Her flame cooled, and she gave visible shudder. Presumably at the thought of being carried anywhere by him in drakkon form.
But inside his head she said, “No, no, Xenon. I don’t need a vacation. I want to leave here. Permanently. I want us all to go. Eos, and the Far Travelers, too, since you’re they’re king and I’m they’re queen. We can’t just leave them behind. We’re responsible for these people.”
Xenon resisted the urge to turn his eyes skyward in irritation, as she so often did. The commitment of Fated Mate to the Group 7 Far Travelers was, at times, vexing. She not only insisted on taking her role of Queen seriously she’d also taken it upon herself to invite the Far Travelers to seek her out for counsel.
They frequently exited the domain to find several Group 7 lupin waiting with problems they wished her to solve. Stolen hides, stolen mates, a daughter who wished not to be given to another wolf by her father. Over all of this did she render judgment, claiming such petty matters were their “responsibility.”
Still, she was his Most Revered, so he struggled to keep both his eyes and his tone the opposite of his flame as he explained, “We cannot simply leave this place, Fated Mate. My lab is here. And I must have my lab to do my work.”
“Oh, you mean the work of drugging our people every month, and running experiments on them like they’re fucking mice?”
He disliked when she used crude language outside their mating furs, but he ignored it to point out, “These experiments are the sole purpose of my mission, Reverence. And more importantly, any data I can collect will help me to prove your species is a viable race. I should not have to remind you of this.”
His uncle, the Royal Overlord, had been particularly demanding as of late, requiring more and more findings and research numbers for his first report back to the Drakkon court.
To be fair, Xenon had managed to use all the extra work as a good excuse for not repairing the “broken” station cameras all these moons. But the fact remained if he failed to deliver the work his uncle tasked him with, and if he did not answer every message and comply with every data request, the Royal Overlord might ignore his Zone 7 ban and come to the glacier station himself. And if that happened…disaster.
“Do you prefer the cease of experimentation on the Far Travelers, or sanctuary for your entire species?”
A good point, he thought. But Fated Mate merely made that sucking sound with her teeth. “First of all, I don’t think—”
DUNH!
A hard sound, muffled but booming, cut Fated Mate off. Xenon went completely still. What was that? he wondered, tongue reflexively flicking into the air, even though whatever it was would be too far away for him to smell. It sounded like something had been dropped into the snow. Right outside the glacier station…
“Another dragon,” Fated Mate whispered inside his head.
And when he turned to look back at her, he found her eyes wide with shock, her flame burning a fearful red. “I can smell him. Also, that’s the same sound you make whenever you come home.”
Was it? He’d never thought how it must sound to have one as large as him in drakkon form land outside the glacier station. But no, the arrival of another drakkon was not possible. He’d declared a solitude ban at the beginning of his trip, just as his father had advised. And he was Prince of Drakkon. No one would dare go against his decree.
“Perhaps your nose deceives you,” he suggested to Fated Mate.
“No, I sleep with a dragon. I know what one smells like.”
He opened his mouth to assure her that even if there were another drakkon outside their abode, said drakkon would not dare enter without Xenon’s permission. But then he cut himself off, realizing…
Golden Son was outside.
Without another word to Fated Mate, he hurtled toward the tunnel, his wings bursting from his back. And by the time he emerged from the glacier station, he was in full drakkon form.
However, things were not as bad as he thought they would be.
They were much, much worse.
His son, having returned to his drakkon form, was now gaping up at a red drakkon. Smaller than Xenon, but much, much bigger than Golden Son.
And now he knew who would break his solitude ban. It was the Mission Therapist, charged with monitoring the mental health of the team members. As such, he was the only one on the team with permission to ignore Xenon’s ban.
And right now, he was staring down at the little golden drakkon as if he were a hallucination.
“Blue Papa! Blue Papa! Look! Another Drakkon. He red. Look!” Golden Son chirred happily in their language.
Look, indeed…
“Go back to the cave,” he commanded, voice as quiet as the Group 7 natives peeking out from inside their mammoth hide and bone tents. “Lock yourself in the lab with Great Wolf Mother.”
“But—”
“Remember my words from this morning. When I cannot, you must.”
Golden Son must have, for once, sensed the seriousness of the moment. Because instead of arguing, he swiftly disappeared into the glacier station tunnel.
Only when he was out of view did Xenon give the red drakkon greeting. “Therapist.”
“Prince,” The Mission Therapist answered with a bow of his great head. But his eyes stayed rooted to the place where Golden Son had been standing. As if still trying to make sense of what he’d just seen.
“Why have you come here, Therapist?”
“He was a lupin young…and then he became drakkon, right before my eyes. He called you father. In our language.”
Only then did the Mission Therapist finally turn his eyes to meet Xenon’s. “This I do not understand.”
“It is not for you to understand,” Xenon answered with an officiousness he had not employed in many rotations. “It is for you to answer. I will query again: why have you come here, Therapist?”
The Mission Therapist was only a thousand years older than Xenon, yet his fire burned as weak and confused as a drakkon in the last flames of his life as he responded with weak chirr, “The Royal Overlord is worried about you. He has decided to declare this species unviable for civilization.”
“What? But I have sent the Royal Overlord report after report proving the viability of this species! How has he reached such decision?”
“The Mission Leader feared you would feel this way about his directive, which is why he sent me to tell you the mission is complete. You must melt your station, and rendezvous with us at the Zone 6 station in two moons time.”
“No!” Xenon answered, no longer chirring, but roaring. “This is unacceptable.”
“Yes, this is why I was sent. To help you manage your flame during this process, but...”
His eyes went back to the spot where Golden Son had stood, then returned his gaze to Xenon. “Why did he call you by fatherly title?”
Xenon didn’t answer. But his flame turned a cold, cold red.
“Is he…?” The red drakkon shook his head as if the possibility were beyond his comprehension. “Are you his sire? What did you do? What kind of experiments have you run to create such a thing?”
Xenon did not answer.
“I must report this to The Royal Overlord. You realize that, yes? How could you done it? Mix drakkon seed with that of the hunting beasts? It is highly unethical. It is si—”
The Therapist never finished his sentence because Xenon threw himself at the red drakkon with an ear-piercing screech.
20
It was a fight the Far Travelers would talk about long after both the Great Wolf Mother and the Great Serpent King were gone from their lands. For years to come, they would tell of the red serpent demon landing in their village. Of the fight that happened after. Glorious and terrifying.
But as for Fensa, she witnessed none of it.
She, too, had dashed toward the glacier station entrance, though not nearly as fast on her human feet as Xenon had been in his dragon form. But before she could reach the light at the end of the tunnel, a s
mall body hit hers, its arms wrapping around her waist.
“Go back, Mama!” came her son’s human voice. “Papa say lock us in lab. He no like red dragon.”
So she’d been right about another dragon landing outside the glacier they called home. And it didn’t sound like he was a friend.
Fensa wanted to argue with Eos. As the daughter of a Viking, she felt terrible about leaving her mate to fight an enemy by himself. And a dragon enemy at that.
But she’d seen what a dragon was capable of when she pulled that spear out of Xenon’s eye. She’d also grown up listening to her father’s drunken fireside tales about the slaughter of his family.
Also, there was her son to consider.
The one her mate had named when she’d been too out of it to do herself. Later, she’d find out it was a tradition on Xenon’s planet for the males to name their children. Not because of some lame patriarchal ideal, but because most often mothers didn’t survive childbirth.
“Aurumessssss Eosssss,” Xenon had called him in his strange language as he handed her to him to nurse. And she found she loved the name, immediately adopting it as if she’d come up with it herself.
So Eos he was, even after Xenon explained more than once that he hadn’t named their child. What she’d heard was their son’s title: Aurumessssss Eosssss, or Golden Son. “And half a title at best” the way she said it.
But she called him Eos anyway. And her love for the name translated smoothly into her love for the child. Which is why she did as her mate commanded: she ran with Eos into the station lab, quickly locking them both inside.
There they held one another on top of Eos’s bed of polar bear furs, listening with wide eyes to the conversation raging outside. It was an argument. Fensa could tell, even if she couldn’t understand the collection of shrieks and hisses that made up Xenon’s language. The shrill back and forth screeches cut through the air like giant chainsaws.
Eos did his best to translate, but he was only two. He understood little of what the two dragons were yelling at each other. Only that it had something to do with him, the son who had been so eager to meet a new dragon.
A new red dragon.
That color detail would haunt Fensa for a long time to come.
Meanwhile, the argument outside soon ended in an unearthly scream. Followed by the heavy THWUMPS of huge dragon wings displacing air.
And that was the last they heard from either dragon before, a few minutes later, the entire structure shook with a popping boom. It would take her months of listening and re-listening to the Far Travelers’ fireside retelling to realize the sound had been an explosion. An honest to God explosion like those she used to see all the time in human action movies.
But in the moments following the sound, neither she nor Eos had a clue what they had just heard. Only the certainty that one of the dragons had not survived.
“Wolf Mama?” Eos whimpered, curling his head into her chest.
“Sshh, it will be okay,” she answered, even as her heart beat thunderously.
Even as she whimpered inside for her sister Ola’s comforting presence. She may have been a delusion, but she could always be counted on for support when Fensa hit rock bottom.
But Ola only visited Fensa in her dreams now.
“We have to be strong,” Fensa said. To both Eos and herself.
Then the glacier shook with the familiar muted cannon sound of a dragon setting down outside. But behind the sealed lab door, she couldn’t tell if it was her dragon or the other.
The sound of heavy footsteps followed. A dragon. One who hadn’t bothered to shift, as Xenon always did before he entered the station.
Fensa’s instinct to run was strong. However, reason prevailed. The lab was encoded, so only members of their family could enter. If the wrong dragon had won the fight, he wouldn’t be able to get in. Maybe. She’d learned the hard way that nothing was infallible. Everything that could be hacked had...and security doors were little more than constructs, installed to make the people inside feel safe.
The dragon footsteps were getting closer.
“Mama…” Eos whimpered again, this time not bothering with the “Wolf” part of her title. A sign that his human—not his wolf or dragon—was currently in the driver’s seat of his terrified brain.
“We have to be strong,” Fensa whispered again, holding her son even tighter as they waited to discover who was on the other side of the door.
A long pause. And then the doors slid open to reveal…
…Xenon in his humanoid form.
“Quickly…gather your things. Yours and Golden Son’s,” he pushed into her head without preamble or explanation. “We will begin the journey to Arizona at sunrise.”
21
Fire and ice…
Damianos hissed when he saw the burnt husk as he approached Zone 7. The remains were far too charred and mangled to identify, but they were most likely that of the Mission Therapist. His father had opted to send the red drakkon to deliver the news to the Prince of Drakkon about their impending departure. A necessary intervention, the Royal Overlord had told the only drakkon cleared to ignore the Prince’s solitude ban. Meanwhile, Damianos had planted a micro-bomb in his bag. Set to go off precisely twenty minutes after the drakkon landed in Zone 7.
The bomb should have killed them both. Conveniently framing the Mission Therapist as an operative for the spoiled king. The plan had been near fool proof, with little chance of escape for either drakkon.
Yet Damianos only found one body on the ice.
Again he hissed. He knew he should have come sooner. Two moons had been far too long to wait. But Blue Father had pointed out it would look less suspicious if Damianos waited until the day of the Rendezvous, and then was sent by the Royal Overlord to “check” what was keeping the Mission Therapist and the Prince. Otherwise, there might be questions as to why Damianos had gone against the Prince’s decree before the day of the rendezvous.
But it would seem his investigation had come too late. Where the Zone 7 station once stood, there was now only a mound of melted ice. Glittering, and glowing blue under the high sun. Perhaps the bomb had gone off inside the station, somehow throwing the Therapist’s body?
However, that small flame of hope died upon further study of the rubble. The mound was far too small to house a drakkon underneath its melted waste. Which meant while Xenon’s lab had been destroyed, Xenon himself might very well be alive. There was also the question of what had happened to the Group 7 wolves who, according to one of Xenon’s reports, had—against his wishes—set up their camp outside his glacier, and declared him their king.
Damianos downshifted his tail, pulling his body upright so he could stay aloft as he scanned the area.
No heat signatures to the south or the east…or the west. But wait…in the distance, to the north…he spotted a large patch of orange, six or seven wing beats away.
Damianos aimed himself in that direction, flapping hard as he bore down on his prey.
So it was etched. He would need to do this the difficult way. Kill the Prince himself, and figure out how to pin it on the red drakkon afterward. The glacier was long gone, and the cameras had not worked for over two solars. That meant there was no longer any way to track what happened in Zone 7. He could do whatever he wanted to Xenon. Kill him, and return to tell the tale of the turncoat healer with no one the wiser—
He stopped short once more, his triumph dying a quick death inside his stomach.
The orange flames belonged not to the Prince’s Far Traveler tribe, but to an even dumber herd. A pack of steppe bison.
With a growl of frustration, Damianos scoured the entire zone. There was specific protocol in place regarding which anthro and lupin groups should be allowed to see them or know of their existence. But in the hours during which he searched, Damianos cared not who saw him. These hominids would once again be deemed meat upon their return to Drakkon, in any case.
But they could not return to their home wi
thout the Prince. For without a body, he and his father would have no explanation for why they would leave a member of the royal court behind to return to Drakkon. No, Xenon’s corpse had to be found. There was no way around it.
However, his cousin was nowhere to be found. Damianos spent the next two days scouring the ice sheet for him, but alas…nothing.
And so he was forced to return to the remaining mission team, still gathered at the Zone 6 station. Upon landing, he found a camp of sorts. A collection of the small rovers the team had used to transport their equipment and few possessions to the Zone 6 Rendezvous point. These rovers should have already been loaded onto the shuttle. But the failure of the Prince to arrive on the assigned day had made it necessary to start living out of the small vehicles, since the shuttle was only meant for short transport, and had no living quarters. From what Damianos could see, many of the drakkon team had reshelled to fit more comfortably inside their small vehicles/less-than-ideal lodging.
Damianos’ solo return was greeted with much lament. Lament that turned to despair when Damianos told them of the Therapist—who had apparently been an anti-Royal agent—and the vanished prince. There was some chance, he told the drakkon (and himself), that the betrayer’s bomb had thrown the Prince into the sea, but they could not return to Drakkon without knowing for certain.
And so did the mission drakkon turn their efforts to search for the Prince across land and sea. They found him in neither place, however. And there was even worse news. Apparently, the Prince had not only disappeared but removed the trackers from Experiment Group 7. Which meant the Prince was hiding. Perhaps among the lupin.
“I do not understand,” one of the drakkon said when they gathered again nearly a moon of fruitless searching later. “Did he think we were all in on the Therapist’s plot? Is he hiding from all of us?”
“Perhaps,” Damianos allowed, intensely aware of his flame. The less he said, the less risk of exposure. “Which makes it even more important to find him. We must continue our search. Find him, and reassure him we are here to help.”
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 31