Rough hands pulled at my hair, dragging me back into the thick undergrowth. The dragon had been walking ahead of me, creating a trail for me to follow him easily within the forest. Now, he walked onward, letting me get dragged away from him without as much of a glance in my direction.

I screamed out as the hands dug viciously into my scalp. I feared my hair would completely rip out of my head by the force exerted on it.

"Help!" I called out to the dragon that seemed not to notice the situation behind him. Or maybe he did, and he thought this was an easy way to get rid of me.

My vision of the dragon was obscured as I was dragged behind a large bush, completely forgotten about and alone with whatever ripped me away into the shadows. I struggled, clawed and kicked out at whatever held me captive, but the grip held firm, and I was left at a disadvantage.

Suddenly, the grip released its hold, and my head smacked against the hard ground, leaving me in a daze. My world spun. Foggy vision twirled within my eyes as I tried to gain focus on my surroundings. But my body felt groggy and slow, like I could not function properly.

Someone sat on top of me, weighing my body and pushing on my lungs. Constricted and feeling deflated, I could barely gasp in a single breath from the downward force on my body.

"Would you like to reconsider my offer now, little rider?" A voice sneered in my face—an echo of a memory.

I tried speaking, but my words sounded jumbled as I choked on a lack of air.

My vision, although blurry, I could tell the voice was the Captain himself, who sat atop my body. His unforgiving hands squeezed my throat, further cutting off my airway as I gasped violently to try and gain a single strand of air into my dying lungs. I was dying, and my brain knew this, but it kicked into overdrive and tried fighting for a chance of survival.

"Desperation doesn't suit you, rider," The Captain's voice was full of mockery as he watched me struggle for my life.

The squeezing on my throat lessened, and I greedily gurgled in lungfuls of sweet-tasting forest air. With my vision clearing, I could now see an endless sea of blue eyes staring at me, framed with an armour of black obsidian. His talons pierced my chest, and I watched as blood pooled around me in a slow-flowing river. I dug my hands into the earth below me, trying to grasp the reality of this situation, but my mind could not fully process it.

The urge to cry was overbearing in my throat as I felt a tear in my chest from the betrayal I felt.

"Kill her," A voice spoke above me, and the dragon who I thought was my other half opened his bloody maw, and that was the last thing I saw as darkness washed over me.

My eyes snapped open, and before I knew what I was doing, I gasped in large breaths to my lungs which seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. I scrambled off the forest floor, looking around me as I saw the forest encompassed in darkness. It was nightfall. That much I knew.

With delirious thoughts, I tried figuring out what was real and what was not as I stared at the sleeping form of the black dragon just a few feet away from me. His tail twitched ever so slightly as his dreams occupied his mind.

A whimpered breath slipt past my lips at the thought of my dream. It felt all too real. The hands, the voice, the betrayal.

The dragon's nose twitched as his eyes cracked open and instantly snapped to mine. His head rose, and he peered around the clearing, sniffing the air for danger. When he realized there was none, his eyes returned to mine in a curious gaze.

"Just a nightmare," I spoke softly through shaky breaths.

He didn't indicate he understood me, but I'm sure he knew what I was saying. I sunk back to the ground, resting my back against a tree. The bark dug sharply into my skin through my shirt, but it helped ground me as I absorbed the pain. "Just a nightmare," I repeated in a whisper too quiet for even the forest to overhear me.

The two of us sat silently, but I knew the dragon was not sleeping. From the corner of my eye, I could see his gaze was on me like a hawk. I curled into my cloak, feeling the smooth material against my skin. I felt comfort in knowing I had a piece of home with me. My brother's cloak and my dad's knife. Two things I was thankful I was able to keep hold of after the Captain captured me.

I felt the familiar sting of tears meet my eyes as I thought of home. My mom believed in me so much and was probably at home thinking I was safe and at the academy, training to become a dragon rider. Dad was right not to trust the council or the dragon riders. I wished to run into their arms and pour my feelings out to them right now, but instead, I was on a different island because of my stupidity. How I thought I could manage this on my own was beyond me.

I felt a slight weight on my back, and I tensed involuntarily. Craning my neck to peer at what was behind me, I saw the dragon had crawled closer to me, and his tail was resting between him and me.

Pausing, I thought carefully of the situation. My distrust for the dragon came from within my dream, my twisted mind and not from his actions. He had been nothing but loyal, protective, and for the most part, passive in our growing bond. This is what I wanted, right? To find my dragon? And now that I had, I was acting like a fool. I needed to get myself in order and start working on our bond. He was probably just as scared and confused as I was, especially since he had only seen the destruction of what the hunters did to his kind.

With this thought in mind, I felt sleep pulling at my thoughts, pulling me into a restful night.

When I awoke, dawn appeared over the forest with soft orange light. I stretched my muscles, peering around the clearing only to find the dragon was nowhere to be found. My heart immediately sunk.

I moved on to better things, thinking of breakfast as my stomach contorted with hunger. It had been a couple of days since I had last eaten, or so I felt. I couldn't remember my last meal, but with the pond beside me that flowed into a creek, there was bound to be fish swimming within it. I tracked down a few bushes with berries growing on the branches, most of whom I stayed away from because of their poisonous nature, but I found some blueberries hidden from the forest creatures.

When I finished cooking my fish over a fire, the obsidian dragon returned with a mouthful of fur and meat. He dropped the carcass on the ground before him as he gauged me with critical eyes.

"Oh," I trailed off as I stared at him in wonder. "I didn't realize you went to go hunt." The dragon snorted as if offended, and he fell to the ground in a heap of dust that flew around him, caught in the rising sun's rays.

He ripped into the animal and ate the remainder of the meat from the bones. I let him eat in peace, mainly because I was trying to tune out the sounds of his obnoxious chewing.

I snacked on the blueberries I collected as I watched the remainder of the fire die down to a pile of embers.

Finally deciding to break the silence, I turned my gaze to the dragon cleaning his teeth with his tongue. But as I watched him, I was struck with the inability to start a conversation. Hi, I'm Navi, your rider, and you're my nameless dragon who has yet to say a single word to me. That sounds about right. I felt the urge to facepalm but refrained, considering he would most likely think I was going insane if he didn't think that already.

I poured some water over the dying fire, and a burst of smoke plumed into the air in a thick cloud of heat. I felt the dragon's eyes on me as I moved around, trying to find ways to occupy myself. I pulled the cloak over my body but thought better of it as I felt the heat from the sun on my skin. I folded the material and placed it in my pack, along with the map and the few clothing articles I took along my travels.

"Look," I finally sighed, having enough of the uncomfortable silence. "I think you and I need to establish a few things." My gaze went to his, and judging from the way he was looking at me, I think he could understand what I was saying. "I travelled a long way, been through hell to get here, and this situation was not what I had planned."

I left my bag behind as I walked across the forest floor toward the dragon, who watched me with indifferent blue eyes. "The predicament we're in is mainly because of other's viewpoints outside of my control, but considering we're here with each other now, we need to make the best of this situation," I said, referring to the council members and how they wanted to prevent me from becoming a dragon rider. Still, he had no idea what I was talking about.

"Anyways," I sighed roughly. "I'm not sure how to work on our bond. I'm utterly clueless about what I'm supposed to be doing with you right now, but seeing how we both need to work together, I need some help from you too. So, I'm asking if you could give me a sign that you understand what I'm saying. Talk to me, nod, blink, anything." I was pleading by the end because the silence was driving me crazy.

The dragon's blue eyes were unwavering as he looked at me. He hadn't moved a muscle as I spoke, except for his eyes following my movements. But it felt more like he was looking at me and not hearing what I was saying to him.

I sighed when I realized he wasn't going to cooperate, or maybe he didn't understand me. Either way, I was left feeling hopeless once again.

Fiddling with the stone in my pocket, I knew from this I was meant to be a dragon rider, but maybe this wasn't my dragon. Raising my head to meet the dragon's eyes, I saw my reflection within them. But that was all I saw staring back at me. There was no sign that he understood what I needed from him.

Are you even my dragon? I questioned in my head, peering into his glowing blue eyes.

I received a growl, which took me aback as I gaped at him in shock. That was the first natural response I had received from him since I met him. Judging his response, he had heard what I said from within my mind. I concluded from this that we did share some bond, and he could hear my thoughts. Why couldn't I hear his? Staring deeper into his eyes, I tried pushing my awareness out to him, hoping that maybe I could catch a glimpse of something. I was met with a strong wall, impenetrable, and when I pushed against it, the dragon growled louder this time and quickly spun around, walking away from me.

"Oh, really?!" I yelled, following the dragon hot on his heels. He spun around, flaring out his wings to scare me off, but this only infuriated me even more for some odd reason. The sight of this dragon sizing up its opponent should be enough to scare me off. Anyone sane enough would back off or hide from this vicious beast. It only made me more determined to tame his defiance.

No, not tame. I wanted to delve deeper, discover what made him, him.

"You don't scare me," I goaded him, crossing my arms and holding my stance firm. This seemed to tick him off even more as he released a vicious roar in my face.

Now, I was mad.

Instead of turning away and cooling down, which would have been the safest option, I got closer to his face and let out a frustrated scream. It was full of the pain of leaving my family behind, letting the council decide my fate so quickly, and having to uproot my life and travel many nights to get to this moment. I expected this experience to be different, to have a dragon that was just as excited to have a rider, one that would communicate with me, but instead, I was with an equally as stubborn dragon as I was.

When I ran out of breath, I stopped screaming, opening my eyes to see the dragon with a gaze full of an emotion I couldn't entirely read. Respect. Approval. I could even see understanding. We were two different creatures with bonded souls with a life full of hardship and struggles.

As I gasped in a lungful of air, I could see the faintest sliver of his thoughts seeping through our bond. He was an outcast, just as I was. For the entirety of his life, he was alone, feared and hated by the dragons living on this island. We were living in a world that everyone was against because they viewed us as unusual. But that was okay because we had each other to depend on, and he now finally saw that.

"Mine," He spoke somewhere within the recesses of my mind.