A full hour passed and Cybela still had not returned from her hunt. Anduin dozed in his chair for awhile, occasionally waking up to check on his friend. Wrathion was still sound asleep. The human rubbed his eyes. Better not let Father know I fell asleep in the same room as a black dragon, he thought with amusement. He'd have a heart attack.

Yet this dragon was too sick to move from his pillow, and his back legs twitched in restless spasms. Anduin remembered once, many years ago, when one of the royal hunting hounds had fallen ill. She had suffered from similar convulsions, before one of the king's men put her out of her misery. It was not one of his fondest memories.

The prince rose from his chair and carefully stretched his bad leg, wincing in pain. He had not gotten nearly enough exercise in the last few days, but his mind had been elsewhere. Relying heavily on his cane, he crossed the room several times, and was considering a walk into the corridor when the door eased open. He turned to see Cybela, looking tired but pleased. Her hooded cloak and red dress were oddly spotless despite her errand.

"How was the hunt?" he asked.

She carried a burlap sack into the room, and Anduin immediately smelled fresh blood. "This should be a good start."

He saw his chance. "Since you're back, I'm going to take a break and get something less, er, raw to eat. If you need me, ask one of the scary-looking people in the hallway. They're Wrathion's guards, and such. They know where to find me."

The elf smiled graciously. "Of course. I can handle things from here."

Anduin nodded, sent one more silent prayer in Wrathion's direction, and slipped out of the room.


Now alone with her patient, Cybela put her traveling cloak on a hook behind the door and pulled a chair from the table over to the bedside.

Wrathion made an irritated noise at having been woken up but did not move or fully open his eyes. She took one of the blankets and draped it over her shoulder, then picked up the listless whelp and nestled him into the crook of her left arm.

"Don't touch me!" The command carried little weight when he could barely hold his head up. Such embarrassing weakness did nothing to improve his mood. "Guards!" he rasped, but his voice was not strong enough to carry through the door and into the hallway, so no one came.

"Ssh," she breathed, wrapping the blanket around his bottom half to contain his struggling. "Calm down. I'm here to help you."

"Help me? Your flight wants me dead." He managed to scratch her with his claws, but didn't have the strength to break the skin, and she barely flinched at the red lines on her forearm. Just that small bit of speaking and moving took nearly all the energy he had, and he struggled to maintain consciousness.

"Some may. I'm not one of them. Now, your human friend thinks I'm an elf, so let's keep up that pretense for now. He was asking around the Shrine of Seven Stars for someone with experience healing dragons, and I couldn't very well stand by and let a sick whelp suffer. I didn't know it was you until I got here. But honestly, I mean you no harm. And I know what's wrong with you."

In spite of himself, he perked up to listen.

"You haven't been eating enough raw meat. Eating the same food the mortals do isn't enough to keep you healthy. You have to eat fresh, uncooked meat."

Wrathion blinked, trying to wrap his foggy mind around this concept. "Absurd," he mumbled. "It can't be that simple."

She reached into the bag with her free hand and pulled out a stringy tendril of red meat. "Here. Eat." She dangled it in front of his nose, and he stubbornly turned his head. "Now don't be difficult. You need to eat this."

Against his will, Wrathion's mouth watered at the smell of the fresh meat. Finally, he snapped his jaws and ate the scrap from her hand.

"Good," she said, nodding. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"

He did not dignify this with a response, but chewed quickly. The tang of blood stirred powerful instincts deep in his reptilian brain, and when Cybela offered him a second bite he did not hesitate. When that was swallowed, he looked for a third helping, but she made no move toward the bag. "That's enough for now. Don't overdo it."

He licked blood from his teeth. "Eat, don't eat... Make up your mind!"

"You've been malnourished for longer than you even realize. If you eat too much too fast you'll just get sick."

Too weak to argue any further, he did not struggle as she wrapped him more snugly in the blanket and laid him against her shoulder. From a distance she would have looked like any elven mother rocking her infant...until someone got close enough to notice that her "baby" had scales and wings.

At first Wrathion was humiliated at such treatment. He was the Black Prince! He was a guardian of Azeroth! He was the mastermind of a dozen intricate plots! He was the leader of a vast intelligence network! He was...so warm and comfortable...

Cybela slowly rubbed his back, tilting her head to rest against him.

It became utterly impossible to keep his eyes open. Oh well.

What was that sound? It was...soothing. Bump...bump...bump... He realized with a small jolt that he was hearing her heartbeat. The only heartbeat he had ever heard before was Fahrad's, and that seemed like part of another lifetime, now...

If he had been born into a normal family, he would have slept in a pile of his siblings near his mother every night for the first few months of his life. Not that he had ever known that warm feeling of security, of course, thanks to the red dragonflight's meddling.

Wrathion felt himself floating off into sleep once more, and could not fight it.


Warmth. Safety. Belonging.

Energy enveloped him, different in many ways from his own, yet still distinctly draconic.

He had been sleeping again. Where was he? Whose hands were drifting tenderly across his back?

He knew the answers to those questions...didn't he? He should. If he could just think. Everything felt like it was spinning slowly.

Pain and sickness flared up, and chirps of distress came unbidden from his throat.

A female voice whispered comforting words in draconic. A sensation like baking summer sunshine swept over him, and his body gave a shudder before relaxing.

He was sinking, falling, losing himself in the pleasant numbess.

This had to be his mother. Nyxondra had come to bring him across to the other side of the sky.

Unwilling to open his eyes, he pressed his face into her softness and held on tighter.

Panic sliced through his stupor as he remembered his mission. The Legion was still coming. He had to save Azeroth.

But such concerns seemed so distant. Right now all he could think of was how ill he was, and how the arms that held him seemed to make it better.

There was a faint trilling noise. He tried to remember if he had ever heard such a sound before. He hadn't, but it was familiar, somehow. That made no sense.

Nothing made sense.

The soft object against his body vibrated slightly as the odd trilling noise grew in intensity.

Whatever it was, it soon made him feel completely at peace. Everything would be all right. Of course it would. He was safe. He was protected. He was loved. There was nothing to worry about.

He sighed out the last traces of tension and slipped back into a deep sleep.


Many times during her stay at the Ruby Dragonshrine, Cybelastrasza had heard the orphan matrons comfort frightened or sick whelplings with a soothing, trilling noise deep in their throats. She had not felt comfortable asking about it, but had come to understand that it was something mother dragons did to calm their clutches. Once or twice she had attempted to mimic it, but felt silly and didn't want to be caught doing anything that would reinforce her reputation as strange.

As she heard the classic distress call burble out of Wrathion, however, instinct took over and she made the answering sound without hesitation. Even more amazingly, it worked. The whelp stopped trembling and sank into her, returning to untroubled slumber.

She simply watched him breathe for a few minutes, noting that his scales were dull and unhealthy-looking. At least, she thought so. She had never seen a black dragon before, of course. Few in her generation had. He was the only one left. The last.

Cybela blinked back tears and held him tighter. I will save him, Mama, she thought. I promise. Your sacrifice was not in vain.

Wrathion's stomach made a hollow, unsettled noise as it worked to digest the first proper food it had seen in far too long.

She stopped stroking his back long enough to gesture along with a murmured spell, and golden light briefly pulsed over him.

Now the only sounds coming from her patient were quiet snores.

Satisfied that she had done everything she could for the moment, Cybela settled back in her chair, keeping the whelp snugly tucked against her chest. In time, she joined him in sleep.


How many hours passed before Wrathion regained full consciousness, he had no idea. It was still dark out, anyway, with only the dim light of the lantern hanging above the table to illuminate the room.

He sensed a red dragon nearby and briefly panicked, thrashing feebly against her. After a moment he remembered the situation, but only let his guard down a fraction. No red dragon would really want to help him. It had to be a trick. If only he wasn't so sick...

Cybela had been dozing lightly, and the instant she felt him moving in her arms she came awake. "Would you like something more to eat?" she asked.

"Go away," he snarled. "I don't trust you...don't want you here..." His normally confident voice was frustratingly weak and slurred.

"Maybe not, but I bet you'd like dying even less." She smiled and picked out a few more strands of meat for him.

Wrathion's mind urged him to refuse, but his body was drawn to the food by powerful instinct. He snapped it out of her hand, narrowly missing her fingers, and chewed with relish. After swallowing, he looked to her for more.

She made no move toward the sack of meat. "Take it slowly," she insisted. "You need to rebuild your strength a bit at the time."

Wrathion snorted and sulked. He wanted to insult her, to demand that she leave him alone, to tell her that she was foolish for daring to approach him after everything her flight had done to him. Somehow he didn't have the energy to say all that, though.

Cybela arranged the blanket around him again. "Are you warm enough?"

"Don't baby me," he croaked.

"I don't think you realize how dangerously close you were to dying. If your friend hadn't found me to help..."'

"Meddling human... Won't mind his own business."

"You owe him your life, like it or not," she chided.

He made a sour face but did not have the stamina for further complaints. Truth be told, he was far too comfortable to remain cranky and had to admit, if only to himself, that he did need help.

Wrathion had always prided himself on being independent. He had ordered the extermination of his entire dragonflight, and that was fine because he didn't need them or anyone else. He was strong enough to make it on his own. He had to be, for Azeroth's sake.

He didn't need this soothing, attentive figure who was snuggling him close and rocking him back to sleep. He didn't need this oddly pleasant feeling of having another dragon around.

He didn't need any of it, but at the moment he was powerless to resist, so he might as well go along with it.


Anduin took it as good news that no one had come for him overnight. Left and Right gave him curious looks as he limped toward the Black Prince's door after breakfast. They had believed him when he said the strange elf was there to help their leader, but their training made them suspicious of everyone.

"All quiet overnight?" Anduin asked.

Right nodded.

He knocked just twice, not wanting to wake the other prince if he was resting. "Come in," came Cybela's voice.

She was still sitting in her chair by the bed, cradling a sleeping whelp in her lap. She looked tired but pleased. "It's been a long night, but he's kept down all the meat I've fed him, and the spasms in his legs have stopped."

"Hmm?" Wrathion stirred, stretched, and looked up in momentary confusion at finding himself in such an odd place.

"Morning, sleepyhead," she cooed.

"Oh, right," he mumbled. "You."

"Feeling any better?" Anduin asked.

Wrathion winced upon realizing that his coddling had been witnessed. "I've been worse," he said after a moment, doing his best to sound haughty.

"Breakfast?" Cybela offered him a small bit of meat, which he slurped up eagerly.

"That's the most alert I've seen you in many days," Anduin said happily.

"Amazing what the right diet can do," she said. "Dragons can live among the mortal races if they want to, but when they forget to eat like a dragon they face the consequences."

"I don't need a lecture." Wrathion sneered.

"Well, he's got enough energy to be disagreeable. That's a good sign," Anduin said with a grin.

"And you, Anduin!" Wrathion whipped his head around to glare at the human, but doing so made his dizziness return, and he closed his eyes with a gasp. When he dared to open them again, his expression was only a fraction less angry. "You had the gall to bring some stranger into my sanctum? What made you think of such a foolish, presumptious plan?"

Anduin took the insults in stride, too relieved to see him feeling better to let himself be provoked. "It was a measure of last resort. Nothing else had helped, and I wasn't about to stand by and watch you die if I thought there was an alternative."

"And why do you care what happens to me?"

"Because the Light compels me to lessen the suffering of others. Because you deserve a chance to prove you're truly uncorrupted. Because I do believe you mean well, even if I don't always agree with your methods. And because you're my friend...the best one I've had in a long time."

Wrathion faltered, unable to think of a proper response.

"Rest up, Black Prince. You owe me an awful lot of jihui games when you feel up to sitting at the table again." Anduin reached out and patted the whelp's head before heading for the door.

"Did you just pet me?" he gasped. "Anduin Wrynn, I've had people executed for lesser insults!"

Anduin stifled a laugh as he shut the door behind him.