The Second Weyr

“Look!” Mihall swiveled Torene about again so that she could see the male dragons beginning to gather on the Rim, their eyes taking on the avid orange of arousal. Their riders were converging on Mihall and Torene, and suddenly she was the focus of their awakened sensuality. Despite herself, she recoiled, tearing her hand free of Mihall’s grip. His eyes had turned an intense blue. “Remember,” Mihall said then, “don’t let her-”

“I know, I know, I know!” she cried, resenting each and every one of them for the way they were looking at her. No one had told her about this part of a queen’s mating-especially this flight, when the reward of Weyrleadership went to the winner. She backed up until she was leaning against the stone of the Weyr, her mouth gone dry, even as sweat began to ooze from her pores and a strange sensation enveloped her guts.

At her final shout, Alaranth woke completely and Torene made the mental linkage. The rock wall supported her. Not even the calm explicit recital Sorka had given her covered the depth or intensity of the emotions the dragon was feeling, much less Torene’s reluctant but inexorable response to the lust. A blood lust, first, with Alaranth aware of an insatiable hunger.

Glittering in the summer sunshine, Alaranth extended her wings and bellowed a challenge. Aware that the male dragons were watching, she turned to display her proud strong body, throwing her head back and stretching out her long neck. She retracted in the blink of an eye, arching herself, and with a graceful, powerful motion, leaped into the air. Three long sweeps of her gleaming wings, and then she was gliding down to the lake, scattering the beasts-her prey-with her hungry cries.

Blood it, Alaranth. Blood it! Don’t eat! The instructions Torene had been drilled in jumped to mind as Alaranth landed on the bullock. Blood it only! Torene kept her voice firm, stern, putting every ounce of authority into her tone.

Alaranth snarled back at the distant tense circle of humans before she tore the throat and sucked greedily at the blood.

Blood it! Hear me now! Alaranth! Torene could not give her any leeway in this. Blooding gave the mating queen the quick energy she needed: flesh would only weigh her down and she would not achieve the height required in a truly successful mating flight. Height meant safety, for dragons locked in conjugation could plummet to the ground before finishing if insufficient altitude had not been attained.

Blood only, Alaranth! Torene repeated as her queen leaped on a second large bullock. You must fly the highest you can. You must not eat to do that! Blood it only!

Though they were the length of the Weyr apart, Torene felt as if she were right there beside her ravenous queen; the hot blood was running down her throat, and she wondered why it wasn’t choking her. With another part of her consciousness, she felt hands touching her and realized that she was surrounded by many sweaty male bodies, but her immediate concern was not for herself, but for Alaranth. The queen seemed to pulse goldenly even from this distance.

The terrified herd beasts were stampeding about, but they had nowhere to go, and as their circling took them too close to the blooding queen again, she casually made a little hop and landed on one of the smaller creatures.

Blood it! Don’t you dare take the flesh, Alaranth. Don’t you dare!

Torene was in her queen’s mind with an immediacy she had never experienced since Impression. Still, she gasped at the suddenness with which Alaranth flung aside the last kill and, with a gigantic push from her hind legs, surged aloft. The male dragons on the Rim were equally surprised. They all sprang up; two or three dropped off the Rim and were somehow airborne and rising faster than their rivals. To Torene, they were just a blur of wings behind her, for she was Alaranth more than she was Torene, increasing the distance between herself and the males with every beat of her broader, longer wings.

The peaks were falling fast below, and the air cooled a body heated by blooding and by sexual drive at its most potent point. Alaranth reveled in her speed, in the height she was gaining so effortlessly. She caught a thermal and soared on it, attaining more altitude. This was higher than she had ever ventured, and she felt strong, felt the powerful lift of air under her wings, caressing her body, stoking the fires already consuming her.

Far below her sparkled the sea, blues shading to green and aqua. She felt, rather than saw, the shadow: sensed the proximity of another. Craning her head around, she saw the cluster of males below and some distance behind her. They would not catch her so easily. They hadn’t her wings, her strength, her. . .