by Starla Night
“And you were trained not to ask questions, and fear that Pyro might blame you. No one supervised you and no one supported you, all because no one has any idea what I do.”
Peridot hung his head.
“You didn’t destroy our company. We’ve destroyed it on our own.” Jasper gripped Peridot’s shoulder with urgency. “Ask the staff to return. This is an emergency, so promise anything and ask nicely, as if they were the heads of aristocratic families.”
“But they are humans.”
“Yes, and they are the only ones who can save us. The structural integrity of the building is in question. Fly.”
Peridot flew.
A commotion sounded outside.
Adviser Wrathmoda’s spaceship descended.
Larimar threw open the door to the hall. “Get in here! It’s time.”
Jasper straightened his suit, brushed off any dust, and strode into the matriarch office. Only a few contractors remained. His brothers had fled; Alex to return Nicole to safety, and the others readied for action.
He’d started today certain of his plan.
But now…
Adviser Wrathmoda’s ship rested on the giant platform. The doors opened and she emerged, a slippery mountain of fury, glistening with aristocratic silver piercings that tinkled like deadly spikes. Wrath was an appropriate name for her violent red bulk, the red-rimmed teeth that she snapped, and every wrinkle of diamond flesh that armored her like a dragon tank.
She stormed the marble walkway and stopped at the doorway. Her resonant voice boomed. “Daughter, my magnificence cannot fit into this paltry room.”
“Yes, my mother.” Larimar bowed low. “It is the style on Earth to shift to human form.”
“Human form?” Adviser Wrathmoda wrinkled her snout. “How disgusting.”
“You will tower over us, a magnificence in every form, and we will clothe you in the most beautiful and voluminous silks.”
“Hmph.” Adviser Wrathmoda shook her long neck. “You are about to witness a rare sight. An adviser of the Empress and heir to the five families shifted into a human! Gaze on my flesh and marvel.”
Larimar bowed lower. “Show us, my mother.”
Adviser Wrathmoda’s scales shivered up her limbs. She stretched and strained.
Shifting was something Jasper found easy, so he didn’t realize at first why she was taking so long.
Adviser Wrathmoda was stuck.
Larimar glued her eyes to the marble and remained silent.
Adviser Wrathmoda groaned and squeezed into her human form. “There, I’ve done it.”
Her voice sounded more nasal and high-pitched being forced out of what was now a short human throat. Flesh wrinkled around her small, beady eyes, and jowls comprised her lower face.
She lifted stubby human arms. Her middle formed a stout disk of flesh balanced atop two toothpick legs. “Now, dress me.”
Jasper glanced at Larimar.
Larimar bit her lip. “You’re, uh, a little different than we thought, Mother.”
“It’s been some time since I last shifted, but I’m not too different.” Adviser Wrathmoda wiggled her arms. “My garments!”
Larimar threw the draping around Adviser Wrathmoda. The silk kaftan complemented a 10-foot, 400-lb human. Adviser Wrathmoda might be the right weight, but she was less than half the height, and the silk bunched around her non-existent neck and puddled at her ankles.
She huffed. “Never…got these…human clothes…”
Adviser Wrathmoda gathered the silk and hefted her bulk through the office and onto her throne.
Larimar froze.
Jasper elbowed her. “Your speech.”
She shook herself and swanned forward. “Mother. Your presence…graces our presence. On this, this honorable day, you will feast on the rich glory of our future. I have gathered the finest offerings of Earth to—”
“Hold it.” Adviser Wrathmoda’s nose wrinkled. “What is that appalling stench?”
“Stench?” Larimar looked at Jasper. “The, ah, do you mean the aroma of Earth, Mother?”
“It smells like a sewage treatment facility.” She wriggled her thick fingers. “Very well. Bring me your offerings so I can get this over with.”
“But…our business plan?”
“Complexity has never been your strength, Larimar. If your plan is anything more nuanced than ‘Acquire, sell, and profit’ I will be very surprised.”
“Ah. My original business plan did bear some resemblance to your description, but that doesn’t matter. With Jasper’s help, I have refined—”
“Offerings. Now.”
“O-of course. The first product is something female dragons will love, yet has never been exported.” Larimar displayed a box of nail polishes. “These ‘nail polish’ colored paint contains glitter and is popular with—”
“Color? Glitter? Attractive dragons shift to boring humans only to reapply colors to their claws? This is ridiculous.”
“Ah…the plainness of human skin becomes a wonderful blank canvas. So said several heiresses of the highest families, including—”
“Forget bubble-headed heiresses who care about fashion. This is not a worthwhile investment.”
“But we can plan these polishes to match your outfit, which—”
“No clothing! It is even more wasteful than that polish. Why shift from sleek, gorgeous scales to a fleshy blob that requires covering? Plus no one ever exports my size.”
“We would—”
“Next item!”
Larimar looked longingly at the extensive suits and dresses they’d matched with polish. “Well, the next item is—”
“Food,” Adviser Wrathmoda ordered. “My stomach is touchy. Get me the food.”
“Y-yes, Mother.” Larimar offered a fine gold platter piled with bumpy red peppers. “This is the ghost pepper, a spicy vegetable with an unusual tang, said to be a favorite of the captain of the Empress’s warship, the Gnashing Teeth. We have never exported it. Beside it, for comparison, are the Carolina Reaper and the Komodo Dragon Chili Pepper.”
Larimar lifted the tray.
Tiny shreds rested on small white dishes in front of their representative peppers. Beside each was a small cup of plain yogurt to cleanse the palate.
Adviser Wrathmoda reached past the small samples, grabbed a fist-full of full-sized peppers, and downed them in one bite. “Hmm. They are small. The flavor is unique.” Her face soured. “It tears the stomach like brimstone. Ugh. An unpleasant clawing sensation.”
“Drink the yogurt,” Jasper advised. “It calms heartburn.”
Adviser Wrathmoda drank three yogurts, then grimaced harder. “This tastes like that fermented monstrosity, cheese.”
Larimar looked at Jasper with wide eyes. They both realized the problem at the same moment.
She moved to the next offering. “Wash it down with this hot beverage.”
Adviser Wrathmoda gulped the thick shot. “Ugh. I dislike coffee.”
“The Gentleman’s Society covets this one.”
She winced and cradled her belly. “It’s souring the yogurt. No, curdling. Ugh.”
“Perhaps solid food will help.” Larimar, in a panic now, grabbed the still-chilled espresso beans from the fridge and flew them to her mother. “Quick, eat this.”
Adviser Wrathmoda threw the entire dish into her mouth and crunched. She moaned and cupped her jaw. “I broke my tooth.”
Everyone gaped in frozen silence.
She spat out a chunk of the dish. “Never mind. It was this plate.”
Larimar released a huge sigh that echoed around the room. “You are meant to eat the espresso beans one at a—”
“No more food! I reject all of these. Traditional gruel is the best food. Exotic flavors, like human fashion, are a pointless fad that only gives indigestion. What do you love so much about this wretched planet, Larimar? I feared this project would be one of your ill-thought-out ideas, and so far, I am right. Show me the next product!�
�
Larimar folded her hands. “That was what we prepared for your visit, Mother. With your new guidance, we will discover and export a different item.”
“That’s it?” Adviser Wrathmoda huffed and stood. “Then I’m leaving. Bring the marriage contract!”
Jasper stared at Larimar.
She looked lost. “Ah, Mother. It turns out that I need Jasper here. For setting up the business. So…”
“When you have found something worthy of my name, then you will summon him from my side.”
Adviser Wrathmoda’s servants wheeled the massive contract, inscribed in gold on an elaborate scroll, to the center of the room.
“I signed our name already so we could leave without delay.” Adviser Wrathmoda snapped her fingers. “Jasper, come.”
Larimar gave him a helpless shrug.
So much for her help.
Jasper stopped at the scroll. “I’m sorry, Adviser Wrathmoda, but I can’t marry you.”
Adviser Wrathmoda froze and turned. Rage curled her fingers into claws and smoke hissed from her throat. “What did you say?”
He was going to die.
She stalked toward him, looming larger and more deadly with every step. “Your matriarch accepted our match, insolent dragonlet.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“You will be sorry. And so will she when I ship your entrails to your mother for daring to defy the both of us.”
“Mother knows my situation.”
“Your situation? Do you know your situation?”
“I pursued a human female who denied my claim, so I accepted our match. She changed her mind, and so I wish to change mine.”
Adviser Wrathmoda blinked. “That’s it?”
“Actually, there’s much more. Rose offered to pretend marriage but I declined, so she offered a real marriage and then changed her mind. She blames me for losing her child. We are not currently dating, but after I get her child back and reconstruct her grandmother’s condemned apartment complex, I will present my wishes—”
“Silence.” Adviser Wrathmoda shook her head like she was trying to dislodge something. “This indecision, this illogic. Is it in the air? The water? The Earth aroma?”
Larimar stepped forward. “Mother? Are you well?”
“I should ask you the same.” Adviser Wrathmoda turned on Larimar. “Daughter, you are a ruthless closer, yet after weeks you’ve accomplished nothing.”
Larimar linked her fingers. “I had false starts.”
“You don’t even look like yourself with those colors, and hair accessories. Where is your illustrious dragon?”
“Yes, my school friend Ruby has introduced me to a hair designer.”
“That sounds monstrous.”
“It’s very satisfying, actually—”
“No.” Adviser Wrathmoda waved her fingers at her ears to rid them of the sound. “No, I have come here to oversee a lucrative business, which you have failed to deliver to me. I will take this male from the family the Empress inexplicably desires to marry, instead. If she emerges from her death sleep to live another hundred years, I will be her new, closest ally.”
“But Mother, Empress Horribus is unlikely to emerge—”
“Do not discount her.” Adviser Wrathmoda raised a claw. “I mourned her once, shot down in our youth, and she returned to flame me with a vengeance. That is why I am a mere adviser now and not a general. She never forgot.”
“But this is madness!”
“It is very strange,” Alex interjected. He’d dropped off Nicole and regarded the adviser with the familiarity of a dragon who had kept elevated company because of his exotic looks despite his low birth. “Why did the Empress offer marriage to the males in our family? We are no longer the top of the charts outside Draconis.”
Jasper felt his chest move. “We aren’t?”
Alex shook his head. “We have launched nothing in your absence. It was inevitable.”
“But you’ve had weeks to—”
“I do not know the reason for her madness, but Horribus does nothing without a reason. Even her senility is deadly.” Adviser Wrathmoda shrugged. “Maybe you descended from the lost Draconian Heroes, or maybe your veins flow with secret nobility.”
“We recorded our lineage in the Hall of Dragons,” Alex replied. “My father was a low-caste like his parents before him. No one was found in an egg.”
“Horribus has a reason. I want in.” Adviser Wrathmoda extended her claws to Jasper. “Whatever the reason, new husband, you are coming with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rose raced down the hall in her lavender-scented hazmat suit, her environmental technician cart jangling, and burst into the matriarch office.
She’d braided her hair into warrior dreads and put on shimmering gold lipstick. Rose had all her defenses.
The squat, ill-looking adviser unleashed her threat at Jasper. “…new husband, you’re coming with me.”
“No, he’s not.” Rose parked the cart, set her heavy boots, and lofted the toilet wand in her thick rubber-gloved hands. “He’s not your new husband. He’s my fiancé! And you’re not taking him anywhere. He’s staying right here with me.”
Jasper’s eyes lit. “Rose.”
Everyone stared at her in shock.
The adviser asked out of the corner of her mouth, “Larimar, who is that?”
“The janitor,” Larimar answered.
Jasper started for Rose, his expression brimming with happiness. “You came—”
Adviser Wrathmoda whipped her extended claws out, blocking his path. “You. Stay.”
Rose glued her eyes to the growling crab-shaped dragon, even though her words were for Jasper. “Of course I came. You said there was only one way to stop you from getting kidnapped and married. I’m here to fight for you myself.”
All the dragons’ jaws dropped. Jasper, his brothers floating at the edges of the room, the contractors Jasper had hired, and that white-blonde Larimar.
Their reactions didn’t help her confidence, but the rustles and squeaks of Elle, Shawn, and Patty wheeling their carts in behind Rose—they’d had to take separate elevators to fit—did.
She nodded at them.
Shawn shut the doors while Elle and Patty caulked them, plugging the cracks. They, like her, were wearing their fireproof hazmat suits. Unlike her, they’d sealed their faceplates.
Adviser Wrathmoda laughed like a phonograph needle screeching across a favorite record. “You are challenging me? Really? Small human, are you mad?”
Rose twisted the wand in her hands like a baton. “Furious.”
“I suppose you must think there’s some trick. So, I should tell you now, idiot human, that if I kill you during this challenge, it will not break the Dragon-Human Treaty. You will only embarrass your lineage and orphan your heirs.”
“Well, I don’t have any heirs, and my ‘lineage’ is already embarrassing, so no loss.”
Adviser Wrathmoda sighed. “Everyone is so irrational on this planet. I suppose I will have to crush you into a paste. Although it pains me, it really does.”
Behind Rose, the environmental techs took atmospheric readings, oriented big carpet fans, and whirred the musty, yellowed air toward the adviser.
Rose’s heart beat a hundred times a minute in her throat and her hands sweated inside the hot rubber. The wand slipped in her hands. “If it pains you, let Jasper go.”
“It does not pain me as much as I’m about to pain you.” Adviser Wrathmoda extended her arms. They shifted to bulky dragon while the rest of her remained human, so she looked even more like a giant crab. She whipped one massive claw to Rose.
So fast!
“Rose!” Jasper jumped on her arm, slowing her enough for Rose to back away.
The other swiped.
Rose jumped backward and brought down her laser trying to cut off the hand.
The laser grazed Adviser Wrathmoda’s claws.
The ends chipped off.
Rose
landed on her butt and dropped the wand. The laser shut off.
Adviser Wrathmoda squinted at her rounded-off tips. “You cut my claws. What is that weapon?”
“It’s not a weapon,” Jasper gasped, standing.
Adviser Wrathmoda snatched him in an oversized claw. “Of course she wields a weapon. It damaged me.”
He winced and wriggled in the iron grip. “It’s a waste sanitation laser set to maximum.”
“A laser for waste sanitation? A laser used in waste treatment touched my claws?”
Rose clambered up onto her feet. “Afraid to get dirty? Then don’t mess with an environmental tech!”
She squeezed the trigger. The beam shot across the room and blackened Adviser Wrathmoda’s white silk dress.
Adviser Wrathmoda shrieked and hopped out of its way.
Rose chased her around the office.
The large female dodged and flew, overturning furniture and causing the other dragons to scramble. She hid behind the enormous gold throne. “Get away from me, human filth!”
“Let Jasper go.”
“He’s mine.”
“Then eat toilet wand!” Rose faked toward one side of the throne.
Adviser Wrathmoda flew out the other side. She swiped as she passed and battered the wand out of Rose’s hand.
The wand clattered to the floor and broke it in half.
Uh oh.
Adviser Wrathmoda stopped and smiled. “Now, dirty human, you will see that—”
“Rose!” Shawn threw another wand.
Rose caught it, then faced her adversary and threw the broken wand with all her might.
The bent rod nailed Adviser Wrathmoda in the belly and bounced off.
“Oof.” Adviser Wrathmoda dropped Jasper, burped, and hugged her middle. “Oh no. The food is climbing into my throat. Cramping…curdling…human food poison…ugh.”
“What’s she talking about?” Rose asked.
Jasper flew to Rose’s side. “The food she ate doesn’t agree with her. And now the strenuous exercise has worsened her symptoms.”
Adviser Wrathmoda snarled at Rose. “You will not defeat a dragon of my impeccable lineage. Certainly not with a toilet cleaning implement. I’m a female dragon. An elder.”
Rose lofted the new wand threateningly. “I’ve got more.”