by Loki Renard
It had never been so important to fight before, and she had never been so totally incapable of fighting. There was nothing in the cell to use as a tool, and there was no way out. The walls of the thing were several feet thick, so there was no chance of burrowing.
It was all she could do to slow her breathing and try not to give into panic. There would be a way out. There was always a way out. What she had to do was be calm and quiet and then when that opportunity came, she had to take it no matter what the cost. There was no longer any room for caution in her world.
Chapter Nineteen
The days went by, and Aria felt a fluttering begin low in her stomach. It was stronger than she had expected, and it reminded her that she was not alone anymore. They had imprisoned her singly, trying to break her will, but a part of Vyktor was still with her, and it was bringing something new, something she could already feel would not go without a fight.
There was no word on her case. No doubt her pregnancy had changed matters. She knew she would be the last to find out what her fate would be. The days went by and though she had every reason to lose hope, the movement in her belly reminded her that there was someone out there who cared for her more deeply than these people holding her captive could possibly understand.
One all too well lit ‘night,’ Aria was doing her best to sleep in her perpetually lit cell. She had asked for the day/night cycle to be restored in aid of her pregnancy, but there didn’t seem to be any concern for her or her offspring. In spite of their torture by denying her any sense of time, it had become apparent through the semi-frequent monitoring that weeks were passing. Weeks in which her stomach began to grow, and the dragon within her became more powerful.
Click.
Somewhere in the middle of what she thought was probably the night, Aria heard the door of her cell unlock. She knew that soft click that usually heralded some asshole coming to take her somewhere. She sat bolt upright, her hands protectively over her belly and waited for the soldier to come and take her away.
It didn’t happen. Nobody was there. She got up and tiptoed to the door and tried the handle. To her supreme surprise, it opened.
She looked into the hall and saw nobody there. What was going on? Had her cell been unlocked by accident? Someone leaned on something in the control panel? Was that even possible? Was it a trap? She didn’t know. All she knew was that fate, or something else, had given her a possible chance at escape, and she was going to take it.
Aria hugged the wall and sidled toward the guard station. She knew where at least one of them was located—and the likely location of an arsenal. All the guards were armed. She was mystified as to why she was yet to be detected. Every part of the building was under constant surveillance, but somehow she made it to the guard station without being caught. The door there was open too.
“Psst!”
She turned to see a shadowy figure approaching her from the rear. He was a prisoner, a fact made obvious by his pale skin and ugly jumpsuit. She wore the same.
“Everything’s been deactivated,” she whispered. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “But I’m getting the hell out of here, I was just doing a sweep to make sure we got everybody. There’s five other guys on the unit, holed up above us. The guards are above ground. Some kind of attack. Someone wants someone in here out of here really fucking badly.”
She didn’t know who this man was, but she knew she shared the look in his eyes. They were both ready to do anything to see the light of true day again, and to have the world go dark around them as night fell. They were ready for the wind on their face, the simple luxury of a breeze. He could have done anything, this man Aria suddenly felt a strong kinship with. The worst of the worst found their way to these prisons, but Aria was beyond judging.
Together, they ran up to the next level, where, as he had said, a cluster of prisoners had formed. They all looked pale and desperate, just like her. The six of them were strangers to one another, but they shared a single purpose: escape.
They had armed themselves as best they could. One had a plunger, another a stapler. One particularly brutal-looking mass of a man was holding what looked like the leg of a metal chair. None of their weapons would do a thing against a single man with a gun, but they didn’t let that stop them.
It soon turned out to be that every door in the facility was unlocked. Every electrical system was down. And every soldier was absent.
“EMP,” somebody muttered. “Must have been a massive attack.”
They came out into the light of a bright afternoon—and walked straight into a fierce battle.
“Holy fuck, dragons!”
Aria gasped, her eyes drawn upward to the furious gray storm above the facility. A portal! From it, winged creatures were sweeping to and fro above panicked soldiers with firearms that were far too small to have any real effect. There had to be two dozen of them, swooping back and forth, throwing the place into utter chaos.
“Vyktor!” Aria screamed her lover’s name. “Vyktor!”
She called again and a great red dragon with dark markings swept low over their heads, wheeled about and landed under fire, knocking several soldiers over as his heavy body made the earth beneath him vibrate. It lowered its great head toward her and sniffed her gently with its scaled nose.
Aria let out a sob and wrapped her arms around the scaly face. She could only hug a very small portion of him in this form, but she had so yearned for his touch that she would take what she could get—and even in the leviathan form of a dragon, she knew it was him. Those great golden eyes did not lie.
She felt clawed hands wrap around her, holding her with a gentle touch as she was plucked from the Earth and lifted into the heavens on dragon’s wings. Aria and her dragon ascended to the portal together and passed on through to the other side.
*
“My love. My pet.”
Aria looked into a golden gaze that she had once been sure she would never see again. Vyktor was sitting next to her, his lips brushing over her mouth. She could not believe it at first. The room they were in did not seem real. He had flown with her across a great ocean to a cliff-side village where homes were carved into the faces of the tall, craggy bluffs. It was the same scene she had seen in his word-working, but much more vivid and grand in scale for being real.
There he had transformed before her and led her into a home more stunningly palatial than anything she had seen on Earth. Now they sat together on a soft bed, Aria entirely naked. The first thing she had done upon setting foot on solid ground was shed the ugly jumpsuit that had marked her imprisonment. It lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, a dark reminder of the world she had escaped.
“Is this real? Am I dreaming?” With tear-fogged eyes, she asked the question over and over again.
“You’re not dreaming,” he said, his voice a soft rumble against her. “I’ve got you, my pet. I’ve got you.”
She ran her hands over his face, touched and tasted him with her lips and tongue, smelled his scent. It was him. Not a dream. Not a mirage. Him. She burst into tears of sheer relief and utter joy.
“Shhhh, pet,” Vyktor murmured, wrapping his arms around her, holding her so tight she could barely breathe. “I have you. I am sorry I was gone so long. I have you now, pet. And I will not let you go.”
“Vyktor,” she whimpered when she could control her words once more. “There’s something you have to know…”
He stopped her whimper with a kiss.
“I know, Aria,” he said. “I know you have had to be too brave for too long. I know what they have put you through. Before the portal was fully activated, there was a time when we had a partial view. Enough to see through. I know they kept you in a small cage all alone. I know they were cruel to you. I know what they said, and did, and…” His hand smoothed over her lower belly. “I know what grows inside you. I did not know such a thing was possible when we mated, but this, my love, is our salvation.”
&
nbsp; “They were going to take it…” she said. “When it was born. Will I live long enough here to save it?” She knew what being brought to the dragon realm meant. She knew that she would die in Vyktor’s world, but maybe her child would not. Maybe she could hang on long enough to at least see…
“Shh, pet,” Vyktor said. “You are already doing much better than the man who came before you. I see no signs of sickness on your skin. Our physicians believe that the fact you have dragon blood in you, your cells and mine mixing to make new life… it means that we are not so very different. It means that we share the same essential elements of creation, and they believe that our child may have imparted a resistance to you. You are changed, Aria, though you might not know it. You may never grow wings. You may never take to the skies without one of your little machines, but you are stronger than you know. You can survive in our realm. You are no longer earthbound.”
Aria stared at him, not knowing if it was true, and not caring either. She would rather live one day with Vyktor than whatever existence she had left on Earth.
“I just hope it’s okay,” she said as he stroked her belly.
“He’s fine.”
“He?”
“Mhm.” Vyktor nodded. “It is a male child.”
“Do your magic hands have sonographers in them too?” Aria smiled through the remnants of her tears.
“No,” Vyktor admitted, kissing her head. He pulled her into his lap and held her close. “I am so sorry, pet,” he repeated for what had to be the thousandth time.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she reminded him. “I knew what would happen to me if they caught me helping you.”
“I remember at the beginning, telling you that you were not as strong as you thought you were,” Vyktor said. “I was wrong. You are much stronger than I ever could have imagined.”
“Well, I did tell you,” she said with a little smile.
“I wish you had not had to prove it that way,” he murmured, placing little kisses all over her face. “You deserved so much better, pet. From me, and from your own people. I am going to spend the rest of my days spoiling you, my love. You will have the best of everything, and you will want for nothing. I promise you that.”
“I don’t need the best of everything,” Aria said through his kisses. “I just need you.”
“And you will have me, pet. Always.”
Chapter Twenty
Vyktor was relieved beyond belief to have Aria in his realm. Eldor’s portal had taken much longer to get to work than he had hoped, and he’d known how much danger she was in. It had been the most powerless he had ever been, at precisely the moment he most needed to be powerful. If Eldor were not the only one who understood the technology, Vyktor was afraid what he would have done to him. As it was, Eldor had gone into exile a good way off immediately following the successful activation of the portal. A wise choice on his part. Seeing Aria in that horrible little cell, his child fluttering in her belly—Vyktor would have torn Eldor’s heart out if he had been anywhere in the vicinity.
She was safe, but there was no denying that he had failed his mate by allowing himself to be betrayed by Eldor, and he hated it. For six long weeks she had been at the mercy of her humans, and they had been cruel in a way Vyktor could not fathom. They had deprived her of all company. They had denigrated and alienated her. They had made her the scapegoat for the entire invasion, though she had been nothing but a servant willing to give her life in the fight to defend their cities.
During the day, she would smile and when he made love to her, she responded as eagerly as ever. But in the dark of night, when she thought he was asleep, he would hear her begin to whimper and then cry. He let her have her grief one night and then the next, but finally he could not stand it. As much as she wanted her privacy, he could not bear to listen to her pain go on and on like this.
As she sat in the window, tears rolling down her cheeks, Vyktor rose in the darkness and wrapped her in his arms. “I have you, pet. It is okay. You are safe now.”
“I’m sorry,” Aria sniffled. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You have lost your world,” he murmured. “It is a real loss, one you should grieve. And you are pregnant. In my short time on Earth, it became apparent that human females become exceptionally emotional at this time. There is nothing wrong with you, and you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“But… I’m happy here!” She looked up at him with a watery smile and burst into tears all over again. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“You were brave for so long, pet,” he said. “You denied your fear and your anger and your sadness, but it’s safe here and maybe some part of you knows that. Maybe what you’re feeling now isn’t what you feel about what is happening now. Maybe it is all those feelings you couldn’t have before.”
“Maybe,” she sniffled. “I guess.”
“Come back to bed,” he said. “If you cry, I want you to cry on me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
When finally all the tears had been cried, Aria discovered that she was happy. As happy as she had ever imagined she could be and more. Happier even than when they had lived on the little island in the Aegean for those months. Cradled in Vyktor’s arms, she felt as safe and loved as it was possible to feel.
He was probably right. It was probably the hormones. Every day her body was changing, the life within her becoming more evident. As the days passed, slowly her nighttime tearfulness abated and she began to enjoy life in the dragon realm.
It was as stunning as she had seen in the visions Vyktor had shown her. Everything seemed to be constructed on a super scale. The mountains were higher, the beaches were longer, the sea was bluer. The dragons did not construct cities in the human sense. They made their homes in the natural formations of the earth, much like they had in the Rockies. Unlike that simple military base, dragon homes were ornately carved, the doorways marked with sigils and writings that Aria was learning to read. There was art in everything they did. To the dragons, the world was something to be sculpted.
Vyktor’s home and the homes of many of the military forces were located in naturally formed high white marble-like cliffs. The stone of the land was strong and pale and from it they had created a city that jutted out over the water.
Vyktor’s home put every dwelling they had stayed in on Earth to shame. She would have thought that a home tunneled into a cliff face would be dark and oppressive, but the dragons knew how to filter light into even the deepest rooms, and there were balconies and windows of generous proportions all over. His home—their home—occupied a natural corner of the cliff, so the light could flood in from both sides over the carefully polished floors.
Expansive balconies and pathways ran along the cliff’s edge, connecting homes and the commercial parts of the city, which housed all number of craftspeople. They were narrow in places, and the polished stone could be slippery when it rained, but that was not a problem for dragons who rarely used the steps and stairs, and could take their flight form long before they hit the water.
If Aria had dared have but one complaint, it was that she was grounded in the dragon realm. There were no planes, of course. Why would there be planes in a world where everyone could fly? Sometimes she would sit in one of the window balconies and watch the dragons wheeling above. They were only doing relatively mundane tasks, but Aria envied them. Of all the things she missed from Earth, having access to the sky was the one she missed most.
She did not complain about it though; she knew she was fortunate not to be spending her life staring at the wall of a cell. And there were plenty of things to do besides stare into the sky. The water was teeming with life, the ocean so clean she could see several feet down into the water to watch brightly colored red and orange fish playing in shoals.
“Please be careful, pet,” Vyktor said for what felt like the hundredth time, catching Aria by the back of her tunic before she could plunge over the edge as she l
eaned over one of the lower ledges to watch the fish play. “You’re front heavy.”
“I’m huge,” she laughed, running her hands over her belly. She barely looked like herself anymore. Her face was rounder, her skin was much more tan, and her body was softer all over. She liked feeling this way. She felt full and complete, and she knew she was totally loved and adored.
Vyktor drew her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly. “It will not be long soon, pet,” he murmured. “We will be three.”
“Are you ready for this?” She asked him the question as he smoothed his palm lovingly over her swollen belly.
“Am I ready to meet my son? Absolutely.”
“Our son, and maybe daughter,” she reminded him with a smile. Vyktor was as loving a mate as could be, but in human terms, he would have been regarded as a traditionalist.
“It’s a boy,” he said confidently.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I can just tell,” Vyktor smirked.
Aria laughed at him. There was no way he could possibly tell, but she did not tell him so again. Instead, she let him have his imaginations. Judging by the cramps that had already start low in her belly, it would not be much longer.
*
Aria woke in the night, knowing that it was time. There was no rush in the process. Vyktor was by her side and as the contractions began, and when she started to cry out from the pain that racked her from the inside, taking her apart to bring new life, he started to hum something deep and powerful. Something that reverberated through her muscles and took away much of the pain.
Aria felt the pressure deep inside her, and then she felt herself begin to open in a strange and wonderful way. There was no more pain thanks to the dragon chanting, only the pressure that ebbed and flowed until finally she heard a cry. A pure sound that filled her with a joy so intense Aria felt tears flooding down her face.
“He’s here,” Vyktor said, his voice filled with pride. “My son.”