39

The men seemed to be concerned seeing a women among the ranks of the men on horse back especially since I had a bow in my hand. Even with the praise the leader gave me yesterday it was as if they doubted it was even true.

"I see you take the girl with you while practicing so she might be able to watch and learn how to actually hunt." Their leader said and his men laughed.

"This girl has a name, and you would do well to show Megan respect as I'm sure she could put ride hunt and shoot your best men." Corey said.

"My son is right. Keep in mind that she is the head lady in our tribe since his mother is dead, you should remember to address her as such." His father said.

"Our apologies, we didn't mean to insult you, head lady." My uncle said. I knew it was an insult though and it was meant to be one.

"Your fine, me and Liz should be heading back and maybe you should all warm up before you leave." I said and road forward to Liz so we could leave.

"Maybe we should, and maybe one day we can have a contest to see how good you truly are since I'm always hearing about how good you are." My uncle said.

"That would be a great idea as something fun before the wedding ceremony since we will have the day to get ready and it could be good entertainment." Sam said.

"Yes it would." His father said.

"Me and Megan will compete for you Sam." Corey said and I looked back smiled at him and nodded.

"Yes and I will send my two best men to compete against you." The leader said.

"Well your all out hunting I'm sure you can work out the details, but I would hate to keep May waiting so we are going to go get her while you all go have fun hunting." I said.

"I would agree because we still need to bring all of Mays stuff over to our camp and we have a lot to do today, but be safe and I hope you have a safe hunt." Liz said.

"If anything goes wrong you know how to reach us." Corey said.

"Of course love, but hopefully nothing will go wrong and I'll see you back here tonight. Just remember the beasts your hunting out there will be nothing compared to what you will face if you come home hurt." I said, and he smiled at me.

I knew what he had meant by what he said because if something went wrong with either he wanted to know I could still be heard through the trees and know if my magic still connected us. Which it does and my clan would know if something was wrong as they are connected to the both of us as well. Corey just didn't want to point out that I used magic often and had strong magic. We worked perfectly with understanding each other because he knew if he got hurt I would heal him the best that I could but my threat was very real since I was a dragon I could have the potential to much more fierce than anything he would face out hunting. Unless he ran into a dragon in that case I would know and would be able to go to him. It would be nice to have back up since I'm not a pure bread so I'm smaller and weaker than pure bread dragons but I'm also bigger and stronger than most hybrids that can turn. As long as the dragon wasn't a white fire I would likely be able to defend myself by using my fire and not get hurt to badly as I wouldn't need to get close to it. Although that would be a case where it would be nice for Liz to have magic so that way I wouldn't need to turn. If she has enough witch in her I could use her and Corey to help handle our enemies and not need to turn into a dragon to do so. Helping Liz is a little more appealing knowing she would stay and maybe she could marry one of my cousins which would put my people closer and in higher positions to help make decisions. It would also ensure that if we hunted as dragons we would be able to since we would likely be able to choose our own hunting groups that made it so no none dragon would be there.

We road away from them and to go get May and her stuff.

"Liz, about earlier. I will try and teach you but I can't guarantee anything and I need to know you won't tell other people and your loyalty will be to my people."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We are in a new environment and going to be in a new tribe soon. We are going to need someone on our side and honestly I think you and one of my cousins would be a cute couple. Of course you would meet him and you can say no and so could he if you don't get along or don't want to be with one another, but I just feel like your personalities would go along great with one another and then you would have someone to bring to your father about who you want to marry." I said.

"Ok, I understand you all will be new and I would like to meet your cousin then, but what does it mean to have loyalty to your people."

"To be able to learn how to use your magic if you are even capable you will need to be in my village with Corey. I'm going to try to teach him as well. We are very secretive and live away for a reason and you will understand once you are with us why I'm saying you will need to be loyal because we don't tell our secrets or trust people with our ways. It's not taken lightly which is why I need to know you will be loyal to us before I can teach you because part of teaching you will allow you to see and learn some of our secrets and our culture and ways of life." I explained.

"I understand, does Corey feel that he will be loyal to your people?" She said.

"Corey is loyal to me. He has been to my family as well and knows our secrets but hasn't told anyone so he's already agreed to keep our secrets and live with us and learn our way of life and how we do things with nothing in return. But we intend to teach him how to use his abilities and it's why we have taught your father and Sam a different way to hunt, which we can show you as well."

"So he trust everyone there. He would agree to have loyalty if he thought it put our tribe in danger so I will agree to those terms. Also did Corey already know how you guys hunt, like not just watching it happen?"

"Yeah, he's hunted with us multiple times now and he participates. He knows our tactics and why we do certain things and he connected himself to us so if something goes wrong with hunting all of will know and I will leave to go help him or if something was to happen to us he would come. Depending on what happened my people would come to our aid as well."

"You all have a lot of loyalty to one another don't you?"

"Yes, that part of why I asked for your loyalty and thought of having you and my cousin marry. You would always have people backing you if you did so no matter what you would never be alone. Even if you lived at our village you are so close to your that you could go back to see your friends whenever. You would also have an entirely new family who don't leave one another behind or let each other be sold off into a marriage not knowing what would happen to them or if they are safe. They did leave everything they knew to follow me so that way we all knew everyone was safe and together, because home isn't where you know it's where your heart and family are at. Family isn't also always blood, it can be friends as well."

"Blood is thicker than water though so friends can't ever be true family."

"Blood may be thicker than water, but wine is thicker than blood. There is a difference from someone who is your friend and someone who was a friend but is so close that you see them as family."

"I hadn't ever heard that before. I was just always told my brother and father were all I had and it was my place to always put them and my tribe first." Liz said.

"I was told that too, but can you think of a single time they have put you first without it benefiting them, because I couldn't with my tribe which is part of why I left so easily. I went to people who would put me first to help me even when they didn't benefit from it, but I also put them first at times even though I don't benefit. It's a give and take. I'm sure May has been taught the same thing we were it's just that we have a chance to change that and she didn't."

"Your right, my brothers have put me first even when it didn't help them but nobody within my tribe that I call a friend has except you. You and your people put your lives on the line to protect us when we didn't even know we had a threat to face and they could of killed us and you would of been left alone. You all didn't though. You protected us to protect Corey because you all knew we matter to him and he matters to all of you so you did what you needed to do to make sure he would be able to stay happy."

"Yeah, we choose how to respond and we will be leading you all through the passage as well because it means the people the both of us care about can be safe."

"You all let yourself be free from normal rules off trust that you will all stay loyal to one another and be able to be happy."

"Yeah we did. It's worked out pretty well for us so far and if you were given a chance to choose your own fate wouldn't you want to take it."

"Do you regret anything about leaving to choose your own path?"

"Honestly yes, I regret leaving the way that I did since I never got say goodbye but I also know that if I would of told people we were leaving and tried to say goodbyes I never would of left. At the time I also didn't know I was leaving or it was the last time I would likely see the people that I left behind and I'm sure they all think that I'm dead now."

"I'm happy you choose to stay with us. Maybe one day you will see them again just as May might see her friends and family again one day."

"Yes maybe we both will one day. We are almost to there camp though. I asked a lot of you and I know you said yes to it, but I think you should truly think about what your agreeing to and take some time to let that sink in and know for sure before you truly agree to it. I wouldn't start teaching you until we got back anyways so you can give me your final answer on the way back while we all hunt."

"Ok." She said as we road into the other tribes camp to get May.