a mission– and boy howdy, she was about to ask him to go on one hell of a mission– he operated on facts, and little else.

“And he’s my last hope,” she whispered into the whirling, swirling Magic of the vortex.

“If my opinion matters at all, I think you’re doing the right thing,” Kara, short for Drakara, interjected with an over-dramatic tone and a theatrical toss of her massive head that took up the entire circumference of Sydney’s mind’s eye.

Sighing and slowly shaking her head, Syd blew out a long-suffering breath while using every ounce of her hard-won, well-learned control not to scream at the top of her lungs. It was all so overwhelming– a feeling she hadn’t felt in over a decade. It didn’t matter how much Magic she had, all the lessons she’d learned, the books she’d read, all the places she’d seen, or the gift of the very Dragon Queen who was dancing on her last nerve; she was tired.

No. Check. She was exhausted.

It was soul deep. It was an ache that compounded with every minute, every hour, every day that she came up empty-handed. The last thing she needed was a petulant Dragon Queen, with hurt feelings and the means to let the whole dadgum world know about it, griping and whining while she was asking for help.

Sydney had always been really good at multitasking, but that ship had sailed. And there was no way in heaven or earth that she was going to lose her cool in front of Carrick and his Mate.

Absolutely no way.

She needed to get the situation under control. She had to reassure the two-thousand-year-old Dragon Queen with whom she shared her soul that she appreciated everything Kara was doing.

“Of course, it matters, Kara,” she placated, letting a fraction of the turbulent emotions she’d been keeping at bay seep into her tone. “You’ve been with me every step of this crazy search and rescue mission. Goddess knows, we’ve tried everything our combined minds could think of, or even imagine. Hell, we’ve even pushed the boundaries of our collective Magical abilities– and still we got nuthin’.”

“Well, at the risk of repeating myself, I think talking to the most renowned Dragon Elder on the planet is exactly what you need to do.”

“Thank you, Kara. Thank you so much. That means the world to me.”

And she meant it. Sure, some of what she was saying was to keep Kara cool, calm, and collected when they reached Carrick and Ginnie’s home, but that didn’t negate the fact that she truly appreciated everything the Dragon Queen with whom she shared her soul had done. The aggravation was just the price she had to pay for all the invaluable help and support.

It was like having an overbearing older sister who thought she knew everything and was more than willing to share her unsolicited opinion at the drop of a hat. The difference here was, Kara could set half the earth on fire with little more than a thought– and she most likely had ninety-eight-point-seven percent of all the answers anyone would ever need.

Also, just like a sisterly relationship, they shared an unconditional love and admiration that the Universe had blessed. It was just like…

“Nope,” Syd huffed. “Not gonna go down that dark, tormented rabbit hole again. Not now. Don’t have time.”

As the whirling, swirling Magic of the portal slowed, Sydney took one last deep breath. Stepping over the slightly raised threshold the second it opened, she exhaled when the soles of her light blue Converse tennis shoes touched the soft, thick Bermuda grass.

Inhaling again, she let the hot, dry air of the Chihuahuan Desert fill her lungs. Bathed in the perfume of star jasmine, gardenias, and sweet acacia, she grinned as a whiff of something akin to grape soda tickled her nose right before her eyes landed on a huge Texas Mountain Laurel tree about a hundred feet to her left.

“There’s nowhere in the whole galaxy like Texas,” she breathed. “I don’t know what it is about this place, but…” Pushing a long, blond curl off her shoulder, she chuckled softly, “Well, it just soothes my soul.”

“Mine, too, Mo Nighean Shònraichte.”