The Betrayed Dragon (Cycle of Dragons Book 2), Dan Michaelson [best books to read all time .txt] 📗

off. There should be no reason for that surge to come, no reason for it to feel as if the connection to the dragon jumped from place to place.

A scrape came across the ground.

I tensed.

I don’t know if I would’ve been aware of it had I not been so focused. Now that I heard that scraping, I knew there was something here.

I tried to ignore the sense of the dragon.

I heard another scraping.

I readied myself, and instinct forced me to reach for a belt knife that wasn’t there.

I cursed myself.

I wasn’t dressed for the exploration the way I should be. Had I still been at home, I would have been carrying a knife, possibly a bow, and I would have been prepared for anything that might be out in the forest. It wasn’t as if I were incapable of handling myself.

I shifted, sliding one foot around the tree, creeping outward.

As I did, I paid attention to the sounds around me. My breathing sounded loud in my ears. I had to focus, steadying my breathing, steadying everything within myself, preparing.

Perhaps this was all part of Jerith’s plan. He wanted to know whether I was capable of finding my way back. An idea came to me that I hadn’t considered before. I’d followed the dragon in the forest, getting increasingly lost the farther in I went, but I didn’t necessarily have to follow that dragon back. I could follow others.

I had been so focused on the black dragon, knowing that he had been the one to guide me deeper into the forest, that I hadn’t paid any attention to the other dragons to help me find my way back.

The black dragon could find its own way back.

Another soft shuffling sound came.

This one was louder than before, and I followed it, moving carefully as I tiptoed through the forest. I didn’t know if I was hunting or if I was the hunted.

If I didn’t have any connection to the dragon power, I was going to have to use my own brute strength. Growing up on a farm and learning to handle livestock had given me a certain physical strength that I could use.

I saw a flicker of movement off to my left. I didn’t turn, just watched.

It blended into the green of the forest. Not an animal, at least no animal I’d known. Maybe the green dragon, but I would have been aware of it and would’ve felt the dragon by now. This was something else.

I took another step toward it, moving slowly and trying not to draw too much attention. Once again, there came a flicker of green. This time it was even clearer to me that it was somebody dressed in green fabric.

I’d seen something like this before. Only once, but the color was too similar to be anything but that.

Which meant I’d somehow come across the Djarn.

I spun in place, looking around me. If there was one of the Djarn, then there would be others. More likely than not, there would be their own paths leading to the forest. I could use them to navigate back. As I turned carefully, I realized that were at least two other Djarn around me, even though I had only seen one. There might have been even more, though I couldn’t see them.

The ones I could see had spears pointed at me.

I held my hands out, sweeping my gaze around me, trying to search for more while also trying to open myself to the dragon again, searching for some way of connecting to the power within me. I knew that it was there, that the dragon energy existed; it just needed to come out. I needed to reach it.

Were I closer to my homeland, I wouldn’t have thought that the Djarn would attack, but out here, this close to the capital, I didn’t know. It was possible they were a different tribe. And if that were the case, then considering how I’d entered their territory, it was possible they might have decided to target anyone who would disrupt their sovereignty. My saving grace, at least as I saw it, was that I wore the emblem of the Dragon Academy on my gray jacket.

“I’m unarmed,” I said, turning in place. I could still feel the energy of the dragon. Every so often, it seemed to me that the dragon flickered, as if the power that was out there came closer to me, surging within me.

Why would there be such a surging of power?

Was there something that the Djarn were doing?

There had always been rumors about the Djarn, suggestions of power. My parents had never spoken of it, but my closest friend Joran’s parents had. His father had some experience with the Djarn, and he had known them better than anybody that I had ever known, going so far as to trade with them, something that very few outsiders were ever permitted to do.

“I’m just trying to find my way back to the capital.”

None of the Djarn moved.

I could see three spears. Had there been three from the beginning?

I knew about two of them, but anything more than that might have been hidden. I had to believe that all of the Djarn in the forest around me were aiming spears at me.

I stared.

I wasn’t about to move, and I wasn’t about to do anything that would be perceived as a threat. Not with spears pointed at me.

Instead, I took a deep breath, focusing on the faint connection to the dragon. If it came down to it, and if the Djarn decided to attack me, I was going to need some way of reaching for that power.

I steadied my breathing, going through the steps I learned in the Academy—hurriedly moving on to feeling for the heat within myself, then to the relaxation stage. Gradually, the energy of the dragon flickered within me, bursting in an almost overwhelming way.

I had done it.

I’d connected to the dragon.

Now I needed to borrow that power.

I tried to summon that power the