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Derek wants to say that he’s proud of himself, but he’s really, really not. He steps over a large overturned tree, careful not to stumble into any dragon traps that might have been set earlier before the raid. If he can find this damn thing, maybe he’ll feel the sense of accomplishment he’s sure his mother will bestow upon him. His siblings will finally look at him with eyes that are not full of pity, and the village will no longer whisper about him—the son of the alpha—not being able to provide for the pack as he should.
But he can’t muster up the emotions necessary to be proud of himself.
There’s something about the idea that he might have just killed something that was living and breathing mere hours ago that makes him feel sick. Boy, he is definitely not meant to be a werewolf.
Derek hears a small rustle and his head whips in the direction of the noise. Stealthily and quietly—Derek has always been great at being invisible—he rushes towards the noise. He stays hidden but peeks to get a look. He sees a large black silhouette in the morning light, its body glistening with dew. Derek doesn’t need to get any closer to know what it is—a dragon.
Derek resists the urge to jump and whoop. An actual, honest-to-gods dragon! Derek knew he had hit something in the raid last night, had knocked something out of the sky. And it had been a dragon. Upon further investigation, though, Derek realizes that not only is it a dragon, but it’s a Night Fury.
Night Furies are only the meanest, deadliest, fastest dragons around. No one has lived to tell the tale of an encounter with one and no one wants to. It’s been said that they can hypnotize you with one look and paralyze you forever with a drop of any of their bodily fluids. Their saliva is venom and their tears are like acid. They’re fast, invisible, and so incredibly dangerous. And Derek has actually brought one down.
It’s tangled in the net trap that Derek launched at it last night and Derek can see its chest rising and falling with extremely shallow breaths. At the moment it isn’t conscious. Derek gets closer, whipping out his knife. As he approaches it, he sees that he hasn’t harmed it too much. There’s a shallow gash in its side, but other than that he can’t see anything the matter.
Derek takes a deep breath and raises his knife. If he does this, he’ll be a hero. If he does this, no one will call him useless. The words of his family swim in his brain as he battles quietly with himself.
“Derek, maybe it might be best if you stay home tonight,” Cora says.
“You’re not useless, you’re just…different.” Laura states firmly.
“My son’s credibility will not be questioned! He will one day learn what he can do for the pack, even if it isn’t keeping us safe.”
Derek lifts the knife even higher above his head, about to plunge it into the Night Fury. He knows he’s going to do it. Hell, he’ll probably be putting it out of his misery.
And then its eyes open.
Derek gasps at their glowing caramel brown, at how human they look. When he looks at them, he doesn’t see fear or anger in that gaze. He only sees submission. The dragon blinks once and then closes its eyes again, preparing itself for Derek’s blade. Derek tightens his grip on the handle and is about to swing downwards, ending this thing’s life. He can do it. He knows he can. He can kill the thing that just looked at him with the most defeated look. He can do it.
Derek lowers the knife and cuts through the rope that entraps the dragon. No, no he can’t. He continues cutting the rope, and the dragon opens its eyes again, curious and confused. “You have to get out of here,” Derek says, sawing through the last piece.
The second he finishes, the dragon is on top of him, roaring into his face. Derek reaches for the knife that was knocked from his grasp from the force of the Fury, but it’s too far from his hand. The Fury’s jaws are wide and Derek is sure that his last kindly act will be just that: his last. The dragon has him pinned down and he’s sure he’s going to die, sure the dragon is going to bite his head off or bury its teeth into his abdomen, and he actually chokes on air when he feels the weight of the dragon leave him.
He watches it rush off into the woods and barely thinks about it himself when he turns tail and runs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Derek puts his head in his hands, because even though the topic of all of their dinner conversations always rotates to <em>him,</em> he’s never been bragged about over the table.
“And then Derek pulled the trigger and the dragon just dropped! Mom, he got it so good that there’s no way it could have survived that! It was all tangled and the fire died right in its mouth!” Cora’s saying, eyes wide as she retells the story. “It was so awesome. That’s when all the howls rang out because everyone saw how awesome it was!”
“Everyone howled because the fight was over,” Derek mumbles into his beef stew.
“So what? Everyone saw your kill!” She says excitedly.
“Was anyone hurt?” Derek asks his mom, trying to change the subject.
“A few are being looked at, but no one suffered anything crippling.” She pauses. “This is great news, you know. You’ll be able to start your training along with the other pups your age. I wasn’t sure you’d be ready, but it seems that you’ve proved me wrong.” His mother has a strange glint in her eye, and it takes Derek a moment but he realizes that it’s pride.
He sighs submissively. “When does training begin?”
“Tomorrow.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Training is a lot different than Derek thought it would be. He’s read all the books and knows exactly what dragon is which and what’s dangerous about them, but it’s almost as if none of that matters when you’re out in the arena, one of those things looking down its nose at you. Derek’s in this situation, a huge dragon with a thin body and limbs glaring down at him. “A Shivertooth,” Derek breathes, then promptly rolls to the side.
As he’s running, he thinks about all the things he’s read on this particular dragon. It’s arctic—he knows that much. It blasts snow at enemies instead of fire and has spikes covering its body to keep itself safe. But the most dangerous thing about it is its—
“Ah! Shit!!” Derek hears an odd slicing sound after it’s already happened. He whips his head around to see Isaac writhing on the ground, holding his leg. There’s a deep gash in it, blood spilling everywhere. He’s already healing and the dragon is rearing back for another lash when Peter lassos it and shuts it back in its cage.
“Concentration.” He says coldly, walking over to Isaac and helping the boy up. “It’s an important part of dealing with dragons. You must concentrate, know their weaknesses, and know your next move. The first rule when dealing with dragons is?” Peter looks between them all. “Anyone?”
They all stare back at him blankly. Peter shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “What do dragons have that werewolves do not?” He asks them as if they’re all five years old.
“Fire?”
“Yes, thank you Erica.” Peter throws his hands up. “What else?”
“Wings?”
“Exactly. And wings means that the first rule is to look up.” Peter looks each of the pupils in the eye. Derek looks at them too. Erica, Isaac, Aiden, Ethan, Boyd, Cora. They are composed of the last litters born within the past two seasons. They’re small, but mighty, and it’s been predicted that they will be a great litter of leaders one day.
It’s kind of hard for Derek to see that future when all they look like to him is a group of terrified, clueless teenagers.
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It’s only a few days after his showdown with the Night Fury when Derek realizes that he left his knife in the woods. Usually he has no attachment to material items, but his father gave him that knife when he was little, and it’s the last memento he has left. He’s always been fairly good at tracking so he has no trouble finding the place where he met the Fury a few days before.
His knife is laying right where it flew from him, and as he stoops to pick it up he catches a strong whiff of something he doesn’t recognize—it must be the Fury. It’s been back here recently. Derek doesn’t know what stupid part of his brain tells him to, but he begins following the scent. It’s fiery—definitely belongs to a dragon. There’s a bit of smoke, but also a hint of apple and some kind of sweet flower. It’s a shocking contrast and makes it a bit hard to follow, but Derek has the nose for it.
He doesn’t have to follow it long, though, because once he gets into a canyon-like area the scent just pools around him. He climbs to the bottom and realizes that the rocky walls on all sides are insanely steep, not to mention high. He doesn’t think that the Fury lives here, especially since it’s too close to their pack. But maybe it’s here for a temporary stay.
If that’s the case, Derek knows he’ll have to get out of here before it returns. He turns to go, but hears a faint moan coming from the trees that outline the bottom of this odd, circular valley. It’s on the other side of the pond that’s stationed in the middle, so he walks around it to find the source.
He’s barely into the tree line when he hears something rustling around, and he whips his head to the sound. There, huddled under a bit of brush, is an animal that’s way too small to be a dragon. It looks up at him with wide eyes, terrified eyes, and looks almost…human.
“Hello?” Derek crouches, and the thing pushes itself backwards, hissing. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He reaches out.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” It yells back. Yep, definitely human.
“I just want to help. There’s a dragon that’s staying down here and I don’t want you to get hurt if it comes back!” Derek says to it, hushing his voice as he reminds himself.
The guy spits out a laugh, amused. “I don’t think it’s gonna hurt me.” He says drily.
“Yes it will,” Derek says seriously. “This is nothing to laugh about. They just finished pillaging our village. My pack is hurt and they could’ve died!” Derek knows how young he sounds, but he desperately needs this guy to understand. “Please, come back with me so we can get you to a safe place.”
“Hey dude,” the human with the velvet voice says, “don’t sweat it. I’m going to be…I’m going to be just fine.”
“You’re in pain,” Derek accuses, narrowing his eyes. “And my name is not dude. It’s Derek. Why don’t you come out from there?”
The guy hesitates. “You don’t want me to.”
“Yes, I do,” Derek argues.
“Man, why can’t you just let things be? You say you don’t like dragons? Well get away before one shows up.”
Derek glares at the kid. “Who the hell do you think you are? Are you from a neighboring pack?”
The kid’s eyes are dancing now. “Something like that.” The kid blinks and looks down. “Get out of here.”
I’m not leaving until you come out.” Derek crosses his arms.
You’re frustratingly stubborn, you know that?” The kids says. He starts to move, and Derek backs up and watches as the kid drags himself on his hands and knees out of the brush. The boy has gelled hair that’s kind of spiky, with a long thin neck and long thin fingers. He has moles dotting his cheeks and neck. Everything he’s wearing is black: a long, tight black shirt with black straps all over it, black pants with tons of black pockets, a black belt and black rope tied everywhere. His shoes are black boots, sleek and covered in silver buckles. Well okay, his shoe is a black boot. He has a left leg, foot, and boot. His right leg is normal, but he’s entirely missing his right boot. Or, to be specific, his entire right foot. Where his foot is supposed to be is instead tied off using his pant leg.
But the weirdest part about the dude is all of his tattoos. They curl up his neck and stop as they reach his face, but they’re black and dangerous looking. Derek bets that if he could see beneath the guy’s shirt, he’d find that the tattoos snake all the way up and down his body and legs. That must have been one hell of a torch job. “Asshole,” the kid glares.
“Your leg,” Derek says, and the boy looks up at him.
“Yeah, dumbass, this is why I haven’t climbed out of this oversized hole yet.”
“I can help you out. What’s your name?”
“I’m not stupid.” He answers. “And anyway, you won’t want to help me out, so leave me the fuck alone.”
Derek looks at the kid like he’s crazy. “And why not?”
The boy stares at Derek, eyebrows crinkled in confusion. “What do you know about dragons, Mr. Eyebrows?”
Derek shrugs, scratching at the back of his neck. “I know everything that they teach in the manuals. I know everything we do about the types of dragons, size, strengths, weaknesses, powers, flight time. Whatever we have, I know. Why?”
The kid tilts his head slightly. “So you don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?” Derek asks defensively, crossing his arms. The kids just makes an exasperated sigh. Derek takes time to glare, their eyes lock dangerously, and….oh god. He knows those eyes. Those cinnamon caramel brown eyes….
“You’re the Night Fury!”
“I’m the whoo-what?” The kid—no, the dragon—says, clearly puzzled. His nose and eyebrows scrunch comically.
“But you’re—you’re human.” Derek states, taking a few steps back even though the dragon is obviously cripplingly injured.
The kid catches on fast, and knows what Derek is accusing him of. “Well werewolves aren’t the only things that shapeshift, dumbass.”
Derek’s eyes flash. “Stop calling me that!”
“Well stop being so incredibly stupid for once!” Derek watches dumbly as the dragon/kid creature uses the side of the rocky wall to pull himself into a standing position. It looks painful.
“I could kill you. I could kill you right now!” Derek says, brandishing his knife in front of him. His hand shakes a little, and he forces it to keep still.
“Then do it, asshole!” The dragon yells, balancing on one foot as he throws his long arms out to the side in a stance of vulnerability. “Stick that knife right through my fucking chest! I know what you are,” he laughs humorlessly, “you’re just a blood-hungry werewolf! You won’t stop killing until we’re all <em>dead</em> you asshole! So do it! Prove me right!” The kid looks crazy, sweat dripping down his head and his eyes glinting almost feverishly. His next words are a challenge. “Kill me.”
Derek tears his eyes away from the dragon and looks at the knife he has held out in front of him. He looks back at the dragon, who’s now wobbling on his one foot, perspiration coating his entire face. “I’m not a monster,” Derek says, disgusted, and turns away.
“So you’re gonna leave me here to wait for the cavalry?” The dragon calls as Derek begins scaling the rocks.
Derek throws a glance over his shoulder. “I’m going to leave you here to die,” he responds, and doesn’t look back.
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Alright, Derek takes it back. He takes back sparing the damn dragon’s life because there is no way in hell he’s going to be able to kill the cursed thing now. He’s talked to it. Sure, the conversation was hostile at best, but it was still a conversation, and fairly civil. Sort of.
Derek approaches his mother the next day. “Mom I have a few dragon questions I wanted to ask you before I continued with training.”
“Of course, Derek.” Talia Hale sits on their rough leather couch, patting the spot next to her. “What do you want to know?”
“Are dragons shape shifters?” He asks before he doesn’t have the courage to any longer.
Talia looks at him, confused. “No, not that we know of. Now why would you ask that?”
Derek shrugs, looking at the ground. “I just thought that maybe because we have a beta form and human form, maybe dragons do too.”
No. Humans have their human form, we have beta and human forms, and dragons just have their dragon form. Those boundaries have not been overstepped.” Derek nods, still not looking at his mother. “Anything else?”
“Can dragons heal like us?”
“It’s been found that werewolves are the fastest healers. Dragons have magic that can speed the process along, but they cannot heal as fast as us.”
“What about something really crippling, like the loss of a limb or part of a limb?”
“You mean like an arm or a hand?” Derek nods in confirmation. “Well, I’m not really sure.” She has a small wrinkle between her brows as she says it. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”
Derek sighs. “There’s a lot we don’t know about dragons.”
“They’re lonesome, feral creatures. They can’t communicate with us and we cannot with them. I fear this vicious circle of violence will continue until one of our races are dead. Only then may the fighting be guaranteed to stop.”
Derek feels a little guilty not telling her, but keeping the Night Fury to himself seems like a good idea. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Anytime Derek. Now go to training, we can’t have you being late!”
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Peter seems to have a thing for calling them idiots.
“Idiots!” He yells as Erica and Boyd get thrown on their asses by the dragon’s tail. “Now what kind of dragon is this!?” He yells at the kids, who are circling the damn thing.
“Windstriker,” Derek grunts out as he dodges the spiky tail.
“Exactly! And what is their method of attack?” He’s still yelling at them from his safe perch above.
“Hot air!” Cora yells as the dragon demonstrates on Isaac, causing his clothes to catch fire. Ethan shoves him to the ground and kicks the fire out of him. Aiden helps him up.
“So how do you defeat one?” Peter asks. Derek thinks furiously. What defeats hot air? He looks around quickly and before he can even think he’s sprinting towards the water trench. There’s a few buckets, so maybe he can just—
Derek screams as the dragon’s spikes impale him, and he goes flying before hitting the hard log walls of the arena. “Derek!” He hears Cora scream, but she’s too busy running from the dragon to do much else. His vision swims as his body scrambles to heal itself. He drags himself to a standing position, feels the blood trickling down his back from the holes the spikes left. He painfully makes his way to the water trench again, determined to finish this hellish training session and wipe the stupid smirk from his uncle’s face.
He fills up the bucket, and he can feel the holes in his back closing up. With a bucket filled with water he rushes to where Ethan and Aiden are struggling to confuse the dragon with loud noises and quick movements. The dragon spots an opening when Ethan turns his back and opens its mouth to spew hot air: this thing is fighting for its life, and it knows it. Derek quickly takes his bucket and hurls the entire thing into the dragon’s open mouth, not willing to let there be the off chance that the water won’t make it far enough. The dragon chokes on the wooden bucket and spits it out, then turns its angry head to Derek and opens its jaws wide. Derek gasps, cringing away from it, and—nothing. Nothing happens.
The dragon looks as surprised as Derek feels, and he can hear Erica and Cora whooping in joy behind him. Ethan, Aiden, and Boyd take the moment to herd the confused dragon back into its cage, slamming the door shut with a satisfying clunk.
Peter hops down from his viewing perch, smirking. “Took you all long enough.”
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Derek must have a thing for people calling him an asshole and a dumbass repeatedly because he can only stay away for a few days before returning to the weird, rocky prison that holds the Night Fury.
“Welcome back.” He hears, and whips his head around to see the boy—<em>dragon,</em> he reminds himself—lying in a small shelter behind him, at the edge of the forested area. The shelter is messy and small, and Derek is left to marvel at it and wonder how the dragon managed to build it despite his crippling injury. If it rains, Derek knows that the dragon is absolutely going to get soaked—but at the moment he’s sheltered from winds. There’s a sarcastic twist to his mouth, but the boy looks paler, thinner. His eyes are sunken and there’s dark circles under them. “Disappointed?” Derek crinkles his eyebrows, confused. “That I’m not dead, dumbass. Disappointed?” His irises glint.
Surprisingly, he’s not, and he shakes his head. “Have you eaten?” Derek finds himself asking, and he scratches his arm absentmindedly.
The dragon wets his lips quickly, then shakes his head. “I haven’t felt up to…scavenging.” He admits. His eyes are still guarded though as he takes in Derek. “Where’s your knife today, big guy?”
“In my pocket,” Derek answers dumbly. There’s something about the kid that makes him want to tell the truth.
“Well at least you’re not completely stupid.” The thing grumbles. He looks up at Derek, uninterested. “You gonna kill me?” Derek shakes his head. “Well then can you at least use that nice knife of yours and whittle me a spear? I seemed to have lost my knife and I know for a fact that this pond has fish in it.” The kid rummages around in the leaves behind him and produces a fairly sharp stick. “Here, I’ve already got it started.” He tosses it at Derek, and it lands at the werewolf’s feet.
Derek picks it up and examines it curiously. “This is already plenty sharp. Any sharper and the tip is gonna break off.” Derek looks up at the guy. “How did you do this?”
“A rock,” the dragon glares. “And if it’s so great, why can’t I spear any fish?”
“You’re probably not strong enough right now,” Derek muses, looking at it. “It’s a nice spear.” He tosses it back and the dragon catches it in midair before it can sail over his head.
“Dammit,” it grumbles, groping around for something else. Derek watches as the dragon produces a canteen and takes a quick sip from it before glaring back up at him. “So what did you come back here for if you’re not going to kill me?”
Derek shrugs and decides to take a seat on a nearby log. “What happened to your foot?”
“Well after I was so kindly shot out of the goddamn sky, I free fell. The netting ripped part of my tail which, in human form, is the equivalent to my foot. So I’ve been missing this thing since the fight.” Derek doubts that the dragon would have told him all that if he had anyone else here. But since it’s only Derek, the dragon has to rant to whomever would listen.
“Will it grow back?”
The dragon looks tired as he rubs his face. “No, dumbass,” he says, but this time it’s missing its usual bite. “My foot’s gone forever.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Derek offers, meaning it.
“What are you sorry for? You should be rejoicing and celebrating.”
He shrugs. “It still sucks.”
The dragon sighs. “That it does.” He bites his lip, contemplating something. “How…how long has it been since the fight?”
Derek counts the days in his head. “Seven days since that night,” he says.
“Fuck,” the dragon groans, setting his head in his palm. “My dad is probably out of his mind with worry. They probably all think I’m dead.” He pauses. “Well, I pretty much am dead, but God, they at least deserve a body.” He looks up at Derek, a small tint of hatred and another small hint of despair in his eyes. “If you come back down here and you find me dead, can you promise me that you’ll take my body up there? Put me someplace somebody will find me? My dad…” The dragon rips his head to the side, swallowing, and decidedly not looking at the guy he’s potentially begging with. “My dad needs to know that I’m not living my days out in a camp, or captured, or think that I abandoned him.”
Derek’s absolutely astonished by the sheer amount of emotion in the dragon’s voice and wastes no time thinking about a response. “Yeah, sure.”
The dragon takes a minute. “Thanks,” he says.
Derek continues sitting on his log, mind at war with itself. The dragon in front of him is supposed to be the enemy. But this dragon has a father, has a family. A family that’s worried. Derek doesn’t want to hurt him, actually wants nothing more than to be rid of him, but what are you supposed to say to someone who’s already accepted their imminent death?
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