by Maia Starr
Then I lucked out. “Terik Vuna. Land Sentinel,” I read out loud. I looked up at the photo and my mouth fell open once more, but for a different reason. This Drackon was gorgeous. His jet black hair fell past his ears and his stubble beard was rugged on his square jaw. His brown eyes were soulful, even with the unusual vertical cat like pupil. He looked strong and youthful, but mature. In all, he was perfect and I quickly wrote down his information on my sheet in the number one choice. I didn’t really understand what a Land Sentinel did but it obviously had something to do with the land of Mooreah and that was exactly what I needed. I suddenly felt a tinge of guilt as I thought about betraying this gorgeous Drackon in front of me in order to study flagion. But maybe I would luck out and he would be just as infuriatingly irritating as Mordikye.
Beep. Beep. I looked at the screen. Ten minutes was left on the counter. “Shit!” I quickly scrolled through and picked out one more Drackon, a warrior. I felt like I couldn’t really fill out all five places. So I moved Mordikye up to the second spot on the list and the Drackon warrior into the third spot.
“Time is up,” the screen flashed and then went dark. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to pick a Drackon husband. “Is this your first time registering?” a lady asked as she came to my station.
“Yes, it is,” I responded as I stood up from the chair and grabbed my pages.
“Then you will need to be photographed. You can hand me your choices,” she said.
I handed her my choices page feeling really anxious. I couldn’t change my choices after I gave it to her. It was such a final thing.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Adriana Adams,” I said. She looked the page over and then said, “It all looks good. This way to photography.”
I followed her out of the dark room back into the massive warehouse. “You see that sign that says I.D. on the wall,” she pointed across the room.
“Yes.”
“That is where you will go. Take your I.D. labels with you. That is your last stop. Good luck,” she said.
I quickly moved across the massive room to the I.D. station to find another line. I got in line and waited another hour before finally making it to the top. There was a wall of mirrors where women were prepping their hair and applying lipstick.
“Well, can’t hurt,” I said pulling lip gloss out of my bag and applying a fresh coat. I plumped up my hair and straightened my dress. I hated getting photos taken of myself. “That’s as good as it’s going to get,” I whispered to myself.
“Next! Hand me your I.D. page and then step on the X on the floor,” the lady shouted at me. I moved quickly to hand her my page. She scanned it with a red light. I looked at the X on the floor and noticed that my I.D. name and number where now projected on the blue screen. I stepped in front of it on the X mark and stood tall. I smiled my brightest smile. “Ready in three. One, two, three.”
Flash! My photo was taken. “Now turn to your right,” she said. I suddenly realized this was probably a full body shot. I turned to my right and stuck my chest out and arched my back. She counted down again, then Flash!
“You’re done. Next!”
“But how soon will I know?” I asked.
“I’m just the photographer. You’ll have to go to the information desk for general questions. Next!”
I sighed, as I had already seen the very long lines at the information desk. No thank you. I was done with the registration chaos. I needed to get out of there. I didn’t know if this would even work, considering I only picked three choices.
I moved out into the hallway where a group of women were waiting for the elevators. Great, another line. Ping. The doors opened and women scurried in, at capacity. Then another elevator opened and the same thing happened. Now I was the only one waiting for the elevators, but I could see another group of women down the hall making their way to the elevators. Ping. The elevator opened and I quickly stepped in. As I did so I saw that two Drackon occupied it, and one of them was Mordikye. I gasped. I was caught off guard. I thought about stepping off, but the doors closed.
I felt the warmth of breath on my neck. “You. Human. What is your name?” Mordikye said, from behind me. I took a deep breath and turned to face him. I turned and faced his strong chest. I tilted my head back and looked up at his chiseled face. I felt my whole body go warm from the heat these two Drackon were giving off.
“Why do you want to know? I’m a weak female, remember?” I said angrily, throwing in his face what he had said to me earlier.
He laughed and said, “Yes, physically weak, but spirited inside.” His eyebrows arched as he looked down at me and took a step forward. I took a step back. He was ominous. “Hmmph. If that is supposed to scare me, it doesn’t.” I said, crossing my arms across my chest. He looked at the other Drackon and they both laughed. I only narrowed my eyes at their outburst.
“I must know your name, human,” Mordikye said again.
“Adriana Adams,” I said.
“Did you register?” he asked.
“Yes, I did, but that is none of your business sir,” I said as I poked him in the chest with my finger as though I was chiding a child. I almost hurt my finger doing it. His chest felt like steel.
Mordikye looked at the other Drackon warrior, who nodded his head as though he understood what Mordikye’s look meant. I did not.
Ping. The elevator door opened to the lobby. I stepped off and took a few steps and then turned to give Mordikye a piece of my mind, but they were not behind me. I saw the elevator doors close and realized that they had not stepped out. My heart was beating so fast. Now that I was free to react to the encounter I let it all out. A hard breath escaped my mouth as though I had been holding my breath. I put my hand on my chest and leaned against the wall. I wasn’t having a panic attack exactly, it was just an unexpected encounter. I had never been alone with two dragon shifters before. It was a very intense situation to be in, especially when they were antagonizing me. But what I could not get off my mind was just how hard his body was when I touched it. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought that he had a metal plate under his shirt. I had never touched an alien before and it was not what I was expecting. I was intrigued. I wondered what else on his body was rock hard. I smiled as I gathered myself together and thought that filthy thought. I was a woman after all. I was allowed to be sexual. I walked with confidence, swaying my hips as I left the building. Maybe this flagion mission would be dangerous but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun with it and indulge. I strutted all the way back to my hotel.
“What happened? What did they say?” Richard asked as soon as I walked in. I had been daydreaming about Mordikye’s hard body so deeply my entire walk back to the hotel that I almost forgot that Richard was in the hotel waiting for me. “Fuck, that took hours. What the hell did they have you do?” he rambled on.
“It was chaos. I stood in so many lines for so many hours. It’s a whole process. You know, it’s not as easy as I thought it would be. You have to pick five Drackon and those Drackon are shown your photo with all the other women that have chosen them that week and they choose from that stack. It’s possible I might not be matched this round. I was talking to a woman who had been through the process five times already and is still not matched!”
“What? No, we can’t wait that long,” Richard said, shocked by the bureaucracy of it all.
“Well, there’s not much I myself can do about it. We just have to wait. Maybe I’ll get lucky,” I said, winking at him. Richard didn’t lighten up. He was anxiously pacing back and forth.
“What are you doing? Sit down. There’s nothing we can do,” I said. as I opened one of those miniature tequila bottles from the bar.
“We’re not the only ones,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I said, shooting down the tequila straight. I needed a little something to take the edge off after my run in with the dragon.
“Xander Black approached another with the sam
e proposition. He said whoever is able to get a Drackon arrangement first would be the ones to get the flagion study exclusive.”
“What?! Why didn’t you say this before?” I asked.
“Because he said he was giving us a first shot before approaching anyone else. I thought you would be on your way to being a Drackon wife before he even had a chance to find another geology team. I didn’t think it was important, but now that you say it could take months or even years to get a match, I’m worried.”
“Shit,” I said as I sat down and finished off the small bottle. We were screwed.
I was worried then, but the next day my worry vanished and became panic.
Ring! Ring! The phone rang as I sat drinking my morning coffee while Richard was in the shower.
“Hello? This is she,” I said over the phone, expecting that it was the front desk.
“Who is it, Adriana?” Richard asked toweling off his wet hair.
“Okay. I’ll be right down,” I hung up the phone and looked at Richard with wide eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It was the registration office. They have a match for me. They want me to come down right away. They said it was the fastest match in the registration office’s history.”
“That’s great!” Richard shouted. My heart sank to my stomach. It was all really happening. I knew exactly whom I had been matched with. There was only one Drackon that could have been available so quickly to make a decision like that.
Chapter 2
CAPTAIN MORDIKYE NEZIS
Being captain of my own ship and battalion was what I had strived for. My ship was known as the Beti, and it was a fast cargo ship. It was the fastest cargo ship that the Drackon had in its fleet. But after a few years of being a captain, it wasn't enough. I needed more. I wanted more wealth and power. That is why two years before I had volunteered to go to Earth for trade. King Jarith wanted peaceful trade with Earth because, more than a decade before, he had married a human female and made her the Drackon queen. She had much influence on his decisions, and so trade operations began with the human planet of Earth. However, I considered this cargo trade boring. The Drackon traded engineering techniques and building materials to make Earth cleaner and in return Earth allowed more of its female population to register as potential mates. Therefore I would bring a cargo of engineering greatness from Mooreah to Earth and in return, bring back a cargo full of human females to Mooreah. I thought Earth was getting the better deal. So after a year of following the rules and being a good captain I decided to take matters into my own hands. I stayed longer on Earth and found a black market trade in the form of an element the Earthlings called plutonium. Just a small amount was worth a great amount of wealth to certain Drackon as well as other aliens in our galaxy. It was exactly what I had needed to advance my power and wealth.
I did not understand what all the uproar was about concerning the human females. Why were they considered such high value that they equaled what we were giving the humans on Earth? I had questioned this until I saw the King’s son with my own eyes a few months before, when I made a trip to Cerista to meet with the king himself at the castle. Prince Caspin was unlike anything I had ever seen. The youngling was twelve years of age and was the product and offspring of the human female Queen Marissa and our King Jarith. He was just as strong and fast as an adult Drackon, yet he was still a youngling. He was of a different color than most adult Drackon. He had scales that were tricolored in blue, green, and silver. The colors seemed to blend and bleed together on his scales. I had never seen scales that color before, though I had heard about the offspring between human females and Drackon warriors. When I first saw Prince Caspin shifted into weredragon form, he was flying high over the castle and diving at fast speeds. It was unlike any maneuvering I had ever seen. I had assumed that diluting the blood of the Drackon with human would create a weak Drackon, but I was wrong. Instead, it created a very strong and unusual breed of weredragon. After seeing Prince Caspin, I too wanted this breed of offspring.
That is why on my return to Earth to do the cargo trade and pick up the black market plutonium, I decided to take a few extra days to go to the registration office and find my own human female bride. Since I was already on earth, I did not feel the need to go through the long process that the other Drackon had to go through in order to match with the human female. I could just pick one out myself in person.
When we arrived at the registration building in the large military trucks that the earth government allowed us to utilize while visiting the planet, I was surprised by what we saw. When we stepped out of the vehicles there was a long line of human females wrapped around the building. It was a very delicious sight. We were overwhelmed with multiple pheromone scents hitting us all at once. I was turned on instantly. I felt my staff harden as we walked toward the entrance. There were so many females. It was erotic. They all looked at us with admiration, as was appropriate. I was something to be admired as a strong Drackon captain. They should be losing their breath and swooning over me. I was worth the effort.
Then a few pages crossed my path and I noticed the female chasing after them. I grabbed them for the weakling. She needed the help. When she looked up at me her beauty struck me. Her skin was delicate and contrasted with her dark black hair. Human eyes intrigued me and hers were brown. But she was obviously weak if she could not hold onto a couple of pages in the wind. She was not good stock to have my offspring. I needed a strong human female.
Our brief exchange was interesting and she was fiery with a lot of spirit as she called herself a geologist, whatever that meant. I quickly dismissed her and moved inside the registration office to meet with a counselor to find me a human female wife quickly.
But it was only after meeting with the counselor and picking out a few females from a group that she brought in to meet me that I actually decided on one. We were in the elevator ready to leave the registration office when the weakling human female from the courtyard stepped in. I was immediately overwhelmed by her scent. I inhaled sharply and knew in that moment that I had to have her.
She said her name was Adriana Adams and that she had registered today. I looked at Lieutenant Rix and he knew exactly what I meant. I wanted this one. I had made up my mind. When she stepped off the elevator we returned to the counselor’s office and made the arrangements. When the counselor pulled up Adriana Adam's file I was astonished to know that she had also chosen me. Luckily we were a match and this was going to be more fun than I had expected. Now I was on my ship with a cargo full of human females, plutonium, and my future wife.
"Lieutenant Rix, bring my future wife to me," I said, as I sat down ready to eat a meal on my spaceship Beti.
"Yes Captain Mordikye," he said as he left my sight.
It had been two days since leaving earth and I had been preoccupied with the mission. Now, I finally had some time to be able to get to know the human female that would carry my offspring, this Adriana Adams, as she called herself.
"You asked for me?" She said as she walked in.
"Yes Adriana, I did. I would like you to have a meal with me, the first of many."
She sat down at the table quietly. A plate and drink were sat in front of her while she was looking at me up-and-down. She was sizing me up, and there was a lot of me to size.
"How long is the trip to Mooreah?" she asked, while taking a drink.
"We will be there in a week. But we are not going to Mooreah," I said pouring more drink in her cup. It would loosen her up.
Her eyes grew wide as she said "What do you mean, we're not going to Mooreah? Where are we going?"
"We are going to Sala. It is the neighboring planet to Mooreah. It is where I spend most of my time as it is the fleet’s port and I am a ship captain. In fact, I spend most of my time in space. You will spend most of your time in my quarters on Sala, unless I want to take you with me on my cargo missions."
"You mean I am not to live on a Mooreah? The registration office di
d not mention that to me in choosing you. This is unbelievable!"
"Calm yourself, human female. What does it matter which planet you live on? You wanted a Drackon husband, and now you shall have one," I said, eyeing her suspiciously. I did not expect to have this conflict about her living situation. It was a surprise to me. It was unusual.
"It is just that I had my heart set on living on Mooreah. I think it would be more enjoyable than Sala, from what I have heard about it."
"The living quarters are much the same on both the planets and I am sure that you will find them agreeable," I said to her while crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair. This was not what I was expecting when I invited her to dinner. I thought we would eat a good meal, get a light buzz from drink, and perhaps initiate some contact. I was on a ship full of human females that were ready to be taken by a Drackon warrior; who were practically begging for it. But my chosen female was giving me argument and conflict over a minor detail.