by Celeste Raye
There were drums beating just outside, echoing against the walls with a thumping, deafening hum. The crowds piled in with shifters of every color, most smiling and ecstatic, ready for their spectating sport.
I took my spot on the uncomfortable stone and looked around the dusty, hot arena.
A stiff breeze ran through the building, and it was as though there was a communal sigh of relief that railed through the building.
I looked on as King Boradrith entered. He was fully shifted for the sake of appearance. He had a gold sheen of scales that were cast about his body. His cheeks were gaunt, and the space around his eyes had a dark layer of suspicion around them. His long, thin wings spread out in show as he made his way to his seat.
To my surprise, he didn’t walk in with his wife. Instead, in her seat was a tall brunette with curves from here to eternity. Her name was Diana. She walked up in a flowing, golden gown that hugged her thick hips and all I could think was how adorable she must have thought it was that both she and Boradrith were gold.
She had been a researcher with our crew when we crashed on Ceylara. Now she was here. With them. She slid a long hand over the enormous pregnant stomach she was nursing and raised her chin at the crowd with the ambiance of someone who was already expecting to usurp the queen.
I looked at her stomach, which the king rubbed proudly, causing the crowd to erupt with cheers. A wiry discomfort wormed its way through my core as I watched.
The truth was, she and I weren’t that different. Both born to traverse space, top of our classes, up there with the men, and in some cases even better. We both felt skeptical about coming to Dobromia and were now both carrying a shifter’s child.
I looked over at her and wondered what she must have been thinking of me. We had been friends once. Now she was a king’s mistress, and I was on trial.
The crowd had gone from a loud roar of speech to a sudden silence: a deathly silence.
Aurlauc pointed to the floor entrance, and I watched as Khrelan, the king’s chosen fighter, entered the stadium. I remembered his face well.
The navy shifter looked up at me and offered a sadistic, arrogant grin. He was spiteful.
Khrelan marched to the center of the arena and demanded cheers, which he was gladly given.
I frowned to Aurlauc and leaned into his ear. “Why him?”
“He’s one of our best fighters,” Aurlauc said quietly, his eyes roving about the arena, waiting for Vaikrand. “He’s who the king chose to fight. If Vaikrand defeats him… he will be worthy to approach the D’Karr with an offer.”
We watched as Vaikrand approached Khrelan. I knew he was ready to fight him: to crush him after what he’d done to me. Still, my pulse raced as the pair began their battle, taking to the air and forcing themselves into one another at great speeds to push the other one deep into the ground.
“Vaikrand knows Tredorphen,” Aurlauc said suddenly, interrupting the intensity of the match.
“He does?”
He nodded. “Tredorphen helped banish him. So, if he wants you to help bring Tredorphen back, I don’t assume it’s for the D’Karr’s benefit.”
I set my jaw and looked down below as Vaikrand lunged toward Khrelan and dug deep claws into his side, piecing the already sensitive skin where I had shot him with the laser.
My eyes flicked stubbornly to Aurlauc. “I see,” I said.
“He wants revenge,” the silver shifter said tersely, searching my eyes for a reaction.
I swallowed and looked down at the fighters, suddenly richly confident that my shifter would come out victorious.
Aurlauc looked at me with no amount of shock and frowned deeply. “You don’t care?”
“I love him, Aurlauc,” I set my jaw stubbornly. “I don’t care.”
“If he plans to kill him?” he questioned scornfully.
“Then he has reason to,” I snapped and felt embarrassed by the judgment Aurlauc was clearly throwing my way. “Whatever he wants to do, I trust him.”
“You trust him?” he snapped and seemed to be in disbelief, shaking his head.
I clenched my jaw and ignored him, focusing on the match instead. If possible, their king seemed even more enthralled with the fight than I was. My yellow shifter raced toward Khrelan with a fury, grabbing his wings and whipping him to the ground.
Khrelan flapped his wings and took to the clouds, soaring to the sky before Vaikrand sped up after him, grabbing his legs and swaying him out of his flying rhythm. Khrelan began to fall speedily to the ground, and Vaikrand kicked at him before fire emerged from his mouth in a large blast.
The navy shifter dodged the blow, and my love took the opportunity to grab his tail and throw him to the ground. Once dropped Vaikrand toppled the shifter and began punching him over and over in the face, drawing his claws into his shoulders and sides and scratching at him relentlessly.
Then, all was still.
Vaikrand stood, heaving breaths and staring down at the navy shifter. Khrelan looked up at him weakly, and then his body fell unconscious.
My shifter raised his arms to the crowd, and all fell silent. I turned my head and watched as the king stood up and stepped forward. He looked down at Vaikrand, and something was exchanged between them. Then, the king nodded and gave a single clap, causing the audience to erupt with a roar of cheers and screams of excitement.
The applause echoed through the arena, and I stared down at Vaikrand with a full heart. I wondered how he must be feeling, being welcomed back into the fold.
I wondered if he would become lost in the prestige, but my heart was immediately quelled when, amidst the slow-motion chaos, Vaikrand turned to me, bruised and bloody, and mouthed the words, “I love you.”
My eyes welled with tears, and I stood, stepping to the far end of the outcropping. Looking down I said, “I love you, too.”
Epilogue
Vaikrand
After the battle I was granted access to the pit: a home to start a family in. I approached the D’Karr and was granted permission to become a part of his army once more and was allowed to present him my thoughts on Athena and her sister. I assured him she would be able to get Tredorphen to come back and he willingly agreed.
In fact, Athena and I were now treated like royalty at the simple prospect of returning his son and heir to him.
Athena settled in with me, and after a full cycle on Dobromia, she had our son. He was a yellow and blue shifter with blonde hair and blue eyes. She adored him, and I adored her.
And he was always the first one fed.
The mission to Lenovius had been a temporary success, though it was difficult to bring food back as the land was tempestuous.
I looked over at Athena, my convert, and nuzzled against her cheek as she sat in the nursery: her permanent position here on Dobromia. She held our son in her arms and tickled his nose with a finger before craning her neck to kiss me.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you forever,” she said back.
I teased, “You talking to me, or him?”
She grinned. “Both?”
“Both it is.”
I held a tablet in my hand and held it up with a smile. I’d received it from Aurlauc, who had allegedly taken it from the ship on Ceylara back in the day. After many of the human researchers toyed with it, they finally got the thing working.
“It’s been… doing that… thing… all day,” I said carelessly as I placed it on the table in front of her.
“Blinking,” she giggled. With a few swipes of the finger she looked down and read something quickly, her eyes skimming across the strange box in haste.
She swallowed hard and turned the technology off.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well,” she said. “She’s coming.”
“With him?”
She nodded, a bittersweet smile crossing her face. She told me she had written to her sister, Marina, and asked her to come back for her: told her to bring Tredorphen. Asked for her help
.
It had been a quiet day between us when she had written it, and we never spoke about it again after that. It felt like such a long time ago now.
“You okay with that?” I asked, tracing a tickling finger down her arm.
She looked at our son and then back up to me, smiling genuinely. “More than happy with that,” she said. “We’re going to save Dobromia.”
“You saved me,” I said.
Athena nodded, her blue eyes sparkling. “You saved me.”
The End
Kavryiss
Kavryiss
“We have a deal then?”
Sillevia, the D’Sharr and mate to our leader had called me into her private quarters. She was refined in every way possible. Her long, white hair fell to her feet and highlighted her immensely long, shimmering dragon wings. She walked the length of her room with deep sighing.
"Kavryiss?" the D’Sharr asked again. "A deal?"
I blinked. Her lips were thin as she held her hand out to mine. I took it gingerly and gave a nod of acceptance. "Yes, D’Sharr. How do you want it done?"
"The murder?” she dismissed. "Quietly."
I smirked. "Anything further? Perhaps, a little less cryptic?"
"We're talking about a death. I figured cryptic was a suitable tone." She laughed and then turned to me, suddenly serious. Her pale gown trailed behind her, seeming to flow in the air as she paced around her private room. “You are my most trusted warrior.”
“Your trust is not misplaced.” I leaned up against the stone behind me, setting a foot on the rocky wall with a bent knee.
"There are several avenues you could take,” Sillevia continued, her smooth voice overtaking the empty room. “Seduce her. Take her out to the wilds and kill her, feed her to the Sala'kem deep in the waters. I don't care what it takes, but I want it done."
"Yes, of course."
As the D’Karr’s wife, Sillevia was once the envy of every Weredragon on Dobromia.
But that was before the humans came. Moons had come and gone since their arrival, and the D’Karr, Boradrith, had taken a lover.
I couldn't imagine how such a thing might feel for the D’Sharr. She had been well respected and well loved by our leader.
Sure, he'd taken lovers before, but never so completely, especially never with a human. The one that had gained the scorn of the Weredragons was called Diana Montanari, and the D’Karr loved her. To love her more seemed impossible. Decisions were made with her in mind, provings and fights for honor and death were attended with her at his side, and suddenly the endless quest for food on the dying planet was not with a mind to keeping his offspring with the D’Sharr alive, but the half-breed son he had created with the dark-haired Diana.
I'd seen her around Graynar, our Octantis Colony or as humans referred to it, fortress underground. Dobromia had been plagued with two suns that circled our atmosphere. A curse, some thought, to punish us for stealing from other planets.
The curse caused us to seek other planets for inhabitance since we were unable to cultivate food except within the deep underground.
Our race was that of Warriors. The galaxy feared us because of what we were known for—extinguishing our enemies. Now we lived underground like creatures of the mud. It was shameful, and I knew the D’Karr must have felt the same. Or, he would have, were he not caught up getting himself wet inside the human girl.
"It will be difficult," Sillevia continued, trailing off to the entrance of the room, no doubt ready to send me on my way. "She's always at his side, of course. His little pet."
“Not a fan of those humans, are we?” I taunted with a smirk.
Sillevia rolled her eyes and shook her head absent-mindedly. “What tipped you off?” she laughed heartily for a moment and then hid her mouth with the back of her hand. Then her face was showered with a sudden desperation. “I rescued you from abandon, don’t forget,” she said coldly.
“You don’t have to hold anything over my head,” I laughed. “My allegiance is to you.”
Her eyes darted around the room as though I shouldn't have said the words out loud. Then she settled into a satisfied nod, a regal movement, and she continued, "It goes without saying, then, that this conversation is to be kept private, under penalty of death."
"Yes, of course."
“I’ll be assigning you as a guard to my rooms,” she explained, tapping her finger against the doorway. “That way you can get close to her. Lure her out.”
“You keep her in your quarters?” I asked in a tone that bordered somewhere between amusement and disgust.
She raised a finger to the air and cocked a brow. With a knowing tone, she sang, “Keep your enemies close.”
“Ah,” I said with a nod. “She was a… what? A scientist, I hear? Brought in with those girls?”
“How can you not know,” she scoffed. “The D’Karr shouts it at every event, at every spaceport, before every mission to gather food and supplies. He finds spaceships and gives them to her, he makes towers in her name, all the while telling everyone that he loves me. What a farce!”
“Women,” I said breathlessly, and she laughed. “When do you want it done?”
“Let me get close to the D’Karr. Regain his love and loyalty. This way he won’t take it so hard when she is dead.”
My brows narrowed harshly. I wanted to tell her that snuggling up to Boradrith probably wouldn’t ease the pain of slaughtering his mistress, but it wasn’t really my place.
“Good plan,” I said with a private mocking. “What about her son with the D’Karr?” I asked.
She blinked in quick succession and looked at me with no small amount of disgust as she asked, “You’re not offering to murder a dragonling, honestly?”
“Well, of course not!” I snapped quickly. “I just want to be clear about the plan.”
The white Weredragon waved me off regally. “Just get it done.”
Diana
When life gives you lemons, sleep with a Weredragon. That had become my motto since arriving on Dobromia more than three years ago.
Not a catchy motto, but the sentiment had kept me alive.
“Don’t stop,” I commanded as the Weredragon ruler, Boradrith, whom the people called ‘D’Karr,’ thrust deep inside me in the privacy of his quarters.
“Don’t order me around,” Boradrith smiled devilishly, leaning down to kiss me sweetly. I ran a hand through his long brown hair and fixed it behind his ear.
I lay on his makeshift bed: a very human looking bedroom structure, covered in various animal furs to keep it soft and warm. I spread my legs to him, and his body hovered above mine with his golden wings spread. He quickened his pace inside me, making my breasts jiggle from top to bottom, eliciting a warm, throaty moan from the ruler.
I set my hand on his muscular chest to feel the rocky texture of his scales beneath my palm.
“Don’t come yet,” I whispered, to which he only grunted in reply.
He thrust faster, filling me to the hilt and pushing into me faster and faster. I could feel his whole body quiver and reached down quickly to try and finish myself off before he withdrew from his climax, but it was too late.
There were two things Boradrith didn’t like: to be embarrassed and to be told what to do. I learned from these things quickly. When I’d first begun my affair with him, I had never been sure whether to fake an orgasm to stroke his ego or try for the real thing. In favor of keeping him happy and proud, I simply closed my eyes in faux satisfaction and smiled when he pulled out of me.
“My little d’ierdaree,” he cooed in my ear as his heavy, tired breaths hit my skin with warmth and moisture. The phrase meant “girl” or “dear one” in the dragon’s native tongue.
I knew most girls would probably have been put off by the phrasing, but I liked it. I liked when he reminded me of my youth. It turned me on, in fact.
“I love to watch you writhe like that,” Boradrith said with the same dirty grin that drew me to him when we’d first met.
“I love to feel you inside me,” I responded in the same sultry tones. “My D’Karr.”
He laughed. “You give me a complex,” he said with a love-struck sigh, brushing my dark hair out of my eyes. “You make me feel invincible.”
“I give you a complex?” I laughed. “I think you have a bunch of yes-men to do that for you. Not to mention women,” I added with playful scorn.
“Not the way you do. You make my mind crazy with thoughts wrapped up in you,” he said and then cocked his brow, suddenly irritated as he realized I’d spoken back to him. “And you’d best watch your tone, Diana.”
“Yes, yes,” I brushed him off with a laugh.
The D’Karr put his hands on my breasts and continued to lay kisses on my skin. His mouth found its way from my nipples and back up to my mouth, where my lips lay dormant.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a whisper, tracing my jaw with his kiss.
“Some days, I fear you won’t keep me,” I said in a meek tone, tracing my hands through his hair absent-mindedly and refusing to meet his eyes. I did this because I knew he hated it: that it would signal my displeasure.
Boradrith had a good sense of people, so to avoid his eye-contact made him feel lied to somehow.
“Why d’ierdaree?” he cooed, tilting my chin to encourage me to look at him. “What have I done to make you think my heart wavers?”
“The girls hate me.” I spoke of the girls I had crash-landed on Dobromia with.
“Then we hate the girls,” he teased back, a smile creeping up the side of his mouth. He spoke in low, sexy tones that made me smile.
“They don’t understand us,” I said. “They say you’ll throw me away, for her.”
The girl’s I’d crash-landed on Dobromia with mocked my love affair when we first arrived, stating that the ruler was old. My argument? All the dragons were. Hundreds of years old, in fact. So why should the D’Karr be any different?