by Seth Eden
He whipped his head out of the doorway towards her sleeping form. His mouth downturned, he stormed over her to her and shook her harshly by the shoulder.
Samantha yelled in surprise. Being awoken so violently wasn’t something she’d expected and, afraid that she was being attacked in her sleep, swung her fist.
Zen easily caught her wrist, annoyed that this seemed to be her usual mode of operation: hit first and ask questions later.
“I’d really love it if you stopped doing that.” He pinned her wrist to the ground.
Samantha blinked away the fog from her mind. Surprise slowly became a scowl on seeing his face and promptly tried to yank her hand out of his grasp.
“Then don’t be an asshole and assault me in my sleep.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t eat all my food.”
“You said to help yourself!”
“I didn’t mean to clean out my entire supply!”
“How was I supposed to know that was the only food you had?!?!”
“You could have asked!”
“And why in the hell would I be polite to you?? The man who kidnapped me?! Why on this stupid planet would I ask for your goddamned permission as to how much food I should eat?!? You set my home on fire, kidnap me, won’t tell me where Ethan is, attack my friends, and I’m supposed to treat you with civility?!” Samantha’s chest swelled and sank with each panting breath she took. Her face felt hot and her skin crawled from all the adrenaline coursing through her.
Zen was taken aback by her yelling, surprised that such a small woman could be so loud. She appeared to be on the verge of crying once more - not something he wanted - so he stepped back and gave her some space. He couldn’t deny that she was mostly right. If someone had treated him that way, not knowing what was going on, then he would be pretty pissed too.
He sighed heavily and retreated to the couch. She hadn’t even bothered to make herself comfortable despite sleeping in his own bed last night. He didn’t really care one way or another, but he thought she would have at least taken the empty couch instead of treating herself like a hostage. She wasn’t shackled to the floor or locked up in a cell.
Maybe it was time that he got rid of some of her concerns.
“I should probably explain some things to you then. Like why I’m looking for Ethan in the first place.” He hung his head in his hands and rubbed at his temples. It wasn’t a story he wanted to share, especially with a stranger, but if clearing the air between them stopped her from being so antagonistic, then maybe things would become a little easier for him.
Samantha remained where she was, rubbing at her still-sore wrist. The promise of there being no breakfast to start the day only made her mood worse, as she was already hungry again. The meat and cheese from last night hadn’t really stuck with her. She remained on her place on the ground too; taking a seat beside him on the couch seemed too... amiable. Not to mention the fact that he was still naked.
“I was married to a woman once. Senna. She and I, we were both shifters from this place, centuries before you humans even built your first combustion engine. It was like fate when I met her. Beautiful red hair that went all the way to her ankles and a constellation of freckles on her cheeks. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. Our lives together were perfect.”
Zen sighed. He wished he had a drink nearby to help soothe his nerves because it would be difficult for him to get through the story sober.
“... tell me, do you know how shifters work? Why we are the way we are?”
Samantha blinked, confused by the question. Why did that matter?
“Isn’t it magic?”
An amused exhale escaped him as he leaned back into the couch. He was going to have to explain a lot more than he’d been prepared for.
“You know what they say. Misunderstood technology doesn’t look much different from magic. What we can do has nothing to do with fairies and magical wands. It’s nanotechnology, tiny microscopic machines in our bloodstream that give us these powers. We’ve had them for centuries. Eons, even.”
“What’s your point?”
“... the point is, that they’ve been evolving with us ever since, becoming stronger, more powerful. We were heading towards the next evolutionary step on the ladder... Senna was. Oh, she was marvelous...” Zen was overcome with emotion then, his eyes glazing over as he remembered the sight of his beautiful wife in all her glory.
She didn’t like that far-off look in his eye as his words trailed off. Almost like he was recalling the witnessing of some miracle. After a few minutes, she cleared her throat, which seemed to be enough to bring him back to reality.
His face flushed a little red, embarrassed that he’d been caught in such an intimate moment. He cleared his throat too and resumed his story.
“... anyway... Ethan was the one who suggested it to the king... the king before this Dominic person, brought up all this nonsense about out bloodlines being too strong, that Senna was too strong. Stronger than the king himself, and that wasn’t something he could abide by. They needed to make an example of her for the rest of Cendarth’s people. So they captured her and hired a bunch of mercenaries to fly her into the nearest star. Made up some lie to his subjects that she had some incurable disease and needed to be quarantined.”
“... and what did you do about all this? I mean, didn’t you try to stop him?” Samantha said shakily. Her empty stomach was starting to get the better of her.
“You think I just stood by and watched it all happen? What did you expect me to do, locked up in a cell?”
“A cell?”
“Who do you think they blamed for their deaths? That fell squarely on me, of course. The pariah of the community. And to show a display of “mercy,” my own brother cast me out instead of killing me. He wanted me to live with the fact that I couldn’t save my own family. How’s that for generous…”
“So... what you’re saying is that he framed you.” It was getting hard and harder for her to keep track of the story.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“And why would he do that?”
He snorted and shook his head.
“Why does my brother do anything? For his own gain, of course. And he gets you and everyone in that city wrapped around his finger in the process to look like the hero. It’s what he wants.”
“You… were in that cell for a reason. Ethan… he wouldn’t have… I…”
Zen wheeled around with a look of fury in his eye.
“You assumed. You assumed I was the asshole back then that you think I am now. Another demonstration that you really know nothing. Ethan is the reason you and those other women are even here in the first place. It was his idea to start taking women from other planets, human women who wouldn’t have our technology in their blood so that the same mistakes wouldn’t happen again. So yes, if you want someone to blame for you being here, it was the very man you’ve been living with for the past few months.”
No... none of this made any sense to her. Ethan couldn’t... he wouldn’t. This news was leaving her feeling dizzy, and the more she thought about it, the worse she felt. She hugged her knees to her chest to try and center herself, to make the feeling go away but it wasn’t helping at all. Slowly, she slid towards the ground, her unfocused eyes staring at nothing too specific.
“I’m sorry, am I boring you?” Zen shook his head, catching her movement out of the corner of his eye. He thought she was giving up on this conversation and going back to sleep. But when he turned his head, he noticed that she was looking a little green.
“You should... You don’t look very good.”
She wanted to reply with something snarky to put him in his place, but all of her concentration was focused on not throwing up at the moment.
Not wanting her to make a mess of his floor, he put aside whatever beef he had with her and scooped her up. He walked briskly to the bathroom and held her up on her knees near the bathtub, hoping she wouldn’t ch
oose to up-end her stomach contents all over his lap.
She struggled a little in his grasp, having been taken by surprise, but she soon ignored his “assault” on her when the rumbling of her stomach filled the silence.
After holding back her hair and allowing her to empty her stomach, Zen quickly rinsed out his bathtub with a quick splash of water. It took a while for the lingering acrid smell to dissipate but at least her color looked much better.
“Could you get me some water… please?” She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand and pulled herself out of his grasp. As nice as he was being, that didn’t mean that they were automatically friends.
Zen shrugged casually as he left the bathroom. He wasn’t going to take an affront to her behavior - they had no reason to be civil with each other - but he would give her credit for saying please.
Glad for his absence, she took the time to go over what he’d shared. If any of it was true, then Ethan wasn’t the man he’d portrayed himself to be. Not some killer. Not some mad man with conniving plans and conspiracies in his back pockets. And yet, the man in the other room spoke with such conviction that it was hard to ignore every word.
Maybe someone else was playing them both for fools, she told herself, pulling their strings so that they would go at each other’s throats instead of going after the real criminal in all of this. She knew nothing about the internal politics of these people but from recent events, she wouldn’t be surprised if another political house was trying to weed out competitors to rise to the top.
Zen took his time filling the glass, wondering what would make the woman throw up. It wasn’t as if she’d had anything bad to eat, except for stuffing herself on all that dried meat and cheese. Unfortunately, he had no kind of medicine to offer her either and he was sure that she likely wouldn’t take it either.
He shook the thought from his head. He didn’t need her to trust him. What he needed her to do was stay alive and well, for the time being, nothing else. Until Ethan decided to show his ugly mug anyway. Then he would be done with her.
Just as he was stepping out of the kitchen with the glass of water, he had to stop short. They almost bumped into each other as they entered the main room at the same time. Both paused for a second, waiting to see if the other would go first and, when neither moved, took a step in unison. Another pause and the ritual was repeated again, to both their frustrations.
“Please.” Zen gestured, hoping that she was feeling much better and wouldn’t have another bout of nausea on his couch.
Samantha turned her nose up at him before making her way. She stopped for a microsecond, contemplating whether she really wanted to return to her spot on the ground. It was hard and uncomfortable and had already bruised her skin throughout the night with her attempts to get comfortable. Not wanting to go through that again, she returned to the far side of the couch, sitting on the armrest so that she could be as far away from him as possible while still being comfortable.
“That’s a bit childish,” he muttered under his breath as he sat down again. “Here.” He offered her the glass of water, which she begrudgingly took. She didn’t even utter a thank you as she gulped down the entire contents of the glass, glad that she could rid her tongue of the awful acidic taste that continued to linger.
“And you aren’t being childish?” she remarked.
Oh. She’d heard that.
“And how, pray tell, am I being childish?” He stretched his arm across the back of the couch, averting his gaze. He couldn’t understand why his brother would become so involved with a woman so contradictory.
“Pushing people around? Kidnapping me for your own end? Thinking everyone should pay you attention just because your wife’s dead? You’re just some kind of attention whore if you ask me.”
Zen pursed his lips; he was sure that if he stayed here any longer, this woman would get on his last nerve and he wasn’t sure what he would do then. Killing her was definitely out of the question and would only make things worse for him, especially with the two dragonshifters he’d left in the city. He just needed to bide his time and get through this as peacefully as possible.
“... would you like a refill?” he offered once her glass was empty. She handed it over without a word, and that meant another trip to the kitchen. When he returned she was a little more comfortable on the couch, choosing to sit on this time rather than just the armrest.
“No. I’m... fine.”
“... you’re not a shifter, are you?”
Samantha blinked, frozen. She wasn’t sure how she should answer, or if she even should at all. It wasn’t as if she’d kept it a secret but she didn’t know how he would react if she told him the truth.
“I can tell. I can’t smell the fire in you.”
Dammit.
“Does that mean you’re going to kill me now that you know I can’t defend myself?” She took another sip of water, ready to throw the contents in his face. For all the good that would do.
“Kill you? What would that get me? Another mess to clean up. No thank you.”
As he stretched the lingering pain out of his body, Samantha couldn’t help but notice that some of his bruises were already faded and his wounds were already closed. Did being a shifter mean that he had some kind of superior healing factor?
“... you were going on about your kind. Shifters and how they work.”
“That’s right. As I said, after Senna, the former king looked outside this planet for those who had adaptable blood to keep the lines thin. That way, the same thing wouldn’t happen again.”
“So... then... how would a normal person like me be changed into a shifter?”
“Our... bodily fluids, as I said, possess the technology that’s been ingrained into our very beings. If you’d spent more time with Ethan... become married... your first night of intimate passion... He would have placed his seed within you and then the change would have started to take place.”
Samantha openly cringed at the explanation of it all. Was that what had happened to Jen after the wedding ceremony? She’d seen her fallen ill at the banquet and hadn’t heard anything more.
“And what happens... with the change? Specifically?”
“Well, the, uh, recipient gets stronger. The ability to shift into a dragon, of course. They become much harder to kill, are immune to poisons and diseases, can’t be harmed by normal fire... I’d be here all evening if I had to list everything out to you.”
Immune to poison. That must have been it, why Jen’s health had improved so quickly. She thought a miracle cure had been found, but to learn that her friend had improved because Dominic had...
She quickly shook the thought from her head. She didn’t want to imagine that scene. Where her thoughts did stray was back to Ethan and how all of this was supposedly his mess.
Ethan, the same man who proposed to her two days ago with a ring, the man who couldn’t even dance right or constantly got on people’s nerves... That didn’t sound like some scheming mastermind to her. He was more of a lovable bumbling fool if she had to choose words to describe him.
“And how do I know you’re even telling the truth? How do I know you’re not just making up some tale to vindicate yourself and make Ethan out to be the bad guy?” she asked with her head buried between her knees.
This again. Zen didn’t know what he could tell her to convince her he was telling the truth. he had nothing to give but his word. He had no friends to back him up, nothing physical to demonstrate that what he’d said was true.
But he could give her what she’d been asking for since they’d met.
“I’ll give you your truth, then. Why I need you here? It’s because I lied about knowing where Ethan is. I have no clue. Honestly, you’re bait to get my brother out of hiding. If he cares for you at all, he’ll come to get you. Eventually. Or you’ll find out the hard way that your entire relationship was all just a ruse.” He hated sounding so cold about it but those were the facts and sugar-coating it would only mak
e things worse. Why he hadn’t been so blunt in the beginning was the fault of his own pride and wanting to strike out at anyone and anything as painfully as possible.
“Bait…?” With that revelation, she didn’t like where this conversation was going. Samantha’s fists clenched, leaving half-moons in her palms. Pale then red, they ached so much she thought she was bleeding. And it was on that pain she focused on to still herself because she knew if she didn’t, she was sure she’d punch his lights out.
She was also sure that she probably wouldn’t stop for anything.
“Then why were you there? Why were you at our house? What did you do to him?” With each question, she stepped closer, and with each step, the shifter slid higher and higher up the wall until he stood.
He was surprised that she was being so brazen, that she was foolish - or brave - enough to challenge him, having no magic of her own. Desperation, he figured. Or true love for his brother.
“I was there to speak with him-”
“So you burned it to the ground?!”
“I tell you, I didn’t burn it! You gave me directions and that’s how I found it! What can I do or say to make you believe me?!” It was his turn to narrow the distance between them, his nostrils flared as he towered over her.
“And I should take your word for it!?” she screamed. She would have grabbed him by the front of his shirt if he was wearing any clothes, so that left her with no choice but to slap him in the face.
He braced against it, remaining stock still. The slap barely registered as more than a pinch
The situation was quickly escalating, he knew, and that if they both continued on their current paths, he could easily kill her without even trying. So when she reached up to slap him again, he caught her wrist.
“Slapping me isn’t going to help either of us find him,” he spoke low and quietly. He was honestly getting sick of all of this.
“No, but it makes me feel a hell of a lot better!” She tried to pull her wrist free, determined to get another hit in.
Instead, he spun her around and pinned her hands behind her back, pressing her face into the couch. She yelped in surprise and continued her struggle. Being made to feel so helpless was starting to wear her thin.