My lips peeled back as a snarl ripped through my throat with force. Bryce had asked a question that I didn't want to answer while I was already irritated. He nearly fell on his ass as he jumped back. My wings twitched as I snapped my head away from him. That was a bit too much.
"I'm sorry," I sighed as the sudden rage faded, "You asked a question I wasn't ready to answer."
He wouldn't ask again. I'd made sure of that with that little outburst. That hadn't been what I wanted to do. I wanted to apologize. I started walking.
I decided to leave him alone for a while. I'd scared him. My wings twitched as I walked. That forced everyone to move much faster to catch up to me. I'd screwed up when I snarled at him.
I didn't want to scare him. I wanted him to be on my side. I just wasn't ready to explain what a bond was, and what it did. I did want him to know what a bond was eventually. Just not yet.
We walked in silence for hours. My bonded could speak to me silently. Bryce was the only one who was truthfully silent. My bonded didn't want to break the silence so whenever they talked they talked to me directly. We needed to be far clear of the settlement before we stopped.
Lizardmen came up alongside our group. They paralleled us for a while before sliding into a river to float down it for a while. The large beasts pulsed with mana. I was kind of surprised I didn't notice it before. They had to be this world's origin species.
No wonder the lizardmen treated them so well. I'd seen them feeding the beasts fish. I was curious about them, but I didn't think the lizardmen would tell me more about them. Origin species were meant to be protected. The way life flourished around them was enough to make them deities in the eyes of simple creatures like the lizardmen.
No wonder Fritoria was able to take control of the society so easily. Her strength would have been god-like to a fledgling race. I inhaled slowly. I'd have to apologize to Bryce for snapping at him eventually. I did want to bring him into my inner circle as a bonded.
I couldn't just snarl at people that irritated me. The day wore on slowly. I didn't know how long this walk was going to take. I didn't know how far we were getting each day. I wanted to check, but that meant removing the load that was on my back.
I didn't want to have it strapped back on so it was staying on until it could stay off. The weight of it was starting to really get to me. I could still handle it. I had absolutely no intention of giving in any time soon. I was waiting for the stamina or strength points to start rolling in.
Now that I thought about it. I hadn't gained a stat point for anything but leveling recently. Had I grown too strong for basic exercises to work anymore? That might be a problem. The only stat that had an easy way of leveling up was damage resistance.
Not that I wanted to crank that one up any higher. Just because I could handle pain didn't mean I enjoyed it. We continued this pattern of quiet walking for another two days before Bryce started getting talkative again. It seemed as if he'd recovered from his initial fear now that I hadn't threatened him for a little while. Part of me still wanted to apologize for snarling at him the way I did.
The other part said he deserved my anger because he was weaker then me. I'd have a major attitude problem if I'd been born a dragon, and didn't have the memories of a human life. Humans weren't that weak of a species. They were just that much weaker then dragons. It was just that the natural baselines of our two species were that different.
I wondered if dragons fought a lot when there were more of them. As a male would I view other males as competition, and try to force them away from me. I briefly wondered if dragons took more then one mate. Then tried to think of myself with more then one partner, and an intense desire to gag made me stop. Dragons only took one mate.
If I felt like gagging over the thought of a dragon taking more then one mate then actually doing so might make me feel physically ill. I really hoped that the eggs that did manage to hatch would have a fairly even number of males, and females. I knew that many of them wouldn't be capable of being revived. If I want Bryce to bond to a dragon I should let him choose the egg. Having a smith in our ranks would only be good for us as time went on, and so far Bryce was the only one willing to work with dragon scale.
All the others had turned us down. Bryce wasn't even discouraged when the things he made seemed heavy, and useless. How was he supposed to know that things made from my scales only reacted to my bonded? I was pretty sure he'd noticed how odd it was that Ethan could wear that heavy armor all the time without it seeming to effect him. He probably suspected there was more to our friendship then normal.
We still didn't stop our march until we found ourselves at the base of a mountainside. Finding a large cave, and clearing it out for ourselves was relatively easy. After some discussion we decided to make the opening to the large cave human sized since it would reduce the risk of something big getting in, and should be easier to seal in case of emergency. Jax, and I worked on shrinking the opening down to an opening the size of a door while Savannah worked on setting up some lighting. Torches wouldn't work long term, but for now they were better then nothing.