Alika skidded across the moss as she approached him, narrowly avoiding crashing into a tree. Tarka stood with one wing against a mossy boulder as large as Alika, excitedly thumping his tail against it.

Alika glanced him up and down. No scratches. No visible injuries. Just a bunch of moss on his fur. Everything was okay.

“Tarka, don’t scare me like that,” she snapped, rippling her wings out. “What happened?”

Tarka cocked his head, confused. “You need to see this!” He gestured around the boulder with a wing. “Look!”

Alika perked up her ears, giving Tarka a silent glare. What sort of prank was he playing on her now?

Cautiously, she poked her snout around the rock, expecting to be hit with a snowball he’d somehow been hiding, or to slip into mud. Instead, all she saw was more of the pine forest — staggeringly green, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Alika rolled her eyes, already considering how best to chastise Tarka. She turned around, only to find herself looking into the white-furred snout of an unknown dragon, staring back at her with golden eyes.

“Hello!” the dragon said.

Alika screamed. Her hackles raised, and her fur poofed up, defensively spreading out her wings and foreclaws.

The dragon cocked her head to the side and swooped her tail across the moss. Unlike the typical stocky dragon, her body was lithe and sleek, but she didn’t show signs of starvation.

“I found our pack!” Tarka announced. “We don’t have to walk anymore!”

Alika stared at the dragon, watching her furred ears move from side to side. Another dragon? This wasn’t possible. Their pack was in the north, past the great ocean. Alika bared her fangs.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Snow,” the mystery dragon replied. Alika raised her claws again as the furred dragon brought her snout toward Alika. Was she going to bite or flame her? Instead, Snow just gave Alika’s side a sniff.

Alika cautiously sniffed Snow back. Perhaps Alika was just used to the odor that came from their excessive walking and infrequent bathing, but Snow’s scent was weirdly light, as distant from Tarka and Serka’s scents as the wolves had been. Had she disguised it as some sort of hunting technique? It would explain how easily she’d snuck up on Alika. Yet, whoever this Snow was, Alika was certain she wasn’t family.

“You must be the famed Alika,” Snow continued, pulling her snout back. “I’m honored to meet you.”

“Famed?” Alika’s gaze narrowed. “How do you know who I am?”

Snow blinked. She pointed her tail at Tarka. “Your brother has been shouting it since he saw me. It’s not hard to guess.”

“Right,” Alika replied.

“I did it, I did it!” Tarka sung. “We have a pack now!”

Alika lightly knocked the bridge of her snout against the boulder. “Tarka, she’s not part of our pack. If she was, her name would end in a ‘ka’ like ours, and she would smell like us.”

“This is true,” Snow affirmed. She waved her wings in a dramatic flourish. “However, we don’t see other dragons often. My pack is friendly to visitors, and we’d be happy to welcome you as our guests.”

The end of Alika’s tail twitched. Another dragon pack? Serka had said that dragon packs that bordered each others’ territories were often hostile to each other, but to dragons from further, it depended wildly. Outsiders or exiles could be taken on as mates, chased off, or killed. Was Snow’s pack the friendly sort, or were they being led into a trap?

“Wait, is your name supposed to be the same as the cold white stuff that’s everywhere but here?” Tarka asked. “Or is that just an accident? Oh, oh! I bet you have a brother named Crow! And a mother named Flow! And a father named Glow!”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I was named Snow because my fur looks like snow, of course,” Snow grinned, showing off her long saber-fangs. “I’m great in hiding in it and pouncing on lemmings. I bet you’d be great at it too. Alika, not so much?”

Alika scowled. “I’d be a great lemming hunter. My fur blends in great on the glacier.”

“What’s a lemming?” Tarka said.

“They’re little round furry creatures!” Snow raised her forepaws, placing them side by side. “They’re about this big. They’re fast, but they taste so good!”

“It seems it would be hard to hunt them now, with the forest so green,” Alika said. “A fur color that blends into the sky would be far more useful, wouldn’t it?”

“Does your fur not turn brown in the summer?” Snow said, cocking her head. “Poor you.”

Alika tensed her wings. Was her fur supposed to turn brown in the summer? Perhaps it did for dragons who lived in areas where it wasn’t covered in snow all year around. She suddenly felt like an incompetent huntress.

“But it’s almost winter, and having a white pelt is so great when it snows!” Snow whisked her tail in a wide arc of white fluff. “See? Perfect for lemming hunting!”

“See what?” Alika asked. Her snout suddenly scrunched up as she felt a speck of cold on it. She looked up. Gray clouds had filled the sky, and white flakes were falling to the ground.

“It’s you-ing!” Tarka laughed, jumping up and down. He snapped at a snowflake, catching it in his jaws. “C’mon, we go hunt lemmings together! We can play hide-and-seek too! I bet you’re so much better than Alika is.”

“Hey!” Alika said. “I can smell you from halfway across the woods.”

“Nope! I just bathed.” Tarka began thumping his tail on the ground, looking up at Snow with his eyes as wide as the full Twins.

“I’d love to play!” Snow affirmed. Alika could tell that Snow was trying as hard as she could to keep her tail still, but couldn’t help keep the end of her tail from rapidly wagging. The moss began to get covered in a light frost.

Still, Alika didn’t trust Snow, whether she was genuinely excited or not. An unknown, potentially hostile dragon appearing out of nowhere? This smelled of rotten meat to her. Maybe Snow was just trying to get their guard down, so she could easily attack them. Maybe she was secretly one of Nigel’s Clan — although she certainly seemed to be fully alive in both body and spirit. Whatever it was she actually wanted, Alika knew it couldn’t be good.

“Sorry, but we’re busy,” Alika said. “We don’t have time to play.”

“Don’t listen to her!” Tarka shouted, pushing himself between the two larger dragons and throwing out his wings between them. “Alika doesn’t want to do anything fun anymore. She just wants to walk all day and complain about her paws being sore. It’s been forever since I’ve had any fun!”

“Tarka, we can play later,” Alika huffed. Perhaps she had been pushing Tarka a bit hard. Maybe they had gotten far enough north that winter wouldn’t be quite so dangerous. But right now, she wanted to get away from Snow. “Let’s just get out of the forest first, okay?”

“Sounds like Alika is a bit of a scaredy-fox,” Snow said, twitching her ears and smiling.

“Excuse me?” Alika hissed, shoving her fangs over Tarka’s head and bringing them threateningly close to Snow’s nose.

“Hey, I’m just saying you’re worrying too much!” Snow replied, backing off. “The forest is too big to get through in a single day anyway. If you really want to get through it quickly, my pack knows the safest and quickest routes. I could bring you back there if you wanted.”

A low rumble formed in the base of Alika’s throat, and hints of smoke rose from her nostrils.

“Alika, please?” Tarka said. “Snow is cool, and I’ve never met anyone like her before!”

More cold flakes began to fall on Alika’s snout. She shook them away. She was supposed to protect Tarka and bring them north. Was she just hindering their journey and frustrating Tarka? Would he even listen to her if she told them they had to go?

“Fine,” she said. “But I’m keeping my eye on both of you.”

Tarka cocked his head. “Well, we’re playing hide-and-seek, so only if you’re not the one seeking! I’ll start! Snow, what you do is when I’m counting you run as far as you can and hide so that I can’t find you. You only get until twenty, so you better hurry!” He placed his forepaws over his eyes. “One, two, three…”

“See you around then. Or maybe not!” Snow showed off her fangs before running across the newly snowy forest floor, waving her poofy tail behind her. Was that a hint of smugness in her voice that Alika heard?

Alika raked her talons across the moss, watching as Snow disappeared behind a tree. A friendly dragon willing to lead them through the forest? Alika couldn’t believe it. It was too good to be true. Whatever Snow was up to, Alika would be there to stop her.

“…seven, eight. Alika, I know you’re just standing there! Nine, ten, eleven…”

Alika stomped off into the forest. Tarka might be too naive to tell, but she knew there was something weird going on here, and she’d figure it out.