by Lili Zander
But I do notice the black-haired man walk toward me.
Felicity was right. The men are shapeshifters who can turn into dragons. What had Raiht’vi called them? Draekons.
Roman’s voice sounds in my head, cool and crisp. Agent Buckner, what are your conclusions?
I mentally snap to attention. The female scientist seemed afraid of the Draekons. She’s warned me about them. From that, I conclude that the shapeshifters are feared by the general Zorahn populace.
Good. What else?
The Draekons took us but left the two Zorahn scientists behind on the spaceship. There’s no love lost between the Zorahn and the Draekon.
Roman steeples his fingers together. That’s an obvious conclusion, he says coolly. I expect more from you, Olivia.
I’m aware I’m hallucinating, and my boss is back on Earth, but staying focused on my mission keeps the pain at bay.
The Zorahn call this planet the prison planet. The Draekons recognized Raiht’vi and both Zorahn and Draekon speak the same language. Hypothesis: The Zorahn have imprisoned these men on this planet.
Roman fades into nothing before I can find out what he thinks of my theory. The dragon I’m riding crouches low to the ground, and the black-haired man puts his hands around my waist and gently lifts me off. “You’re badly wounded,” he says unsmilingly, setting me on the ground. Rummaging through his pack, he pulls out a small bottle and unstoppers it. “Drink this. It will ease the pain until we can get you to the med-kit.”
Trust no one. Especially the Draekons.
For a split-second, Raiht’vi’s warning makes me hesitate, then rational thought takes over. If the Draekons want to kill me, one swipe of the dragon-claws will do the trick. There’s no need to poison me.
With a mutter of thanks, I take the bottle from the dark-haired Draekon and lift it to my lips.
I need a plan.
Step 1: Fix my broken leg. The Draekon mentioned a med-kit. If these Draekons possess even a fraction of the obviously superior Zorahn technology, their med-kit will mend the break in no time. That’s good, because right now, even a newborn kitten is stronger than I am.
Step 2: Find the others. Viola, Harper, Ryanna, and Sofia are somewhere out there, looking for food and water. I’ve got to get them to safety.
Then there are the two Zorahn scientists. Raiht’vi and Beirax are still alive, back on the Fehrat 1. They’re not my responsibility, but I can’t let them drown either.
Step 3: Figure out how to stay alive. The Zorahn went through a lot of effort to recruit their lab rats. They’ll definitely rescue us. We just have to survive for the next couple of weeks.
My thoughts seem clearer now. It’s the drink. Blissful numbness is spreading through my leg. “Thank you,” I say gratefully. No matter what Raiht’vi might think of them, so far, the Draekons have acted with nothing other than integrity. I’m not ready to join hands with them and sing Kumbaya, but I’m also not going to treat them like the enemy. “My name is Olivia.”
He nods coolly. “You can call me Liorax.” His tone is impatient, and he avoids looking at me. Not a fan, then.
The other man approaches me as well, his hazel eyes thoughtful and assessing. “I’m Zunix und Kalox ab Mamarce,” he says. His lips twist into a bitter smile. “Welcome to the prison planet.” He lifts his head and addresses the others. “Gather around. We are near our camp, but before we go there, you will need some information.”
The four women crowd around the three of us. Bryce doesn’t look cowed in the slightest, but Paige and Felicity are clinging to each other, and May looks like she’s about five minutes from losing her mind. “What do you know about the Draekons?” Zunix asks.
Everyone looks blank.
He doesn’t look surprised. “Very well. A short history lesson. A thousand years ago, the scientists of Zorahn created a captive race of soldiers called the Draekon, men who possessed the ability to transform into dragons. However, the Draekons were unwilling to stay slaves. They rebelled, and in response, the High Empire decreed that any man found with the ability to transform into dragons would be exiled to the prison planet.” He looks around at everyone. “Liorax and I have been here for sixty-five years.”
What the…? They look thirty. Tops.
The other women look just as shocked by their revelation as I do, but none of us have any time to process it because Zunix keeps talking. “I must warn you,” he says quietly. “There are no women on this planet. To the men in our camp, you will be something of a miracle.”
“A miracle?” Bryce lifts her chin up. “Or a possession?”
Liorax shakes his head. “No one will take you by force,” he says. “It is a capital sin on the homeworld. But you will be the center of attention. You will be wooed. That cannot be helped.”
“And,” Zunix adds, “It might be wise to take a mate. This is a harsh and dangerous world, and life is difficult here. A mate will protect you.”
“I don’t understand,” May says, blinking in confusion. “You’re speaking as if we’re stuck here, but we’re not. We’re under the protection of the High Emperor Lenox. We’re not prisoners. We’re going to get rescued.”
“High Emperor Lenox?” Liorax sounds disbelieving. “How is that possible? Even if High Emperor Dravex is dead, Arax is Firstborn, not Lenox.”
Zunix gives May a genuinely sympathetic look. “I’m sorry. This is going to be difficult to hear, I know, but there’s no rescue possible. An asteroid belt surrounds the planet. No ship gets through unscathed, and even if one did, getting out would be near-impossible.” He pauses. “This is your new home.”
Figure out how to stay alive.
Fuck. Step 3 just got a whole lot harder.
Zunix:
I watch Olivia as I make my announcement.
The human women are shaken, my mate included, when they find out that there is no escape from the prison planet. But their reactions differ.
Two of the women collapse into a weeping heap. The injured one faints to the ground. Even the one who rode Liorax, unafraid, looks distraught.
Olivia, on the other hand? For a heartbeat, her eyes narrow, as if she’s listing her options and running through them, figuring out what to do next, but the reaction is gone so quickly that I wonder if I imagined it. Her eyes well up with tears, and she emits a loud cry. “But what about my luggage?” she wails. “My make-up, my pretty dresses… It’s all back on the ship.”
She’s concerned about her belongings? That’s… disappointing. For an instant, I’d hoped that she would be a worthy conquest. A woman I could pit my wits against. A woman around who I could drop my guards.
But my dragon is a mindless beast, and it has chosen poorly.
The other women give her looks of barely concealed disgust. “Your clothes? That’s what you can think about right now? For fuck’s sake, Olivia.”
“Ignore her,” another woman says in a low voice. “She’s got the IQ of a pea. I bet you she’ll wrap some poor sap around her fingers soon enough.”
If Olivia hears them, she gives no sign of it. Her green eyes glisten with tears, and her breasts heave with distress.
I can’t take my eyes off those breasts. They’re beautiful, large and round. I want to cup them, squeeze them, massage them, rub my shaft between them. My cock hardens at the thought of her red lips wrapped around me, her crimson hair draped over my chest as we pleasure each other.
I will bed Olivia, of course. I will not deny my dragon. She is a tool to be exploited. The ability to transform at will is too valuable a skill to be left unclaimed. And she will be easily wooed. I know her type. Some fruit, some flowers, soft sheets, and delicate meat, and she will be mine.
But I will not be hers. I am a product of my training. I will always be a spy. Mates are weakness, and my heart will remain shielded.
I will provide for her, I tell myself, soothing my conscience. I will give her every comfort I can. She will lack for nothing.
A trickle of guilt
runs through me. No matter what I might tell myself, I’m using the human woman. What I’m doing isn’t right or fair to Olivia.
4
Olivia:
For a split-second, I imagined Zunix’s eyes on me, wary and assessing, and I wondered if he was onto me. Then his gaze shifted to my breasts.
Insert eye-roll.
When it comes to my 34DD breasts, some things seem universal. Human or alien, guys can’t keep their eyes off the knockers.
Ignoring my faint stab of disappointment, I smile to myself. Zunix is entirely predictable. He’ll be easy to manipulate.
On the other hand, I don’t have much of a read on Liorax. He doesn’t seem to like me very much. Why? I’m inclined to blame the ditz act. I’m whining about clothes, for fuck’s sake. No wonder Felicity thinks I’m as smart as the average pea. Then again, he seemed terse even before I collapsed into tears at the thought of my missing make-up.
I like to know what makes people tick, and so far, Liorax is a mystery to me.
The two Draekons give us a few minutes to absorb the news, then they indicate that we need to be on our way. “Once the sun sets, the detsena will overrun the ground and will eat everything in their path. We must reach camp before that happens.”
I have no idea what the detsena are, and I don’t really care to find out. I’ve lived in the DC metro area my entire life. I’m a city girl through and through. I can rough it, of course—agency training is rigorous—but on balance, the further away I am from wildlife, the happier I get.
Zunix hoists me on his shoulders, taking care not to jostle my left leg. He leads the way. The other women follow, Liorax bringing up the rear. We leave our clearing and plunge through the thickly wooded forest. In less than half an hour, we arrive at our destination.
The camp.
I don’t know what I expected to see. A bunch of tents, I guess, though, in retrospect, that wouldn’t have made sense given the detsena, whatever they are.
But we’re in another massive clearing, the size of four football fields. Enclosing us are tall trees, towering so high that I can’t quite see their tops. Halfway up their mammoth trunks are clustered a handful of small houses, built into the branches of the trees themselves.
I look around from my position in Zunix’s arms, making mental notes for a mission I might not return from. Twelve Draekons emerge from the treehouses and make their way to us.
As they near, I see their faces. None of the twelve look especially happy to see Liorax and Zunix, but when their eyes fall on us, their expressions turn awed. “Prepare yourself,” Liorax mutters under his breath. “It’s about to begin.”
He’s right. The moment we’re spotted, the Draekons move so fast that they’re a blur. In seconds, we’re surrounded by them, their gazes avid and greedy. I feel their desire in the air, and I’m grateful Zunix warned us about what to expect.
A bare-chested man with long blonde hair, his face covered with stubble, steps forward. “Zunix, you have many talents, but this time, you’ve outdone yourself.” He bows deeply to us. “It is an honor to receive visitors,” he says. “My name is Dariux. Welcome to our humble home.”
His words are polite enough, but his eyes tell a different story. For a brief second, his expression is covetous, so covetous that it makes me uncomfortable. Then his face settles into bitter lines.
Zunix opens his mouth to say something, but before he can form words, the air stills. Shudders run through several of the Draekons that surround us, a shudder I remember from earlier today.
They’re about to change into dragons.
Zunix and Blondie both clue in at the same time. “To the trees,” Zunix cries out. Blondie—Dariux—grabs May and Paige by the shoulders and pushes them to the safety of the forest. Liorax does the same to Felicity. Bryce, a half-step ahead of the other women, has already come to the same conclusion Zunix and Dariux have, and she runs full-tilt toward the nearest treehouse.
Zunix hasn’t put me down. Shock waves of pain radiate from my leg as he speeds toward cover. “There are too many of them,” he says as he runs, not sounding the slightest bit winded, even though he’s been carrying me for more than the last thirty minutes, and I’ve got more than my fair share of curves. “I thought another pair might shift when they saw you, but I hadn’t planned for eight.”
I’m missing something. What do we have to do with the shift?
We watch from the safety of the forest as eight of the Draekons crouch to the ground. I barely know where to look. Bones shatter. Skin tears. Vertebrae become spikes, and wings emerge from their backs. The Draekons who haven’t shifted take shelter along with us, their gazes openly envious as they watch their companions transform.
When the dust settles, eight massive dragons stand in the clearing.
Liorax moves next to us. “Belfox and Herrix transformed when they saw Olivia,” he says to Zunix, his voice pitched low.
“I know.” Zunix sounds grim.
“Do they mean to lay claim to our mate?”
Hold on one second. What the everlasting fuck is this ‘our mate’ bullshit? I’m tempted to ask, but for the moment, both men seem to have forgotten I exist, even though I’m still in Zunix’s arms. In fact, I might as well be furniture, for all the attention they’re paying me.
“I don’t know,” Zunix replies. “We can’t take on the entire camp. Not yet. Not until the bond is complete.” He takes a deep breath. “For the moment, we’re going to have to play along.”
I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but something tells me I’m not going to like the answer when I find out.
Liorax:
On the homeworld, Dariux and Zunix were assistants to the Spymaster. Despite that, I trust Zunix.
Dariux, on the other hand? Not so much.
For sixty-five years, Dariux has brooded. In the High Empire, he had power and prestige. Exile stripped all that away from him.
The true worth of a man isn’t measured by how he reacts during times of plenty. It is measured by how he reacts during times of adversity.
Dariux has turned bitter. He’s sown discord among us. Like Zunix, he managed to use his network of contacts to arrange a tech drop on the prison planet, but he’s hoarded his tools jealously.
And now, things are about to get worse. Dariux considers Zunix his rival. I saw the envy in his eyes when eight Draekons transformed. When he finds out Zunix shifted as well…
We have a claim to Olivia, but so do Belfox and Herrix. Dariux is going to be called on to resolve this dispute, and I don’t trust him to be fair.
The dragons howl and growl and roar, but the first transformation doesn’t hold for long. In a matter of minutes, every one of them has shifted back, and they all crowd around us, jostling for access to the humans.
The women shrink back in fear, and Dariux notices their reaction. “Enough,” he shouts, his voice carrying through the clearing. “You are frightening our guests. We are not savages. Step back.”
Then again, maybe I’ve judged Dariux too harshly.
I took everything I could find from the ship on the principle that any technology would make our life on this harsh planet easier. Rummaging through the pack I’m carrying, I hand Dariux a translator. When he sees it, his eyes snap to me. “How much?”
“Consider it a gift.” Not everything needs to be bartered for. There were many spare translators on the wreck, and I’m happy to share. It will ease the women’s transition.
Belfox and Herrix push their way through the other Draekons. “She’s our mate,” Belfox roars, his hands clenched into fists. “Put her down, Zunix.”
“Make me,” he replies calmly.
“Enough,” Dariux snaps again. He bows to the women. “My apologies,” he says smoothly. “This must all seem very confusing to you.”
“Why did he call Olivia his mate?” This is one of the human women, the one with the broken hand. Her voice has a definite quaver in it. “What’s going on? He said,” she points to Zunix, �
��that we’d be safe.”
Actually, what he’d said was that they wouldn’t be taken by force, which is a very different thing.
Dariux gives Zunix an amused look. “Did he?” he asks wryly. “How very gallant of him.” His eyes soften somewhat when they rest on the clearly terrified women. “Allow me to explain. We are Draekons, men with the ability to become dragons.”
Zunix rolls his eyes. “I told them that already,” he says impatiently.
“But you didn’t mention the mating bond,” Dariux guesses, his eyes taking in the protective way he’s cradling Olivia. “You didn’t want to frighten her? That’s rather considerate of you, Zunix.”
My hands clench into fists. Dariux is deliberately provoking us, but I need him alive. The med-kit is keyed to him, and he’s the only one who can operate it. The effects of the rubra leaves are wearing off, and Olivia is pale again, her face pinched with pain.
She is our mate, my dragon growls. Help her.
She taps my shoulder. “Liorax,” she murmurs, “the effects of the magic juice you gave me are wearing off. You wouldn’t happen to have any more, would you?”
A sudden surge of sympathy runs through me. She’s badly hurt, but she hasn’t voiced a single complaint as we trekked through the woods. I fish another bottle of the rubra and hold it to her berry-red lips.
Belfox and Herrix see the intimate gesture, and both men step forward aggressively. “She’s ours,” Herrix insists. “We turned into dragons when we saw her. Isn’t that what the legends say? When a pair of draekons first sees their mate, it brings forth the transformation.”
The others nod. “We did too,” Rezzix says. “When we saw that woman.” He points to a different human. “We demand a chance to claim our mates.”
“Are you animals?” I snarl, rage coursing through my blood. “You stupid fools. Their ship has crashed on this planet, and they’ve just learned that they’re stuck on the prison planet for the rest of their lives. They’ve lost their homes. Their families. Do you remember what that feels like?” I glare at them in turn—Belfox, Herrix, Rezzix, Magnux, Luddux, Yasix, Thesix, and Xanthox—and they have the grace to look ashamed. “Give them some room to breathe.”