Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
I had to fight not to cover my breasts with my arms. I didn’t want to draw attention to my female assets when it seemed that no one was looking at them. So I just frowned at them and swiped my wet hair back from my forehead.
It’s working—it’s really working, whispered a voice in my head. I could hardly believe it, but it seemed that the Dragon Glass pendant was doing its job. Nobody saw anything but just another skinny male cadet when they looked at me.
“Oh shit—you really can’t swim?” Bugs asked, breaking into my train of thought. He still wore his thick glasses and kept swiping at the lenses with his fingers as they fogged up from the steam.
“No, I can’t,” I said shortly.
“No wonder you didn’t want to come to the Cook-pot yesterday,” Jorn-o said, frowning.
“No, I just didn’t feel good,” I protested. “Hey, can someone give me a towel? Mine are lost now.”
Despite knowing that they weren’t seeing me as I really was, I still felt incredibly vulnerable. I had never been naked in front of anyone before and here I was, as bare as the day I was born, in the middle of a group of males who were also naked.
“Oh, sorry—here, you can have mine.” Jorn-o handed me his towel as I stepped out of the pool.
But as I stepped out of the water and reached for the offered towel, I happened to see someone looking at me.
It was Ryse Skoren. He was standing across the steaming lake from me, and his strange eyes were narrowed. His dark brows were pulled low, and he was clearly studying me.
I felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with being wet and naked rush over my entire body. Could he see me—the real me? No one else was paying any attention but the North Wing Leader was staring at me with an intensity that turned my blood to ice.
“Here—give me that!”
Quickly, I snatched the towel that Jorn-o was holding out and wrapped it around myself.
“Hey,” Toady said, frowning. “Why are you wearing it like that?”
I looked down and realized that I’d wrapped the towel around my entire body, securing it under my arm. It was the way a woman wore a towel—not the way a man did. The boys around me who were still wearing towels had them wrapped around their waists.
“I…I’m just cold,” I said, though steam was rising from the water around me. “I think I’ll head back to the dorm.”
“Okay—see you later.” Leaper shrugged.
“Toady, you shouldn’t have pushed him in,” I heard Jorn-o say, as I turned away from them.
“Well, how was I supposed to know he couldn’t swim?” was the answer but I didn’t stay to hear any more.
I fled the Cook-pot, my heart thudding against my ribs. I half expected Ryse Skoren to follow me, but he didn’t.
Regardless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had seen me—the real me—despite my Dragon Glass pendant which seemed to be fooling everyone else.
19
AURORA
After that incident at the Cook-pot, my days started to fall into a kind of routine. First Bell came early but I was up before it every morning to hurry into a stall so I could pee before the other cadets woke up.
I didn’t dress in the stall, however—I was afraid it would draw the wrong kind of attention. Instead, I kept my face to the wall and my back to the rest of the dorm and pulled on my uniform as fast as I could. I was always the first one dressed.
After the first few days of classes, I no longer bothered with the bandages to bind my breasts, either. The Dragon Glass pendant, which I never took off, had everyone fooled. Well, everyone with the possible exception of Ryse Skoren, but as he hadn’t come after me or said anything, I was able to tell myself that I’d imagined the way he was looking at me at the Cook-pot.
After a delicious breakfast in the Mess Hall—I felt I would never get used to how abundant the food was at the Academy—I went to my first class which was Advanced Aeronautical Mathematics. There Professor Griven taught us all about Dive calculations. We had to factor in thermal lift, wind shear, and a dragon’s carrying capacity to get the calculations just right.
We also learned about attack trajectories and formation spacing as well as flaming angles which could be deadly if a formation wasn’t spaced just right. Receiving “friendly fire” from another dragon in your wing could cost your life, your dragon’s life, or both, as Professor Griven hammered into us day after day.
After AAM, I had History of the Madling wars, taught by the Academy’s Head Librarian and Archivist, Professor Teren Valis. He was tall and thin with a dreamy look on his face, except when he described the desperate battles to flame the Madlings from the sky before they could infect the whole kingdom with their deadly bites that could turn whole villages into hordes of raving lunatics.