by Celeste Raye
“Sillevia is a beloved queen,” I argued, turning from her and looking back down at the well. This would be the perfect opportunity. “I'd like to see you win the shifter's over after millions of cycles with her as co-ruler.”
She stared at me contumaciously before her face vaulted into an embarrassed grin. “Cycles are like... days, right?”
I turned to regard her; full lips and ample breasts peering out from the small top she wore; the sun making her body pink even as we spoke. I simply shrugged in response.
She lowered her brows in dismissal and peered down into the hole I had been so fixated on. Then casually asked, “Hey, if this is supposed to be a team operation, how come we're the only ones out here?”
Another shrug. “Probably just Sillevia's way of keeping you busy.”
She laughed and offered me an ‘Isn’t she wicked?’ expression before sighing, “Lucky me...”
Before long she wandered back over to her tools, waving them over the ground and holding them up to the sun, trying to find the proper angles to measure both of their rays equally.
I looked over to the west at the dragon bones that lay waste in a private graveyard, large enough to take shelter in. Then I heard a creature crawling up to us and flapped my wings back, rushing toward it.
“What’s this?” Diana asked with an adorable squeak in her voice as she carelessly picked up the creature.
I pressed my eyes shut in annoyance at her willingness to scoop up the potentially dangerous being and grimaced. “It’s a Zallu,” I said with a sigh.
“It’s so cute!” she squealed, throwing it into the air and catching it safely.
The Zallu were creatures no bigger than Diana’s foot. The small, pink Zallu was thick with fur. It was perfectly round and had stout, stubby legs that made walking a chore.
Luckily for the animal, it could glide with ease. The Zallu would usually travel in packs and glide over the waters in T’nemtar. This often made them food for any swift water creatures that could attack from the safety of the water, but with the ponds bled dry of their proteins, the Zallu were left to their own devices.
The hundreds of sharp teeth hidden in the fur of its underbelly made them difficult to eat, part of the reason the rest of us shifters didn’t bother with them.
“He’s adorable,” Diana repeated, bringing the creature up to her lips with both hands.
“He’ll rip your face off,” I warned with a laugh. “Hm. Come to think of it, go ahead and play all you want.”
“Your humor could use a little work,” she snarled before turning back to the pink Zallu and rubbing its head. The animal burbled and vibrated with pleasure at her touch and stayed by her side even when she pat its backside for it to shoo.
“Can we keep him?” Diana asked, flashing doe eyes at me and pursing her pouting pink lips.
I sighed and twirled my hand with acceptance.
Hours went by as the girl took samples, and soon nightfall was upon us. The suns had turned to the other side of the planet, and soon blue darkness was upon us: a freezing fog crawling over the land like a veil.
I set up camp not far from T’nemtar. I could have flown us back, but the heat drained me of any energy I had left. Besides, I was still supposed to get rid of the girl.
“So you're all for an Earth alliance, huh?” I said quietly, poking at the small fire I had created.
“Of course.”
My brows shot up, but I didn’t look at her.
“Would you rather I say that I hope you all die?” she laughed. “You'd all owe us a giant favor, that's for sure.”
“I should have guessed you would love to have someone indebted to you.”
Diana grabbed a nearby twig and attempted to stir the fire with it, but was foiled as the Zallu tumbled up and grabbed the twig with its array of sharp teeth, pulling it away from her and blinking immense, circular black eyes at her.
“What's wrong with saying it would be a favor?” she giggled at the sight and quickly relented the stick, bravely brushing her fingers through its thick fur with affection. “I'm indebted to Boradrith for saving my life. I have no problem admitting that.”
“Yeah, how did that all start, anyway? One day we heard Tredorphen was bringing humans back and next thing I knew I was seeing your face everywhere.”
“Lucky you, right?” she teased.
“I'm serious. You said we're supposed to be getting to know one another, right? So. Talk. It's what you girls do.”
“I guess, I mean, we were taken in to do research, right?” she said bashfully. Her long cheeks went round at the apples, and she ran her tongue across her bottom lip as though she were about to try out a story: try out the words.
“Boradrith comes in to see what we're all about and I just started talking to him,” she continued. “I didn't know who he was or that he was important. He just seemed... nice. After that I was brought to his room and, well, you can guess the rest.”
“And he's been obsessed with you ever since,” I said petulantly, and she just giggled in reply, seeming proud of herself. “And here I thought you were just being pragmatic.”
“Hey, it helped. But, I'm glad I talked to him. I wouldn't have Plovoeus otherwise.”
“Or your Zallu,” I said with a smile, and she looked down at the pink fluff that was now well tuckered out from running around with a stick nearly three times its size.
“Or my Zallu,” she repeated.
I stared off. “Right,” my mouth moved absent-mindedly. “So, you don't feel like you betrayed your people by wanting to… serve here on Dobromia?”
“I wasn't the only girl to make love to a shifter you know,” she said suddenly; her tone unsure whether or not to be defensive or seducing. She watched me, but I could only gather her expression from my peripheral vision.
“Why space travel?”
I looked at her then and watched a broad smile take over her thick lips, and at that moment, I suddenly wondered what it would be like to taste them.
Back in the Octantis Colony, she was regarded as some kind of harlot: a thief of the D’Karr's time, affection, and political attention. Power hungry.
There was something immensely dislikable about Diana to outsiders, but something incredibly alluring in the same breath. To actually speak with her, I could see exactly what the D’Karr enjoyed about her. She was provocative. She had a conversational wit that made you feel both teased and incredibly important.
She was the epitome of intelligence and charm and knew exactly how to behave in most social situations. Save for the occasional outburst. She even gave the D’Sharr her due respect in public.
“Why did I join the Vulcana team?” she asked, and I shrugged, unsure if I cared about the answer. She continued, “As a researcher space is the ultimate goal, right? So being accepted into the academy is basically a dream come true. And my, uh... my boyfriend was part of Vulcana team, so... you know, I followed him.”
I tongued the inside of my cheek and felt my sharp teeth graze against the muscle. I offered her a slow nod, and she continued, “Plus, I liked everyone. Marina was actually a great leader and Athena and I used to be friends.”
“What happened to the guy?”
Her lips squished to the side of the mouth and she gave a quick shrug, expression unreadable. “Not a hard guess. Either he was killed when they attacked our ship, or he went back to Earth.”
I raised my brows. “You don't know?”
“No point. Either answer makes me sad. And I'm with Boradrith now, anyway.”
“And you think he's only with you?” I asked curiously.
Tired eyes looked across the fire at me and a shy smile crept up beautiful lips once more as she thought over the question. She looked as though she’d genuinely never considered it before. And she likely didn’t have to.
She and the D’Karr had a fire about them when they were together. His passion for her was undeniable. It seemed like there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her.
“Boradrith has a lot of mistresses. He soon gets bored.”
“Okay, first of all, I don't care, and second, he hasn't gotten bored of me yet, and it's been three years,” she said with a careless tone. Perhaps a little too put on.
“Well first,” I mocked, “I think you do care and second, they are called full cycles. Not years. And it's been four.”
She pressed her hands against her mouth as she scoffed. “Geez… You guys have really short years.”
“You know,” I teased, “if you're going to commit to living here then you should probably commit to our terms.”
“I would be a better leader for Dobromia than Sillevia,” she said forcefully, and I let out a hard laugh. “I would! I'm the only progressive one in any position of power. I'm pursuing an alliance. Nobody else has enough trust for one another to make it happen. Just me.”
Our conversation fell into a dead silence, and I looked to her side, watched the Zallu sleeping at her side; buzzing every so often in a dream. The fog fell thicker around us, and suddenly I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep after all. Not if there were any enemies afoot.
Chapter 6:
Kavryiss
It felt like forever since I had been in the Octantis Colony back in Graynar, down in the safety of the inverted spire of caves that protected the Weredragons from the ridiculous heat.
I had spent four cycles out in the scorching fields watching over Diana as she gathered research. She’d taken different sun samples from the soil, water, and the dead ground trees, all to see where the most intense heat was coming from.
Like a desert, nights were freezing, and the days were unbearably hot. We were leaving in the morning and I couldn’t sleep at all.
I could hear Diana stirring. She couldn’t sleep either. The curvy girl yawned and sat up, watching me pace the length of our makeshift camp. The Zallu was at my side, hopping around to catch up with my stride.
I felt a pinch against my immense wing, sending it flying back on instinct, snapping as it flexed against the sting.
“Sorry!” Diana laughed, covering her mouth with her hands as she continued to giggle.
“You scared me!” I seethed in fury, whipping around with my wings before feeling the ground beneath my feet once more. I watched her with annoyance for a moment before a laugh pulled at the base of my throat and suddenly emerged. I shook my head at her and shooed her away playfully, shouting, “Get out of here!”
She smiled at me and, not surprisingly, didn’t listen. Dragging her toes in the dirt behind her, she came up beside me and took my cold hand into hers and pulled me back toward the fire.
“What are you doing up?” she asked quietly.
“I heard something,” I said and felt a nervous pit form in my stomach. “Turns out it was just your little fur ball,” I said, nodding toward Zallu.
“Oh, good,” she said with a relieved breath. “Sorry.”
“Two apologies in one night,” I teased. “Must be a record for you.”
We reached a large scrap of metal that had no doubt been salvaged from a crashed ship and sat with our backs against it, burying our feet in the warm sand before us.
“My family helped build the caves in Graynar,” I offered stupidly. “It was a big task and we received accolades from the D’Karr. Did I tell you that?”
“You didn’t,” she said, almost proudly. “Where are your parents now?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, the answer registered on my face, and she thinned her lips awkwardly. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she said slowly.
“It’s fine… We hadn't cultivated Graynar yet for food, so they didn’t last long in the pit. They gave my brother and me the best of what we had, but they worked hard jobs.” I shrugged helplessly. “I suppose that's what parents do.”
“It's what I would do,” she agreed.
I looked over at her, and suddenly everything between us changed. I looked over her curves of her body and the gentle but determined way she spoke of defending her child, and it hit me. She was a mother.
The skin in the corners of my eyes tightened as I watched her; something was warming my demeanor.
“I just did my duty since then. Tried to please the D’Karr. Worked my way up the ranks,” I continued slowly, suddenly living in slow motion as she tilted her neck up to rest against the metal slab behind us. She turned her head to me and smiled. A smug curve of the lips.
“Thanks for sharing that,” she said quietly, crossing her long leg over the other. “I know you’re not a man of many words.”
I watched her legs with guarded interest and briefly wondered if I should use this moment of relative quiet to kill her. Choke her and leave her to the fire. Then I looked back at the Zallu and imagined it ripping my leg apart for taking down its new little friend. I’d been in exactly one exchange with a Zallu before, and they didn’t mess around.
“A taciturn,” Diana said softly, the thick glaze of sleep tugging at her voice. “That's fine. That's hot.”
I swallowed and narrowed my gaze at her: the glowing fire illuminating her delicate features. “You must be kidding.”
She laughed and waved me off and at that moment, I began to wonder what it must be like to set my hands on her, to feel the delicate parts of her body. I wanted to feel her breasts and get a taste of them: a taste of her skin. The more she spoke, the more the lust rose up in my body. I could feel myself harden under her gaze: from a hateful passion or a newfound respect, I wasn't sure.
“So, if you could do anything, what would it be?”
I bit my lip at the comment and thought, I’d rip your clothes off. Instead, I swallowed hard and said, “I'd stop fighting. I’d leave the pits. Come back up and take our desecrated lands and make them beautiful again. We used to live in the most envied planet in the system. Now we live in a hole in the ground.”
Diana raised her finger in protest. “For protection.”
My brows rose and quickly lowered. “So they say. We used to have creatures come try and fight us for our land, and we thought they were pond scum. We had rich resources. Now we're just as they were.”
“Fighters,” she said passionately, as though she were correcting me.
I laughed. “Desperate.”
“Well then… How would you do things differently?”
I shook my head. “I'm not big on making a difference.”
“That’s too bad,” she said, almost seductively. “Is it because you don't know how, or because you don't feel like you can?”
I thought on the question and couldn’t seem to find the answer or just couldn’t say it out loud. She let the silence hang between us and then uncrossed her legs, stretching them out and rubbed her hands up and down her calves.
“I think you can,” she said finally.
I looked at her and smirked. “Hm.”
“Do you know how long humans live?” she asked, and I shook my head. “Say we have eighty years. That's, what?” she said quietly, counting on her fingers one after another. She twirled her tongue and concluded, “Maybe one hundred and six ‘full cycles’?”
“It’s actually more like—”
“—Not a math assignment,” She interrupted, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “My point is... You guys live ten times that long.”
“So…” I ran my cold hand across my forehead and then frowned, perplexed. “Sorry? What is your point?
“Humans eighty years to make a difference, and we try like hell. Shifters live for a thousand, and you’re just hoping to survive.”
I frowned, suddenly realizing she wasn’t being sweet with me; she was telling me off. A deep heat rose up in my chest, and I set my jaw. “Shouldn't that make you sympathetic to us?”
“No,” she said stubbornly. “Take over a planet, force an alliance with the Earth, just do something. You'r
e not even trying.”
“Pardon me. It's not as easy to secure a treaty when your people are dying off.”
She shrugged playfully, giving her patented ‘So?’ expression. She leaned hard against the metal behind her, and I could feel the heat radiate from her body. “I think you can.”
“Is that so?”
“Why not? You're strong, and you're smart enough. You've crawled your way up the totem pole; you're running around for the D’Sharr. You should be able to get whatever you want.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Not all of us have riches at our disposal. Not all of us—”
She cut me off, and I speared her with a hard gaze as she said, “I think you're just a coward.”
“I think you're spoiled and delusional,” I snapped. “You want to rule, just like every other self-serving creature, and once you realize Boradrith will toss you aside like the rest of them, I bet you'll be the first in line to leave us.”
She cocked a brow and scraped her teeth along her bottom lip in fury. She turned to me, our bodies so close that our thighs were touching. Then she slapped me across the face. Her hand mishit, and I could feel her stiff fingers crack against my mouth, mashing my lip against my teeth in a pang of sharp pain. Dots of blood trickled down the center of my mouth, and I bore daggers through her with my eyes.
“Take that back,” she seethed.
I turned to her and nearly growled with the deep, dragon’s roar. I grabbed her shoulders, my claws emerging and digging deep into her skin. I should just kill her now and get it over with.
Diana swallowed hard and tried to pull away, but my grip was firm. I slammed her into the metal behind us.
“Boradrith loves me,” she said sharply.
“Boradrith loves many, many women,” I corrected, enunciated my words. “And besides, you don't love him,” I quieted, loosening my grip gingerly.
Diana’s dark brown hair fell in front of her face, and she jerked from my grasp, flipping it out from her sightline. Her breasts heaved with heavy breaths, and we glared at one another as though breaking the contact would send us careening down a dangerous cliffside; like something unseen surrounded us and we were too afraid to look.