by Celeste Raye
“What?” I frowned. “No, I forbid it. As captain I forbid it.”
She shook her head once. “Tell headquarters what happened. They’ll send someone for us.”
“And what are you going to do?” I begged.
“I’m going to go to the tower,” she confirmed dutifully. “I’m going to be the girl on the inside. Don’t worry,” she said with her trademark grin. “I’ve got a plan.”
I could hear Peter urging us to leave. I looked to my sister desperately.
“Hey, I’m the likable one, remember?” she nudged me. “Now scram.”
“Look after her,” I begged Tredorphen, our eyes locking and a pang of love rushing through my system. “And then we’ll be back for her.”
“Oh no, no,” my sister confirmed with a laugh. “He can’t do that, sis, because he’s coming with you.”
Tredorphen frowned. “I… I cannot.”
“You need her,” she said forcefully, shoving the golden shifter in the direction of the ship. “And she needs you. So please, enough with the melodramatics and just… be together.”
“I have shamed my people,” he admitted shamefully. “And I have betrayed your sister.”
Athena brushed him off and looked to me seriously. “If he stays, they’ll kill him,” she said forcefully. “I know what you did,” my sister said to my love, still weakly attempting to shove him above the spacecraft. “You tried to stop them, and they attacked you.”
My eyes shot wide, and I looked to Tredorphen with a full heart. “What?”
I had never fully watched the video. I never knew…
“I didn’t want it to go this way,” the shifter said weakly.
“But it did, and it looks like it’s up to me to save the day so… Please,” my sister begged in an inappropriately jovial tone. “Protect my sister. Take care of her for me until we can all ball-bust about this some other time. Okay?”
“I love you,” Athena said, stepping away from the door and raising her hand to me, her ever-present smile creeping up her lips.
“I love you,” I said back.
Tears spilled down my skin like a great stain as the doors sealed shut. I could feel the pull of the ship as it left the earth and my hands slipped from the door. I turned and looked to Tredorphen, the intoxicating shifter with the most beautiful blue eyes I'd ever seen.
"She'll make it," he said confidently, holding my face in his hands. "She's strong."
"I know she will."
"We'll come back for them, one day," he said. "I promise."
I smiled in spite of myself. It was the same, easy smile I had so willingly given to Tredorphen since we first met. The same smile that couldn’t help but cross my lips when I felt the rush of love flooded through my body. My heart broke when my sister left, her adventure just beginning. But I knew he was already putting it back together.
Kavryiss
Dragons of Dobromia
By Celeste Raye
Chapter 1:
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.”
Chapter 2:
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?
Besides, he was sexy as any man in his thirties back on Earth. He looked young, with only a large dark beard giving him away. His skin was firm and supple, and his eyes had an undeniable sex appeal.
“Shhh,” he said, pressing his finger to my lips. “I claimed you the moment I saw you.”
“I claimed you,” I teased back.
“You are like no other to me.”
I let out a long sigh. “The girls say–”
“Then we kill the girls,” he breathed out.
When we first landed, it was on a planet not far from Dobromia. The Weredragons lured us back to their planet and massacred our men. So, while I knew he was kidding, I also knew he had the power to do exactly that.
“No,” I laughed and batted him away. “It just makes me think…”
Boradrith propped himself up on his elbows to give himself a better look at me. His yellow eyes followed mine, and his face was filled with a compassion that all but said, “You silly girl.”
The truth was, I knew Boradrith cared for me. He spoiled me like no other, and it seemed his life’s mission to make me the happiest I could possibly be. What would make me happy, I wanted to say, was to get rid of his wife.
“You worry too much,” he said in a low, smooth voice. “You just need to be…” He paused and seemed embarrassed to be searching for an English word after all these years.
“Patient,” I finished with a sullen roll of my eyes.
He tapped my nose as though my petulance was adorable and gave a strong nod, kissing me on the cheek. “Patient,” he repeated. “And soon you will rule alongside me.”
My teeth grazed my bottom lip and I nodded. “Yet she controls you,” I said as a dare. “I believe that you are righteous over all. You should be able to have what you want. But here we are, hundreds of cycles later, and we’re still being controlled by her.”
He looked down at me with a sudden fury, and his hand gripped my neck, squeezing only slightly. He raised a careful brow to me and then his expression softened.
“No one controls me,” he enunciated sharply. “Let it be known that I am the ruler of this realm and you will not speak ill of the D’Sharr.”
He spoke of her. His ‘wife.’ Sillevia.
“Now listen to me when I say my heart is dedicated to you alone.”
“But she’s still here,” I argued furiously.
Boradrith’s eyes went wide, and he blinked in surprise, ripping his hand from my neck. “What would you have me do?” he yelled, backing away from me on the bed while still on top of my body. “Send her to the tower?”
“Better her than me!” I screamed back.
“You will control yourself, or you may just see your fears come true,” the gold, broad-shouldered Weredragon warned me as he flicked his wings back in frustration.
“S-sir,” came a sudden announcement from the small entryway to the D’Karr’s room. “The D’Sharr is calling for all of her servants,” the yellow shifter warrior stammered as though he weren’t sure whether to continue the rest of the way into the bedroom or fly out the door as fast as his wings could carry him.
By servants, he of course meant me and the rest of her maids. I looked up at Boradrith unsurely, and he instructed me to stay quiet. This wasn’t the first time we’d been walked in on by one of the ruler’s warriors.
“Why does she want her maids?”
“Your son,” the shifter said unsurely once more. “Your son is set to arrive back on Dobromia shortly, and he’s said to have brought resources.”
It had been a year since a great
fight broke out between one of the humans and the Weredragons. The D’Karr’s son had taken off with one of my crewmates, our lead scientist, years ago now. Her sister, Athena, remained here as prisoner before seducing one of the Weredragons into giving her freedom. It had been a big debacle that was only silenced when Athena promised to lure her sister and the ruler’s heir back to Dobromia.
Looked like they’d finally arrived.
“My son?” Boradrith pulled away from me, and a look of pure elation had overcome his face.
I couldn’t say I wasn’t jealous. It seemed these days the only thing that gave him any happiness was spending time with me, and I had enjoyed the thought of keeping it that way. Besides, didn’t he hate his son?
From my understanding, Boradrith believed that Tredorphen had fled to Earth and abandoned the Weredragons to the humans; betraying everybody.
“Yes, sir,” the guard responded with a smile. “The D’Sharr wants to plan a great celebration to welcome him, and she requires all of her servants. She’s…” the man shifted uncomfortably, “coming to your quarters as we speak.”
Boradrith looked at me, and my heart began to pound as I shamelessly stood naked in front of the guard and began racing for my clothes.
“Thank you,” Boradrith said with a dismissive raise of his hand. The guard followed the unspoken orders and left us.
If he had a good head on his shoulders, he would know to distract the queen if he ran into her outside. I knew she knew of our affair, but it remained unspoken. If she ignored it, so would everybody else. In fact, I think she invited me to be one of her servants simply to show everyone in the realm that she wasn’t jealous, nor did she suspect anything.
It was all for show; all for power.
“Did you hear that, Diana?” he turned to me and I wanted to roll my eyes and ask him if he thought I was deaf. But then, I couldn’t help but smile at his smile.
“I heard, my love.”
“Come on, come on, get dressed! Quick!” he said with hurried excitement as he gestured toward my clothes still sitting in a pile on the floor.