And I look up at the man who’s collared me, my eyes full of betrayal. “Akwasi, why?”
“I don’t know,” he answers. His eyes are wide with fear. “I do not understand what I am doing!”
“Ola…” A dark, resonant voice calls out to me.
Akwasi and I turn to face the dragon calling my name.
“It is time to go,” Damianos says. Then he opens the old car’s back door. Like it’s a thing already decided.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I answer, my voice so fierce, my throat hits the binding collar with every word.
There comes that pressing sensation again. Then a heavy frown from Damianos. “I see this will be a bit more difficult than I planned.”
“A bit more?” I repeat, rage coursing through me. “If you think I’m getting in that car with you, you’re out your dragon-ass mind.”
The dragon king’s head tilts, like a scientist observing some new species. “Such coarse language,” he says.
“Oh, you think that’s coarse, bitch? I’m about to show you just how rough my Detroit ass can get—” I start to vow.
Damianos cuts me off with one word: “Akwasi.”
Then comes another click.
However, this one is much louder than the small sound of the biocollar snapping around my neck.
I turn to Akwasi, and my heart drops to my feet.
It’s a gun. Akwasi, my shy, and formerly sweet boyfriend has a gun made up of cold and grey metal in his right hand. But he’s not pointing it at me or Damianos. He’s pointing it at himself.
Horror ices through my veins. “What…what are you doing?”
He doesn’t seem to understand. Tears stream from his terrified eyes, even as he pushes the gun’s barrel deeper into the side of his own temple. “I don’t know! I don’t know!”
Behind us, the dark voice repeats, “Get into the car, Ola.”
I can’t understand how or why this is happening. But I immediately know two things: This isn’t Akwasi’s fault, he’s not in control of his body. And…despite not wanting to, he will shoot his own brains out right here in this parking lot if I don’t do as Damianos says.
Funny, everyone thinks I’m such a bitch. There were even articles on WolfNet about whether I was too selfish and abrasive to take over the North Dakota throne.
But I know in this moment, that I’m a good queen. That I would have been a good queen to the North Dakota wolves. Because without hesitation I turn to say to Damianos.
“I’ll get into the car. But you’ve got to let Akwasi go. Whatever hold you have on him, it ends tonight, and you will never use him like this again.”
Damianos studies me, his light brown eyes scanning my resolute face. “You realize I could snap your neck right now. End this negotiation.”
Oh, I realized it all right. Dude has an easy foot on me, like, fuck yo’ heels, Ola! And though I’ve often felt like the largest person in any room I enter, because of my height and weight, the dragon king’s hulk makes me feel like a petite little thing. Easily broken.
But…
“We all die. Even dragons, so my dads tell me. And being loyal as fuck is my thing. Kind of like being creepy as fuck is your thing. So if you’re going to snap my neck, do it. But I promise you, I’m not getting into that car until Akwasi drops that gun.”
The silence…it’s not quiet. It bangs between us, loud as a gong in an old martial arts movie.
Then I hear a clattering sound behind me.
And when I turn to look over my shoulder, Akwasi is sobbing into his empty hands. The gun…oh thank the Fenrir wolf…it’s now lying on the ground.
“Come now, she-wolf,” Damianos says, stepping back to the door. “Do not make either of us regret this negotiation.”
I think about running then. I’m a shifter, with half a brain in her head. Of course, I do. But this is the dragon that made my sister’s formidable mate turned tail and hide. Not easily gotten away from, I sense, especially with a biocollar around my neck. Also, if I try to run, and he catches me, I sense that both Akwasi and I will pay the price.
I remember the vows I made at this morning’s much quieter formal coronation ceremony. The one about protecting my subjects at all costs. Akwasi is my subject, and at the end of the day, I am his queen. The royal who must protect him. No matter what. Also, if I go and Akwasi lives, there’s a chance—a small one—that he’ll be able to get word to my people and send them to rescue me.
Expelling a quick breath, I get into the car.
Damianos closes the door. Like a warden locking me in his cage. A few seconds later, I hear him slip into the right side passenger seat beside me.
I don’t look. I don’t blink. I don’t cry.
I stare straight ahead. Trying my best but then failing not to think the obvious question.
Now that he has me, what is he planning to do with me?
Part II
The Royal Geneticist conceded in his petition that both the anthrohominids and his bio-engineered lupinhominids were primitive and lacked higher intelligence. They were only slightly more evolved—due to their larger brains and capacity for language—than their primate ancestors.
But the lupinhominids, and at least one genus of the anthrohominids, he asserted, had begun developing tools, language, and rudimentary expressions of art. The Royal Geneticist believed both genera had the potential to evolve into two distinct, civilized species, and should therefore no longer be treated by drakkon as mere game and beasts of burden.
The petition had proven vexing for the drakkon planet’s king and Damianos, his Royal Huntmaster.
For various reasons, a few restrictions had been added to the king’s previously unchecked power when the Blue Drakkon line took over the throne. Petitions by members of the court could no longer be dismissed out of hand. Nor could they be simply ignored because the Crown Prince wished his hunts to continue uninterrupted.
The solution? Send the Royal Overlord with a team to the third planet from the sun. Half the team would conduct a thousand-year survey of both the evolved and the genetically manipulated hominids and collect the data needed to refute the Royal Geneticist’s claim.
And as for Damianos and the other half of the team?
They would prepare the mutations for the hunt.
Chapter Seven
FENRIS
“Forgive this intrusion. But after hearing tale of your great feats in the kingdom village, I could not pass up the chance to meet with you in person.”
“Chance” was as his mate would term it, putting it quite liberally.
It was not as if they had invited the traveling skald currently seated across from him to their home. Nor had Fenris told anyone in their auld kingdom village where they lived. The skald had searched for a full day and made a camp overnight before receiving this “chance.”
“I am honored that you traveled out of your way to their home,” he answered, nonetheless as Chloe set a bowl of porridge in front of each of them. They were seated at the table upon stools his mate fashioned from the leftover trees he felled to make this cabin. “Have you tale of the village?”
“Indeed I do…”
They talked easily over their porridge about the recent homecoming of Fenrit, the fenrir who replaced him. After viking abroad from spring to harvest time, their current fenrir had returned to happy news. His mate had born their second child while he was away, a boy this time. “Thus is the next generation of the new Fenrit line secure,” the skald told them.
“That is lovely news,” Chloe said from her position seated near the hearth. Having no expectation of ever receiving visitors, she and Fenris had only made two stools. She’d insisted on sitting on the floor with her porridge, her legs folded in a style she referred to as crisscross applesauce when their sons and daughters were children.
Fenris was surprised by the light tone of her voice.
Even though they’d both decided together to give up their royal titles, he would not have
blamed her in the least for feeling jealous of the son of his former beta. Fenrit the Chosen, formerly known simply as Randulfsson had grown up beside FJ and had been meant to take on the role of beta when their eldest son assumed his destined place as ruler of the North Wolves.
Now Fenrit not only held the title that should have belonged to FJ, but he had also given his village an heir, thanks to his making a conventional mateship—ironically with the bride Fenris and Chloe had brought back from their last sea voyage for FJ.
With this second bairn, it would seem Fenrit now fully had the life that should have belonged to their son
Chloe had cause to be jealous, to rue her mate ceding to him both the title and bride originally meant for FJ. But nay, her genuine delight upon hearing this news flowed over their mate bond.
She was still a true queen, Fenris realized then. Happy for others, even when they received gifts she and Fenris could never hope to have. Such as grandchildren they were fortunate enough to meet.
“More porridge?” she asked them.
“Yea, thank you,” the skald and he answered together.
As they tucked into a second bowl of porridge. the subject turned to the Great Serpent Battle. And Fenris relayed the tale from beginning to end.
“So, you were not here the first time the drakkon set down upon your village, but you and your sons led the warriors who drove the drakkon from your villages?” the skald asked after he was done.
“Yes, that is correct,” he answered, tensing. He did not mind the skald’s question. Fenris did not often get the chance to talk with anyone other than Chloe. And regaling the skald with tales of their village warriors’ feats of bravery during the Great Serpent Battle had been an enjoyable way to pass the morn.
However, the skald was now venturing onto what his wife would call “a sensitive topic.” he glanced over his shoulder at Chloe, who had now moved on to a sewing project, adding pockets to the lining of the bear coat Fenris would wear for his upcoming week-long hunt.
The skald followed his gaze, and Fenris could see the frank curiosity in his eyes as the smaller male looked upon his wife. Most wolves had never encountered anyone who looked as she did. Even the wolves who viking had only had a few encounters with peoples with skin the color of Chloe’s. Blamenn they called them. And before the time gate delivered Fenris to Chloe’s land, he, like his fellow viking warriors, had only come across humans with skin as dark as his mate’s. Fenris imagined their skald guest had also never encountered a wolf who looked like his Chloe ere to this.
“Your dress is of such a strange design. Does it hail from the same land as you?” the skald asked Chloe.
“In a manner,” Chloe answered without looking up from her sewing. “The dress I came here in fell apart many winters ago. This one was reconstructed from memory and made of a much heavier material.”
Fenris inwardly frowned, recalling the eve she began sewing the first of three garments she referred to as “prairie dresses.” He’d liked these dresses of hers well enough, as she was wearing such garb when first they did meet. But it unsettled him that she now wore her prairie dresses exclusively. Before they moved into this cabin, she’d happily worn hangerok aprons as the other North she-wolves of this land did.
“Your garb is enchanting,” the skald said, interrupting those thoughts. “Such a wonderful detail to include in my tale. I am sure this story will become one of my most well-received poems. I only have a few more questions?”
The skald turned back to face Fenris across the table. “What happened to your sons, Fenrisson Ever the Man and Olafr Ever the Wolf, after the Great Serpent Battle? Why did your former beta’s son become the fenrir of the North Wolves and not your own? When I asked Fenrit the Chosen about this, he could not answer for certain. So please tell me now, Fenris the Beardless, did your son die from his wounds after sacrificing himself to save us all from the serpent threat?”
Fenris the Beardless. No one had called Fenris that in quite a long while, even though his Chloe continued to shave his face twice a week to keep the hair there from growing back.
The skald’s breathless tone told Fenris this male had already decided his guess was true. And he opened his still beardless mouth to let him know that his sons did not die in battle but left to find their fated mate.
However, another voice stopped him. “Get out!”
They both turned to find Chloe, standing now with a furious look upon her face. “You think you can pick over our tragedy like a vulture? No, get out! Get out of my house now!” she screamed at the skald. Not in their North Wolves tongue, but in the English from the future land she’d left so many winters ago.
“Get out! Get out! Get out!”
“What is she saying?” the skald asked Fenris, his eyes wide with astonishment.
Fenris tightened his jaw, swallowing down the story he would have told him if not for Chloe’s upset. Then he said, “You will leave now. And you will speak of this not in story, poem, nor song.”
“But how shall I end my tale?” the skald demanded, looking between Fenris and the she-wolf whose unexpected fury Fenris could feel quavering over their mate bond.
Fenris rose from the table and went to his mate. “You shall say that after the great battle, Randulfsson became fenrir and the former alpha took a cabin in the woods,” he answered the skald, wrapping an arm around his mate’s shoulder. “You may also say that our hearts were…saddened by the loss of our three children.”
“So does that mean—” the skald began to ask.
Fenris cut the persistent teller of tales off with his next words. “That was the end of the tale,” he growled at him. “If I hear you have ended their story any other way, I will hunt you down and kill you.”
Chapter Eight
OLA
As my mom often says after something crazy goes down…So that happened.
I sit collared and stunned in the back seat as Damianos intones, “Colby, you may continue on to our final destination.”
“Right away, Master,” the driver answers with a super posh English accent.
He turns an actual key to start the engine, and we drive past Akwasi and the gun, leaving them behind in the parking lot.
“Please fasten your seat belt,” Posh British Dude says after a few minutes of driving, then he pulls onto a highway leading north without consulting any kind of GPS system I can see.
Hmm, he’s English, but he knows how to drive on our sides of the road, no GPS required. I’ve never seen someone drive without a nav system before. Biosystems only work with driverless cars. And biomaps only work outside of moving vehicles, so as to avoid the kind of technological conflict of interests that ends up in car crashes.
But this man drives with more self-assurance than Uncle Clyde. And if you’ve ever seen a black man from Detroit drive anywhere, you know that’s pretty damn confident.
“What’s your name?” I demand.
“My name is Colby, Mistress.” He looks at me over his right shoulder when he says that, and I inwardly jolt. He looks more like a fresh-faced college kid than a Bond villain’s henchman. How old is this guy? Is he an ageless dragon like Damianos? No, I don’t think so…
I covertly sniff in his direction. I don’t pick up any wolf or fire. From what my nose is telling me, he’s one-hundred percent human. Good. Maybe that means unlike the guy sitting next to me, he actually has some humanity.
“Colby what?” I ask. “I want to know exactly who’s helping this asshole kidnap me.”
“He won’t feel any guilt over his assistance if that’s your aim,” Damianos says beside me. “I assure you, this Colby and all the Colbys before him heed me and only me without compunction.”
He leans over, so close, his fire and ash are all I can smell, and pulls the seatbelt across me. The sides of his large hands brush against my body as he does, and there’s no mistaking the sensation when he touches me this time. My wolf stands all the way up.
But why though? Does this stupid b
itch not realize we’re being kidnapped? By someone who probably plans to…actually I’m not quite sure what he’s got planned for me.
“What exactly is this kidnapping about?” I demand. “What’s your endgame? Where are you taking me?”
He slides me an icy look. “Does it really matter?”
“I’m sitting here with an electronic collar around my neck, so yeah I’d say it matters where you’re taking me. It matters a lot.”
“Funny that you should call the contraption I had Akwasi place around your neck a collar. Dogs..." His mouth tilts up, but the amusement in his voice never makes the climb all the way up to his deadly cold eyes. “That’s what we drakkon began calling you wolf mutations after we saw how the anthros had domesticated many of your grey wolf cousins.”
Okay… how much worse would this situation go for me if I punched him in his smug mouth?
But then I hear my uncles tutting in my head.
“Honey, you can’t ever let them see they’re getting to you,” Kyle had explained after I cussed out one of the older small town pack leaders for calling me “the girl alpha.”
“Just put a bullet in them when nobody’s looking,” Clyde advised.
“Oh, Clyde,” my uncle-in-law had said, giggling like his husband was telling a joke. Though I suspected from the lack of protestors throughout the first gay alpha’s reign that Uncle Clyde might be a total “where is the lie?” meme come to life.
Okay, I’m a queen now. What would a real queen do? Stall, I decide. Get more information. Keep him talking while I try to figure out what to do.
“Is that what you call humans?” I ask. “Anthros?”
“Anthrohominids. Also upright primates. And cattle.”
Cattle….
“They were basically raising the humans here like cattle. And I guess we were, like, their hunting dogs.”
I recall what my twin Fensa told me after we rescued her dragon mate. That it had been the alien dragons from Mercury who were responsible for the wolf shifters race. We’d been a genetic mutation of humans created by the dragon court’s royal geneticist, a dragon named Fenrir. Our species was originally supposed to be some kind of gift to the royal dragon family. And apparently Fenrir, the Royal Geneticist, had been the basis of the Fenrir wolf myth we’d grown up with courtesy of our Viking werewolf fathers, not a wolf locked up by Odin—Fensa stopped here to let me know Xenon hadn’t appreciated the North Wolves’ colorful interpretation of what he had attempted to deliver to them as a fact-based history.
Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet Book 1): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 1 Page 5
