"Get down from there right now," demanded his mother.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the situation. His father and other brother came around the house with shocked looks on their faces as he untied himself from the dragon. Sliding off as gracefully as he could, he hit the ground. Kaden had held his legs tightly to the dragon, but its body was wider than he was used to. When his feet touched the ground, his legs felt like jelly standing in a normal position.

"How—why—wh—a—" He was proud of that reaction. There wasn't much that could cause Anton to shut his mouth.

"I made a friend," he teased, while patting Zuma.

His brother Ozmere casually walked back up to them, as if he hadn't run off screaming only moments before. He knew which sibling he wouldn't take with him to a brawl now.

"So hunting went well," teased his sister Prema, who was closest in age to him.

He laughed before rubbing his head. "Not really. I lost my bow and quiver and couldn't manage to catch a single deer."

"So you just decided to catch a dragon instead, then?" His father raised his eyebrow at him.

"Honey, we don't know what happened. Let him talk," said his mother.

Looking back at the dragon, who watched them all with curious eyes, he said, "Actually, someone else had caught this one. I found it in a large rune trap."

"A Rune trap?" His oldest brother, Anton, was giving him looks of confusion. "Why was there even one big enough for a dragon out there?"

Shrugging, he said, "I wondered the same thing. This trap was complicated. Nothing I could do was breaking the damn thing. Someone with detailed knowledge of runes had to have set it."

A hushed, nervous silence fell across the group of them. They all knew what he was suggesting. Someone of higher class had intentionally trapped a dragon. The implication Kaden was bringing forward was heavy. Intentionally harming a dragon was heavily punished in their land.

Lelsi broke the tension, "how did you get it out then?"

"I dug."

Ozmere's eyebrow raised, and he said flatly, "you dug? … Like a hole?"

"Yeah!"

"It had to have been a big hole," said Prema. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the dragon with an apologetic look before saying, "please don't take offense to that."

Kaden watched as the dragon did its weird form of a chuckle. Humans truly amused the beasts. They must be weird foreign apes to them.

His father placed a hand on Kaden's shoulder and said in a soft voice, "have you been blessed?"

Every eye fixated on him as they held their breaths, waiting for him to answer. He hadn't wanted to tell them just yet, but what did he expect?

"Yes," he said sheepishly. "A Matriarch came upon us shortly after I released this one. Had I just waited, she could have helped them escape. I guess because I went out of my way to save it, that was worthy enough."

He wasn’t going to tell them the truth. No one could know the truth. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his family; he didn’t trust whoever they may share the information with.

Anton's eyes grew and Kaden could swear he saw them sparkle from tears pooling in his eyes. "You've saved the farm."

He hadn't even considered that. Every citizen who gets blessed is expected to serve the country from then on. This is a considered a high honor. Because of this, they were taken care of. They couldn’t have a blessed citizen looking bad because their family was starving. They would support the family of the people, within reason.

If you made the blessed looked poorly, they would come down on you more harshly than if you were a normal citizen. The families were expected to show that they too were of value to have produced a child of such noble birthing.

When they found out Kaden had been blessed, they would start sending the farm wealth to survive. They wouldn’t have to worry as much about a low crap harvest anymore. They wouldn’t have to worry if the sheep were producing enough wool to cover the costs of their feed anymore. No one would need to go out and hunt for food so they could survive.

Sure, they had chickens and sheep, but they were expected to provide most of the wool and the eggs to the local village. It was part of their taxes. They managed to make that arrangement with them instead of having to shell out the coin they weren’t making. It allowed them to survive as long as they had. If they ate the animals, they wouldn’t be able to pay their local taxes and the local magistrate could take possession of their farm.

“I guess… I did…”

Lelsi motioned toward the dragon and said, “but you can’t tell them about this one.”

Ozmere gave her a frown. “Why not? We’ll get more if they know he can ride a dragon, too.”

“Please,” she rolled her eyes. “They would use him. If they think he’s just a magic user, he’ll only be used here in the nation. If they learn he rode a dragon, we’ll never see him again. That would guarantee he would be in the capital. We can’t trust those people.”

“Lelsi. Don’t say things like that,” nagged their mother.

Prema shrugged and said, “Momma, you know what those people have been like. They haven’t appreciated us at all and our country supplies them with food and water. You’d think they’d send us more money and pass more laws in our favor for literally keeping them alive, but nope.”

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“Who have you girls been talking to in the village to hear this nonsense?” their father said while glowering. “The capital city is important to keeping us from going to war with the other nations. It is our responsibility to help them thrive. I’ll hear no more of this negative talk.”

Kaden looked around awkwardly. He didn’t like political talk; it made him uncomfortable. Everyone had their opinions about everything. He didn’t really understand most talk about laws and taxes. It wasn’t a thing he ever cared to pay attention to. He never thought he’d ever have to go to the capital city, much less possibly defend it.

Unfortunately for him, he was going to have to learn about all the politics soon enough. He was not looking forward to that new revelation.

“Well,” he looked back toward Zuma, “you’re probably not wrong. I don’t think it would be a good idea if they actually saw one of the wild dragons. We don’t know who set the trap and if this one might still be in trouble.”

“Can you get rid of a dragon?” asked Anton with a grumpy look on his face.

“I… guess I could try… I didn’t know what Zuma had planned. If they were going to stay or what…”

“You named the dragon,” said Ozmere.

He grinned. “Well, yeah. I couldn’t just keep calling them Dragon.”

Ozmere threw his hands up and said, “he’s bonded with the dragon. He’s bonded with the freaking dragon. Yeah. You’re a dragon rider, for sure. What… why did this happen to you, of all people?”

“Yeah! Why couldn’t I have got the magic powers?” whined Anton.

“Maybe if you left the house more and went on an adventure occa—” Anton threw his shoe at Kaden and they playful fought. Zuma was watching them with interest as Anton managed to grab and wrestle Kaden to the ground. They were both laughing.

Zuma tilted their head as they watched the brothers. Kaden flipped Anton over and shoved the shoe on his face.

“Get off your brother,” said their mother. “You’ve got only a day and half before the magistrate is set to be here. Figure out something to do with the dragon or both of you will be taken to the capital city.”

She threw her hands up and marched off, not before petting the dragon as she passed. His whole family shared similar traits to himself. He honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if they all would have done the same thing had they too come upon a dragon in need.

They had spent the rest of the day asking him all about the blessing. He was able to tell them some truths. He wasn’t lying entirely. Kaden was just being careful with who knew about the nest. He didn’t want to know that he had been blessed by not just the matriarch, but that the whole nest had been involved in the event.

He couldn’t even broach the subject about the visions, or even if they truly were visions. He didn’t know if they were something of wonder he should be aware of for his future or if they were possibilities of what could happen. For all he knew, it could have been images of the past. His family were not the people who could give him any answers.

The wolves were a different story entirely. He wasn’t even sure what had happened there. There was something more wrong with them than just the suspicious rune trap. They were hunting a dragon. Things don’t hunt dragons. They looked twisted, too. They were a mystery to him, and he wasn’t ready to share any details about that encounter.

“What was the Matriarch like? Was she a giant?” asked Prema.

They were walking out toward the windmill they had passed on their way in. They thought that maybe the windmill would be a decent place to get the dragon into. It was large enough and far enough away from the main complex of the farm. The magistrate was only going to be reviewing their stores. They had no reason to think anything else was amiss. Or so they all hoped.

He was surprised they were so in agreement about hiding Zuma. While they all knew and respected the dragons, his story of the runes was making them all feel uneasy about the situation. Telling the world that there was a dragon at the farm was probably the last they want to do. They were going to have enough attention once they informed the magistrate of his powers.

“She was so large, Pre, you had to have seen her. I can’t even describe the size. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done to stand in front of her.”

She looked at him with large eyes, “wow. And you have magic in you now?”

“Yeah, I even made mist come out,” he excitedly said.

“How did you manage to already use the water magic?” asked Lelsi in a flat tone.

“I…” he hadn’t thought about this part. He couldn’t say he was dropped from the dragon at an incredible height. “I.. Uh.. Just focused really hard and some mist swirled out of my hands. It was super neat.”

He was going to try to downplay everything he could. He didn’t know why he felt so compelled to do so, but was sure it was in his best interest to do so.

They led the dragon into the large opening. They sometimes would let the sheep stay in the windmill if they were too far from the barns and the weather was bad. The bottom of the windmill was very open. Zuma looked around, sniffed the ground a few times, and slowly stepped into the open room.

“What do you think? Would you mind staying in here while we deal with the officials?”

The dragon gave an abrupt shake and a huff before laying down, twisting their head away from him. They let out another huff and a billow of humid, cold air swelled out around their body. It spread out and made the room annoyingly sticky and cold.

“She’s pouting,” laughed Lelsi. “I didn’t know dragons could pout!”

Anton came running up in a panic. “The magistrate… they’re here early!”

Kaden shared a look with his sisters. How was he going to present himself to the magistrate?

“Zuma, you have to stay here. Listen to Prema. She knows what’s what out here,” he said with a slight shake in his voice.

The dragon raised its head with concern. It could feel the tense emotion in his voice. It was insane to him how perceptive the creatures were. He didn’t know if it was because of the bond he had with the Azure clan now or if it was just normal dragon behavior. There wasn’t anyone around to tell him either way.

Patting Zuma on the shoulder, he pushed out a comforting thought to them. He tried to let her know that everything was going to be okay. He didn’t quite believe it himself, but he did his best to not worry the dragon that was now going to be living in his windmill for the time being.

They didn’t hesitate and quickly took off back toward the complex. Explaining why one of them was missing was much easier to do than all of them. As they neared the buildings, he could hear a deep voice talking to their father.

“We can’t extend the contract any further. You owe what is due. I cannot make any more concessions, Mr. Berkhoff.”

“That’s not what I wanted to speak to you about. There has been an incident. We need to let the authorities know,” he heard his father say.

Kaden didn’t know why his father was phrasing the situation that way. It made it seem like he had been cursed. Unless he had planned on telling them about the rune trap. Panic filled his being. He didn’t think it through. They had to tell them about the trap to understand how he got blessed.

He took a deep breath to steel his nerves before he took a step out of the shadows, interrupting his father’s speech.

A tall man in various ornate blue robes stood in front of him. A quick flash of a vision popped into his thoughts. The ornate robe reminded him of the one he saw in his vision, just the wrong color. It had to have been a magistrate from another nation. Only it had been holding a severed head. The visions were going to haunt him from there out.

The magistrate turned to him with confusion. Kaden and his siblings never made such an entrance. They let their father do all the talking with the authorities. His brothers were likely to run their mouths, so it was the smartest move for all of them.

“Good afternoon esteemed Sir,” he said as he gave a polite bow. “My father was merely going to tell you that I’ve been blessed by a wild matriarch while I was out hunting.”

The man looked between the two of them with a suspicious squint. He took several moments to process the declaration.

Straightening his back, he said, “Prove it.”