by Celeste Raye
I didn’t tell her the name of it, in case she began to get any ideas. And even though she told me she’d been locked up for the better part of two full turns, her face sparkled with recognition at the entrance of the cave.
Aquamarine eggs hung from the top and bottom of the deep cave, many having lost their glow over the cycles: dead. The eggs were roughly the same size as Athena, and a spark of nerves flew into a flurry in my stomach as she traipsed through the caves.
Athena traced her delicate fingers over the black vines that held the eggs in place and she looked over at me quizzically. “These are the babies, right? Where they’re born… err… grown? Or, whatever you call it. Birthed?”
“Just stop,” I laughed in protest. “This is them, yes.”
“My sister told me about this place,” she said in a tone that was triggered with sadness. “Tredorphen brought her here.”
“Is that right?” I said slowly. “She got to know a lot around these parts?”
She gave a searching expression as she carefully monitored the eggs that latched and roped into the walls. The change in her demeanor said she didn’t want to answer my question, yet she opened her mouth anyway.
“I think so. He was the son of your king and all, so they probably had access to lots of places.”
“King?” I tested the word out on my tongue and then shook my head. “The D’Karr, right. You ever resent her for leaving?”
“No,” she shrugged and gave an expression that was nearly unreadable. “I was the one who told her to go. I could have just as easily left on the ship
“So what am I supposed to be learning?” she asked indignantly, swiping her hand hastily off the vine. “That you have little eggs in here who are going to be devastated by the lack of food when they get out?”
“I guess it goes without saying.” I scratched the back of my head bashfully and she laughed.
She looked down at the eggs with a dismissive shrug and looked back to me with a giant grin across her moist lips. “Not moved,” she said in a proud tone. “To me, this is like looking at caviar. Gross and something I’m not interested in, which I know,” she raised her hands to me to prevent me from speaking, “is a reference you don’t understand. So just trust me, I don’t care.”
I felt a boiling in my stomach as she said the words. This human was impossible. It was becoming clear to me why the guards at The Tower had no luck breaking her or finding the coordinates for the earth.
My eyes spread over the eggs and I placed a hand on one that hung directly above me. The vines looked like they would give out at any second, but I knew they were sturdy. To me, this cave was everything.
Life, love, the future. I craned my neck to look around the cave and take in the sight. I hadn’t been able to come here since my exile topside. It was usually guarded.
“Since the famine, we haven’t been able to protect them like we used to,” I explained when I saw her inspecting some of the cracked, broken eggs, the thick shell parting slightly to reveal a mangled blackness within its holding.
“Why not?” she asked, crouching down to the broken egg and making a pointedly disgusted face at the corpse within.
“We’re not the only ones starving on Dobromia,” I said with ease.
Her blonde hair whipped behind her as she turned to look at me, still crouched down. “They eat them?” she winced.
“We don’t,” I said with a laugh. “But the Drogs do, as do other creatures. Look there,” I pointed. “See that small hole dug into the bottom of the egg there?”
Athena marched her long, tan legs in the direction of my finger and she ran a delicate hand along the hole.
“That’s from one of the Zay’eer’s. They appear like vines that come out of the soil. Usually they crop up and burrow into a land creatures leg.”
“Like a Drog?” she asked with perked brows.
I frowned. “Well, the Drogs are acidic. So that would kill them. They usually burrow into Paeldron’s.”
Athena laughed and waved me off. “Okay, whatever. Go on.”
I smiled at the girl and watched her wander: let my eyes linger on her backside and down her perfect legs with a raging lust. As she turned, my eyes flicked back up to hers and I offered her a guilty grin.
“Go on,” she repeated flirtatiously.
“The Paeldron’s are what we’ve been eating,” I explained of the large, furry beasts with an incredibly snouted nose. They were practically blind. “Usually, they would wander to the lakes and use their snout to attract the sea creatures. The Zay’eer’s would use this time to pounce on their enemy, burrowing into a leg and slowly debilitating them. A Zay’eer, small as it was, could feast on this for a full cycle, or one human year.
“But,” I continued, “The Paeldron’s are dying, just like we are. There’s less around, which means the Zay’eer eels need to get creative. Usually, they wouldn’t bother with something as meager and hard to get into as the eggs.”
“Ah,” Athena said with a nod. She made her way back to me and crossed her arms, looking down at the mass of broken shells on the ground beneath us. “How are eggs hard to get into?” she asked unbelievingly.
I tapped my nose and wandered back out into the blazing heat beyond the entrance of the cave. I grabbed a nearby branch and walked back over to her.
“Watch,” I instructed.
I moved the dead branch toward a glowing egg and began to push the stick hard into it. Before it could pierce the shell, the black vine that gripped around the egg slithered up toward the branch and hissed before spreading itself thin across the full surface of the cocooned child.
Athena’s eyes went wide, and she looked at me in surprise. “What… was that?”
“The vines are here to protect the young. You see, you can place a hand across one, and nothing happens, right?”
She nodded and watched as I splayed my hand across another healthy egg. The vine stayed in place.
“But once they sense pressure or an attack, they spread out over the child. It’s just their design. But look,” I continued, walking over to one of the eggs that had only a weak glow illuminating from within. I wiped my hand over the surface to show Athena nothing would happen and then began banging my hand against the long surface.
“Stop it!” she yelled as I continued to whack the human-sized egg. “You’re going to hurt it!”
I laughed and took my hand away from the creature. My fist left a small, circular fracture in the shell and my heart dropped at the sight of it. “It’s Zay’eer food, anyhow.”
“Why didn’t the vine come up?” she asked, absolutely transfixed now on the egg.
“It’s dead,” I said. “Or dying.”
“You weren’t kidding,” she breathed and then clarified, “About the famine affecting more than just you guys.”
I rubbed my hand over my forehead and wiped the sweat away, looking back over at the girl. The wind blew in hot, and I could see the moisture dripping down the blonde’s face in beads. We were both thirsty.
“Just for the record,” I said bluntly, “You didn’t want me to keep hitting the egg. That means you care.”
“No!” she protested with wide eyes. “You were just…” She swallowed and laughed. “Making noise! You had made your point, and there was no reason to alert any nearby Weredragons… that’s all!”
“Is that so? Well then, I see your hard heart remains a black hole,” I teased and nudged her arm. She looked at me with another proud smirk, and I shook my head. “Onto the next?”
“Onto the next,” she repeated, her voice completely game for whatever I had in store.
Chapter 7 - Vaikrand
Athena
It had been a grand total of almost two months traveling together, hunting together, and exploring Dobromia together. He showed me the dragon hot-spots that were supposed to make me feel sorry for the shifters: make me crack and tell him where Earth was. We would usually do this in the dead of night, as to avoid detection and also
to be out of the unforgiving heat.
Vaikrand was impossible to deal with some days: hot-headed, a raging temper, stubborn, condescending—an alpha to be sure. Or, at least that’s what he thought of himself.
I was sure he felt the same way about me.
But then there were nights by the fire where we would spend hours talking and he didn’t quite seem so bad. I would take comfort in the fact that here, on this strange planet, we were both outcasts.
I battled with guilt on a daily basis, constantly punishing myself for teaming up with a shifter—the very creature who had destroyed the life I had worked so hard to build.
We sat near the edge of the Westfall province. This was where we had the most luck finding food and shifters who had migrated underground and worked for their king rarely came. We would often fly back here. So much so that we had set up a permanent tent in one of the dragon skeletons by the bone yard: a cooking station set up for roasting the meat.
It had perfect shelter from the heat and the cool, and an empty pond, six-feet-by-six-feet. It was the perfect spot for bathing.
The sky was already beginning to darken, and so I wandered up the red sandy hill to fetch Vaikrand only to discover him washing up in the water, completely naked.
I blinked in surprise and crouched back down the hill, frowning deeply and blushing to myself. I had to let out a laugh of delight and wasn’t sure if I should keep looking. After all, those were the kinds of pervo actions I would have looked down on if any of my guy friends were to repeat this story to me.
But still… when curious…
I walked back up to the top of the hill and watched him. He was, I hated to admit, gorgeous. His body was taut and perfectly muscular. His yellow scales overlapped across his body and shone: glimmered under the faint light still left in the sky. I stared at his ass and the way he carefully dipped his wings into the water so that droplets cascaded down and dripped back into the pond.
He let out a small groan and turned to look in my direction, when I decided I should make myself known.
“Hey,” I said as casually as I could and acted like I was already on my way toward him.
“Hey,” he said slowly, unsure of what else to say to me.
I swallowed and smiled at him, my eyes casting over his chest and then up to his cut jaw and blonde hair that had darkened with the weight of the water.
“Sorry,” I offered casually, “just had to wash up before bed. You mind?”
I knew it was a slippery slope, what I was doing. But I couldn’t help the flirtation.
He raised a curious brow to me, unsure of my mood, and then shrugged. “All yours,” he said and began to step out of the pond.
“You might as well stay,” I said smugly. “This way I don’t have to obsessively watch for enemies.”
“Lucky me,” he joked and stepped back down into the water so that nothing inappropriate was showing.
I undressed as casually as I could, hanging my clothes on a nearby outcropping of rocks before stepping down into the pool. I felt my heart rate quicken with the motion, and I felt a cool tower rise up through my center.
I splashed water down my round breasts and turned away from him so that only my back faced him, trying to act as though I didn’t want him to look. As I dipped my hair back into the liquid, I could see him stealing a glance at my breasts and felt rewarded in some strange way. I scraped my tongue along the front of the inside of my teeth and set my jaw. For the life of me, I wasn’t sure why I wanted him to see my body. But, we had shared so much up to this point, it hardly felt strange at all.
“It’s cold,” he warned as I submerged my head. I came up out of the water laughing, and he chuckled as well. “I told you,” he said.
I turned to face him and watched his eyes steal a glance at my breasts, and he walked up to me, turning my heart into an explosion of nerves. Even through the water, I could feel my hands sweating.
Vaikrand ran his hand down the back of my wet hair and raised a brow to me, condescending and lecturing.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Bathing,” I said.
The yellow shifter ran his hand down my back and below the water to my bottom before removing his hand from my skin. “And nothing more?”
I shrugged. “Nothing more.”
He stared at me as if to say, ‘Ah,’ and then moved away from my body. “Then hurry up,” he snapped and stepped out from the pond, dressing immediately.
We arrived back at camp in just a matter of minutes. Vaikrand opened the flap of the tent to me, and I walked in nervously, taking my position on my side as I normally did. He came up behind me, the two of us wet and sticking to the furs beneath us. Half of me expected him to try something but was pleasantly surprised when I heard him drift off to sleep.
We woke up in our familiar spoon, our bodies tangled together in a mess of limbs and heat with the new suns spreading their warmth across the sky. I knew Vaikrand was awake. His five-o-clock shadow was scraping against my bare shoulder as he fit his chiseled chin into the crook of my neck.
“I want to do unspeakable things to you,” he whispered suddenly.
His words mixed with the whisper that hit my skin caused a full-body shudder to cross over me, and I turned my head only slightly to the arrogant shifter.
I wanted to tell him to shove it. To back off and not be so arrogant just because I admitted that, okay, maybe, the Weredragon’s didn’t have it as easy as I thought.
But, instead, I whispered, “Like what?”
“I want to run my hand down your body,” he said, and slowly ran his hand along my side, lifting up my shirt slightly so his hand could dip into my waist and then down my hip.
“And then what?” I asked again.
“I want to make your body tingle and throb, the way you do to mine.”
My eyes flicked up like a porcelain doll and grabbed my breasts in my hands, “And what about these?”
“I’ll lay here, like this,” he explained in smooth, cool tones as he gestured to our bodies and slowly moved his mouth toward my chest. He lifted my shirt up, and I hesitantly allowed his hands to caress my body. His thick fingers moved under my bra, so my breast spilled out from the black lace and he gently sucked my nipple. “Now I want to watch you touch yourself.”
My face flushed at the sentiment and I let out a ridiculous giggle. “No,” I said.
“Listen to your breathing,” he said in a husky, low tone. “You want me, don’t you?”
I rocked my hips against his hard dick and ran my right hand down his thigh. “No,” I whispered. “It’s all in your head, kid.”
“Sorry?” he mocked with raised brows, biting my nipple and releasing it. “How old am I?”
A flirtatious smile infested the corners of my mouth, and I said, “I dunno. Probably a million?”
He let out a smug ‘hm’ noise and continued with my breasts before moving up to my mouth. I craned my neck to give him a better field of play, and he grabbed my lips with his: sticky and sweet like butterscotch. The wetness of his mouth soon made contact with mine as his tongue flicked in and out of my mouth like a preview of what his body could do.
I grabbed his lip with my teeth, biting it and giving him a lover’s tug. Then I reached my hand behind me to feel the girth of him on my hand.
He locked eyes with me, never breaking our kiss, and then suddenly we were like animals.
Vaikrand ripped at my clothes and began tugging my pants down furiously. His left hand wrapped around my neck in our spooning position and his right was now inspecting the moisture that he had created between my legs. He dipped his fingers in and then looked at me with a hazy, satisfied lust.
I tugged at his leathers while he caressed my breasts in his hand. Once I had freed his member, I knew I wanted to give it a look. But, unsure if it would look as I expected, I kept my eyes closed and stroked its immensity in my hand several times, eliciting lustful groans from Vaikrand before guiding it inside me.
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I could feel him push in and my body began building up to climax almost immediately. It’d been way too long.
He thrust deeply into me, and I started moaning loudly, moving my face away from his lips. This continued for several moments before he smacked my backside with an unbridled passion and then dismounted. He turned me so I was on my back and guided himself back inside me so that my body was pressed flat against his, his lips locking against mine even through furious thrusts.
“Don’t stop,” I instructed and he took it as an order.
My moans gained traction, and I had the presence of mind long enough to open my eyes and see our small tent moving against our bodies, looking as though it would collapse on top of us at any second.
I smiled at the thought and spread my legs wider as Vaikrand pounded into me: weeks of pent-up rage and sexual frustration finally coming to an explosive end.
My climax sent waves of heat and pleasure across my body as my abdomen clenched and released over and over. With a long sigh, I wrapped my legs around his back and waited for him to give just a handful of thrusts more until he gripped my body tightly and orgasmed.
I felt a gush of liquid fill me with heat, and it was only then I registered what had really just happened.
He buried his face into the crook of my neck and kept his hand locked on my left breast; squeezing it every few seconds like a pulse. I traced a finger over the bright yellow scales that covered his body and found their way to the base of his wings: the bone-like bulbs mounted on his back where they would soon emerge from.
My hands found their way off his back, and a cold sweat ghosted over my body. I just wanted him off.
“Well… that was…” I began unsurely, making a shocked scowl he couldn’t yet see. “Interesting.”
I removed the look from my face immediately as he rose up from my body. His chin rested on my navel and he began kissing up the mounds on my chest and then into my neck.
“Sounds like it was pretty damn good to me,” he said, borrowing a curse from my language.
“Right,” I said with widened eyes. “So, I guess we should be off then, or something.”