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The whelp snuggled into his neck.
Jhon picked up his pace, enjoying the sensation of stretching his legs after the long flight.
The wind buffeting at his back shifted, bringing the scents of the newcomers to him, and the dragon awoke in his chest all at once, flooding into him so that he stopped in his tracks, reeling.
Mine.
The dragon’s roar echoed in his head. But Jhon couldn’t understand it.
He was too distracted by the exquisite scent tugging at him, drawing him toward the brown-haired female with a ravenous desperation.
Mine, the dragon groaned again, showing him an image in his mind of the girl under him, that dark hair tangled from the throes of their coupling.
No, Jhon screamed back inwardly at the dragon, trying to unsee that delicious image.
He was a career soldier, assigned to guard duty for the next twenty years. He couldn’t be fighting against his base urges that whole time. It would be torture.
Calling on all his will, he strode to the bottom of the slide-ramp and turned on his heel to find the droid in charge of transport. With any luck, one of his brothers would have the girl’s whelp, and he would never have to exchange a single word with her.
Sure enough, the transport droid was already programming sleighs on the side of the ship. Three massive lichen-deer snuffled beside the sleighs, their breath pluming in the frozen air.
“First pick of transport, sir,” the droid said politely.
Jhon inspected the three sleighs and chose the one with the most secure sides for his wiggly whelp, knowing Rafe would want the fastest and Kian would need the largest.
“Excellent,” the droid said. “The lichen-deer with the matching harness will pull.”
“Just the one?” Jhon asked.
“Indeed, sir,” the droid told him. “Each deer is more than capable of pulling the sleigh on its own.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jhon said. “But this is not regulation. Proper animal transport requires at least two animals.”
“Each deer is more than capable of pulling the sleigh on its own,” the droid repeated.
“Yes,” Jhon said impatiently. “But what happens when it gets sick or breaks a leg and we’re stranded in the middle of the tundra?”
“If you would like, you can requisition a second animal,” the droid said briskly.
That was more like it.
“Yes, obviously,” Jhon said. “How fast can you get it here?”
“It will be available to you immediately,” the droid said, “once the lichen-deer on your brother-in-arms’ farm are bred, and the resulting babies reach adulthood and are trained to the harness.”
Jhon drew in a deep breath and turned away to stop himself from dismantling the thing with his bare hands.
But the gods were frowning on him.
The girl was approaching, the wind lifting her cloak again, and molding the purple satin against her meager curves.
Instantly, he forgot why he was angry.
He drank in her scent and the unexpected blue of her wide eyes. With the dragon’s enhanced senses, he could hear the pounding of her heart, its rhythm bewitching him.
The dragon inside him roared and clawed at his bounds, begging Jhon to claim her, before someone else did.
His body surged with primal need as he stood frozen before her in a tornado of unwanted emotion and sensation, holding himself back by a thread as the feelings finally began to make sense.
