Nabvan

by Celeste Raye

  Before I had the chance to answer, another interruption came.

  A pair of Drogs came rushing from the west, storming toward us. The arthropods’ set their tusks toward the girls and Athena began firing her weapon. I watched with fascination as the heated stream from the weapon began sizzling against the creature’s flesh, bursting a hole in its long, bony arm.

  Aurlauc widened his eyes to me as if to say, ‘Let’s go!’ and use this as an opportunity to escape, but I wasn’t afraid of these humans. Though, I wasn’t exactly fond of the idea of the weapon’s beam hitting my flesh either.

  “They’re acidic,” I said too casually as the girl fired her weapon over and over. “Don’t get too close.”

  “A little help would be nice since you seem to know so much about it!” The girl screamed back with frustration.

  I raised and lowered my brows quickly, considering the request. Funny, how she was willing to partner up now after having aimed her weapon at us.

  I twirled my finger at Aurlauc and he immediately began whipping the beast with his tail. He took to the sky, his black scales shimmering and reflecting the maroon creatures in a red hue. He dove down at the Drog and dug his thick claws into its flesh before tossing it off into the distance.

  The creature wrestled against the tube worms below, but still had life in it. I dismissed it and grabbed the unnamed girl from under the arms and lifted her to the top of the spaceship.

  “Stay here,” I said and flew away from her.

  “I don’t really have a choice!” she shouted back from atop the tall space vessel.

  I dove down toward the remaining Drog and knocked it over with my tail, dodging as quickly as I could as it sunk its tusks into the ground right next to me, trying to pin me into the worms.

  I whipped it with my tail and was careful not to bite down anywhere for fear of the acid melting through me.

  Gripping the creature by one of its large legs, I tossed it to the red earth below and Aurlauc and I began whipping it back and forth wildly, flying around it with taunts and then sending it careening back into the ground.

  We continued this until the creature was too weak to get up. As though the earth below sensed a gift, the red tubes shot up like hungry children and covered the beast until we could only see the form of it in tube worms.

  “Still not a fan of that,” Aurlauc said with some disgust as he watched the worms retreat from their feast to reveal only the skin of the Drog.

  “Better it than us,” I said with a wink in my tone before turning my attention back to the women.

  Chapter 3:

  Marina

  “What the hell is going on?” my sister demanded under her breath. Before they’d attacked the maroon beast, the other… dragon man had lifted my sister high above the ground to sit on top of our spaceship with me.

  She paced the unsteady roof while I merely sat, watching as the dragons made worms’ meat of the beast.

  I foolishly thought that they would come back up to get us, but I was wrong. Instead of fetching us, the two made their way into our ship, and I couldn’t help the ball that formed in my throat from that moment forward.

  “What are those things?” I asked to no one in particular.

  “They’re Weredragons,” my sister said begrudgingly.

  “Pardon me?” I demanded. “How is it you know something that I don’t?”

  “Well, excuse me!” my sister laughed with drawn-out vowels. “Egotistical much?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” I rested my hand on my forehead and sighed. “I just meant… Well, ‘Then?”

  “They do teach us things when we train for space combat, you know.”

  “So… what are they?” I asked.

  “They’re an alien species. A WereDragon. They look like half a man and half a dragon. Wings, scales, a tail, sharp features,” she rolled her wrist as she listed off their attributes, her eyes scanning the area around the ship as she walked. “But other manly parts that are a little more human.”

  I blinked. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “I’m just saying!” my sister laughed.

  “Alright, penis, I get it,” I rolled my eyes. “They were…” I trailed off, and Athena caught my eyes.

  “Kinda sexy though, right?” she asked as though she were finishing my thought.

  My face flushed and I looked away from her. “No, that’s disgusting.”

  “Not from where I was standing,” Athena laughed. “I’d roll around with one any day. Well,” she paused and tapped her pursed lips. “Not those ones, I guess. Since, you know, they’re stealing our ship. But they were hot.”

  I didn’t respond, but she wasn’t wrong, no matter how childishly she phrased it. The one with the black scales had a wild look to him that was immediately alluring. But, the other one… he was undeniably gorgeous.

  He had short brown hair and broad shoulders. If there was a human example of rugged, he was it. He had a sharp jawline and deep blue eyes. Except, he wasn’t human. Not really.

  “They’re not supposed to be here, as far as I know,” Athena continued hesitantly, interrupting my thoughts. She dropped her gun so it hung lazily at her side and finally stopped pacing. “They are native to Dobromia. That’s a few planets over, I think.”

  “Then what are they doing here?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Robbing us, I guess.”

  I grit my teeth in frustration and took a deep inhale. “Isn’t there any way to get off this ship? Seriously!”

  Athena raised her brows curiously and said, “Jump.”

  I looked down at the 100-foot drop and shook my head. “Nope. No thanks. You’re saying there’s really not a ladder to get down from here?”

  She shrugged. “There’s a latch that heads back into the ship, but it’s locked from the inside.”

  “Well, that was a poor design choice,” I swore. “And you’re just… okay with this? You seem pretty calm, considering, well, you’re you.”

  Athena laughed. “And you’re pretty worked up considering you’re you.”

  My brows creased into a frown and scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Marina, you are calm, cool, and collected. Basically always. So do what you do best!” she raised her brows as I watched her with confusion. Then, she enunciated, “Make a plan.”

  I stared at her seriously for a moment and then closed my eyes. I rubbed my tongue back and forth against the inside of my teeth and then looked back to Athena.

  “Do you think they mean to harm us?” I asked. She shrugged one shoulder, and I sighed. “Okay,” I breathed. “Call me crazy, but studying the Weredragons would mean a lot more than studying some plant life here.”

  “Debatable, but the council would probably love it back home. They’ve been trying to get a hold of these things forever.”

  “So… We befriend them?” I asked.

  “Again, a questionable plan there, sis.”

  “Hear me out,” I said, halting her words with my hand. “We get close to them, give them what they want, and then get them to take us back to their planet. What’s the downfall?”

  “Okay, where to begin?” Athena said, tapping her skeptical face with her pointer and index fingers. “First, they could eat us, kill us, and rape us, though not necessarily in that order. That’s one. Two would be that they don’t need anything from us. And why’s that, you ask? Because they can take whatever they want. If you hadn’t noticed, they are dragon people. With claws, and fangs. They could basically kill us and take what they want.”

  “If they wanted to kill us, they wouldn’t have protected us from the arthropod

  “Ever the optimist,” she said, her eyes widening.

  “Have we switched roles here?” I asked with a laugh. “I thought you were the adventurous one and I was the cautious one?”

  “Yeah,” she downplayed, “But it’s also my job to protect you and use my head. I can be adventurous in my private life, but not when
my sister’s life is in jeopardy.”

  “You?” I offered her a stunned expression and began to laugh. “My sister? The girl who doesn’t take crap from anybody?”

  “And yet, oh look!” she mocked. “Here I am, taking crap from you. Ha!”

  We laughed until we could feel the ship jostling beneath us from the Weredragons rummaging in the deep decks below.

  Athena sighed and pointed to her laser rifle. “I’m firing off a warning shot,” she announced and aimed the weapon into the air. “At least it’ll alert some of our crew that we’re up here.”

  “And get them killed? No!” I protested.

  “They are my crew, you know,” Athena insisted. “The soldiers, anyway.”

  “Yeah, and your soldiers ran over there,” I pointed. “They’re probably fighting the dragon who ran off. A distraction, obviously.”

  With that, the two Weredragons emerged, stomping their large, loud feet on the top of our ship. The black-scaled dragon had thick brows that furrowed with delight as he shoved a banana into his mouth. Our banana.

  “That’s our food,” Athena protested with a frown.

  “That’s what you took?” I asked in surprise.

  The other WereDragon approached me slowly. He had deep blue eyes and a cleft chin. Like some kind of ridiculous superhero. I felt saliva release in the pit of my mouth as he walked up to me, standing tall above my 5’4” stature.

  “It was a distraction,” he said with a blink; a smile. “My name is Tredorphen. That,” he pointed, “is Aurlauc.”

  “And you stole our food?” I repeated, my tone unsure.

  He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  I thought on that; our eyes watching each other’s in a silent battle of wits. They took our food but weren’t going to steal our ship? It didn’t make any sense.

  “What do you want?” I asked slowly, my brow cocking slightly as I questioned him, completely oblivious as to what the answer might be.

  There were shimmering golden scales with the hint of rosy tones basing Tredorphen’s color. He took a moment to look me over before his scales seemed to fade into his smooth skin. With a grunt, I could hear the slick movements of his wings as they retracted into his body as though they never existed at all.

  My eyes skimmed the back of him and saw that his tail had disappeared as well. I looked up at him curiously and couldn't help but smile.

  “I thought this would be a...” He hesitated, watching his words. “A less frightening form for you to see.”

  “What's that all about?” my sister said skeptically. “What you did there.”

  “We are shifters,” he said plainly. “We can shift back and forth from this form to—”

  “A dragon?” I asked quickly, and he shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “We are partial shifters.”

  I nodded slowly, a dawning horror crossing my mind but never showing on my face. I rolled my tongue in my mouth and couldn't help but marvel at how seamlessly he appeared as a human. Handsome, too.

  He had an undeniable sex-appeal; like the hunky guy you know would never go for you. I looked at his square jawline and crooked smile and thought... if I passed him on the street in Sydney, I would never know he wasn't human.

  The thought made me feel sick.

  “And you guys are after… what, exactly?” my sister repeated, glancing at me before fiercely meeting the eyes of the shifters. My sister wasn’t afraid of anything.

  “Obviously, you’re not our biggest fans,” Tredorphen said with a bemused smile. “But, I’d like to establish a truce.”

  His dark shaded shifter partner widened his eyes in surprise and looked over to Tredorphen with no small amount of shock. Aurlauc set his jaw and shifted his eyes back and forth before lowly asking, “Tredorphen… a word?”

  The rose-gold dragon waved him off without taking his eyes off of me and said, “It’s obvious you are… looking for something here.”

  “We’re researchers,” I offered carefully. “Scientists.”

  He tipped his head back as though he were going to nod, but didn’t follow through. His eyes steered toward my sister’s gun and then back to me.

  “Well,” I sighed. “She’s not. But my crew is. She is here with her own crew, hired to protect us.”

  “Ah.” He said. “Well, we are looking for food to bring back to our people. So how about we make a deal. You need protection from the Drogs, and we need people who can tell us what’s safe to eat and what isn’t.”

  “The Drogs…?” I repeated.

  “Those beasts, obviously,” my sister rolled her eyes.

  “Correct,” Tredorphen said. “You’ll need protection.”

  “We have protection,” my sister corrected, gripping her gun harder. “But thanks.”

  “I’d venture a guess to say this,” Aurlauc said, whipping to my sister's side, his wings still sprouted from his back, and he tore the gun from her grip, “isn’t going to do a thing to the Drogs. Besides, they’re acidic. You shoot at them, and they drip on you, you’re dead.”

  “Hey!” my sister yelled, reaching for her gun and standing childishly as the black dragon held the weapon high above her head. “Give that back!”

  “You need to beat them down,” Tredorphen added. “We can do that. Help you get on with your research.”

  “And why should we trust you?” I asked, crossing my arms and feeling surprisingly intrigued.

  “Because we saved your lives,” the sexy male before me said, his tone almost daring me to object.

  “And then you robbed us,” I added with a laugh.

  “We took some food,” he reasoned, spreading his palms before me. “And for that, I cannot apologize. We are starving; our land is low on resources. But… we didn’t take anything else.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to think. Poor things? I felt empathy for them if they were actually starving, but I was incredibly wary about trusting their word. Getting burned by an alien alliance wasn’t exactly foreign to the Earth, after all.

  A deep exhale left my mouth, and I gave a simple nod. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll have to talk it over with my crew but, it sounds like a plan.”

  As soon as the word left my mouth, Aurlauc lowered his arm and gently handed the gun back to my sister, who took it eagerly and backed away from the man. This was of no use, of course, as he scooped her up by force into his arm and flew her to the safety of the ground below.

  “So,” I said.

  “So,” Tredorphen repeated with a grin.

  “My name is Marina,” I said, extending my hand to his.

  He stared at it plainly for a moment and quizzically dipped his palm into mine. “A pleasure,” he said.

  Chapter 4:

  Tredorphen

  “What is it, exactly, that you think you’re doing?” Aurlauc whispered through clenched teeth. Despite the precarious situation.

  I couldn’t help but find the humor in his tone.

  “You always do cheer me up, Aurlauc,” I said with a grin while patting him on the arm.

  “I’m serious!” he jerked away.

  We stopped walking and were trailing far, far behind the women who had agreed on a temporary truce with us. We’d all been quiet on the walk back to their people until the raven-colored shifter couldn’t hold back any longer.

  “I’m devising a plan; can’t you tell?” I said with annoyance as my gaze shifted up, watching as Khrelan approached, fluttering his wings gracefully before landing in front of us.

  “Oh, great,” Aurlauc continued shamefully. “Okay, Tredorphen! Explain it to the man!” I opened my mouth to speak but Aurlauc quickly stole my thunder. “He made a deal with the humans!”

  “What?” Khrelan seethed severely. “Why would you do such a stupid thing like that?”

  “It’s for our benefit,” I said. “Trust me.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” Khrelan said with a roll of his eyes. “Seriously, I’m not cooperating with these creatures
until you tell me what the plan is. Period.”

  “Period, he says,” I repeated. “Look,” I said in such a way that both shifters knew this wasn’t a conversation for prying ears. And there was a myriad of those around now with all the humans scampering about.

  “Have you heard of the Earth?” I asked, my tone calculating.

  “Only about a million times, from you,” Aurlauc said.

  “I’ve heard rumblings,” Tredorphen said impatiently. “That’s where those things are from,” he pointed out, regarding the humans. “What about it?”

  “It’s lush with fruitage. Fields of food. Literal fields. There’s more than we could ever ask for,” I explained.

  Aurlauc raised a brow and crossed his arms, leaning back against one of the strange molten mountains, setting a foot on its base with trepidation, as though it might burst with even the slightest form of pressure. He seemed to think on my point before looking beyond stumped once again.

  “So?” Aurlauc asked dimly.

  “So he’s implying we should befriend the humans and take over their planet,” Khrelan said at a fast-pace. Then he looked to me. “Right?”

  I spread my hands before my brethren as if to agree and waited to see what they thought.

  “How do you know so much about it?” Khrelan asked.

  “Don’t ask!” Aurlauc said with a laugh. “You haven’t seen the cave yet?”

  Khrelan looked at me as though I had no head and I could feel the heat creeping up my face. I gave the shifter a warning look, and he snapped his mouth shut comically, letting out a chuckle as he did so.

  “What are you guys talking about?” came the bouncing, suspicious tone from Athena as she barged into our huddle, unafraid.

  I set my jaw and stared the girl down, incensed. “That was awfully brave of you,” I said sternly.

  “Well, we are comrades now, right?” she snipped; her sister followed closely behind, offering me a small smile as she passed.

  My eyes followed her swiftly as she moved, unable to drop my gaze on her. I watched the curves of her and was overcome by a raging lust. Her eyes were a deep hazel that seemed to cast a spell on me, though she said nothing at all.