I look at him, my eyes imploring. But he looks away as he always does.
“I’m sorry, Ola. You don’t know how long I considered letting you out of that contraption. How many nights I fretted over it. But in the end, it is just too risky when your flame does not also burn yellow for me. I will do all I can to turn your flame to a similar color. And until then, I will make life so pleasurable for you, you will surely forget the collar around your neck.”
Chapter Thirty-One
I will make life so pleasurable for you, you will surely forget the collar around your neck.
The epic promise swirls around my head as I fall asleep in the dragon king’s arms. The bed has been stripped of everything but the pillows and one fitted sheet. I don’t need blankets to stay warm. I’m a wolf and even if I wasn’t, this dragon burns incredibly hot.
But I wake up the next morning, chilled and alone, without a dragon in sight.
“Damianos?”
I call out his name but receive no answer.
Hmm, strange.
Figuring I should get dressed, I hike over to my room and grab one of the nightgowns before making my way downstairs to the kitchen.
Only to find he’s not there either.
“Damianos?” I call out again.
Again, no answer.
I look at the kitchen door. An opportunity suddenly glowing. Now that it’s daytime, do I have a better chance of escape?
Do I even want to escape, or do I want to stay here, with the dragon who made such emphatic vows to me last night?
I didn’t make any promises myself. Sure, I’d said no more running, but only in my heart…so why does it feel like I’d be breaking a serious vow if I took off again? This time in the daylight when I’d be able to see enough to make my way to the old Yellow Mountain kingdom village.
“You have risen much earlier than usual,” his voice suddenly says inside my head before I can answer that question. “I am sorry I was not there to attend to you when you awoke.”
I turn to see Damianos emerging from the kitchen’s other knobbed door. A set of black steel stairs peek out at me before he closes it behind him. And turns the lock.
“What’s down there?” I ask.
“Some things the last Colby left behind,” Damianos answers. “I was hoping I might find the computer he used to make all our arrangements.”
“He didn’t have bioware?” I ask, my eyes lingering on that lock. If he’s no longer down there, why did Damianos lock the door behind him?
“Ah, yes, he did. But, of course, I told him to only access his communication lines when he needed to hail me. For that reason, I simply told him to make use of his father’s laptop to carry out my orders.”
“And now you’re trying to find that laptop because why exactly?” I ask.
“I was hoping to make some changes to our standing grocery order.”
“Oh, I’m totally on board with that,” I answer, voice light as I send lots of “sure I believe that” down our mate bond. “How about I go downstairs to the basement and take a look, too? You didn’t grow up with a twin like I did, but I can’t tell you how many times one of us would be looking for something, mention it, and then the other twin says, look it’s right there. Two eyes are better than one and all that. Especially since mine can actually see in stereoscope.”
I reach for the knob, but he stops me, his hand wrapping around my wrist. “I assure you, Reverence. I searched quite thoroughly.”
I tighten my hand on the knob. Torn between wanting the tender and new feelings from last night to keep on burning and my natural distrust of the dude who kidnapped me.
“I want to trust you, but I need you to swear to me. Like, swear to me on this baby that you didn’t lie about letting Colby go,” I say in the end. “Tell me…tell me you’re not keeping him in that basement right under my nose.”
Instead of answering out loud, he uses his free hand to pull a phone out of the pocket of his trousers and make a call.
“Hello?”
“Hi…is this Colby?” I ask, frowning up at Damianos.
“No, this is Maxwell Kreft. Colby was my father,” the voice on the other side of the line answers. He has a British accent that sounds just as posh as the one I remember. Only a lot more suspicious as he asks, “Who is this? How did you get my number?”
Damianos presses his finger into the red phone symbol before I can answer.
“His name wasn’t Colby,” I point out.
“No, his father named him something else. Sometimes the Colbys do that. I believe they think it will save their sons from their destinies. Humans can be…the kindest phrase I can utilize here is ‘magical thinkers.’”
I stare at him. Glance back at the phone. Then I say, “I believe you. Why do I believe you when I barely trust anybody else outside my family?”
“Because unlike ‘anybody else,’ I want nothing more than to revere you, to be the drakkon you can trust with your life.” He gazes down at me as he says this, his expression open, sincerity radiating over our mate bond.
I breathe in his reassuring words, then sigh out as I let go of the knob.
We locate the computer less than twenty minutes later in the top drawer of a side table in the living room. Like it was just waiting for us to find it.
I haven’t used a computer, since I was, like, in junior high. And from what I can see, Damianos has exclusively employed minions to do all of his dirty and practical work. But between the two of us, we manage to change the order to include things I like instead of a bunch of weird British shit I will never eat, like mushy peas and Marmite (seriously, so gross).
That very same night, I’m chilling in a comfortable maternity dress and a sweater cardigan instead of a nightgown. And eating from a tub of ice cream on the couch.
“I’m not going to say I forgot the collar like you promised,” I tell him. “But this Ben & Jerry’s is bringing me real close. Though I think my body’s not used to dessert anymore. My stomach’s having a weird reaction.”
“I am glad you like your dessert,” Damianos says over our mate bond. “Apparently our son likes it too.”
I follow his gaze down to my belly, and then just about have a heart attack when I see that the heavy bowling ball inside of me is now visibly squirming. Like, Alien style. So all the stomach grumbling wasn’t a reaction to the dessert then.
“Okay, that’s new,” I say, lowering the spoon. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.
“It is a fortunate sign,” Damianos assures me. “Many drakki perish when their babies begin to move about in this manner too early. My own mother died when I broke the egg inside of her with my movements.”
“Your mother died in childbirth?” I reach out to take his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
His eyes drop to my hand on top of his, then swing back up to mine. I can feel his pleasant surprise at my unexpected touch.
“You honor me with your sympathy, but it was a common occurrence back on my home planet. Also, my father did not suffer Widower’s Madness, so it did not affect my life much before I came here.”
“But didn’t it though?” I ask, squeezing his hand. “That was your mother and you had to grow up without her.”
“This was the fate of most mothers on our former planet. The reason for Reverence itself.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“You see, drakkon praise our mothers as your species praises your deities. Whether they live or die, we revere them for the rest of our lives. The Betrayer King’s father, the Third Blue King, had a special palace erected in his drakki’s honor after she survived the birth of her first son. It was so large one could see its heat signature from space. By the time she died giving birth to the former Second Prince of Drakkon, her first son and her mate had an entire millennium to revere her. That was considered a very rare privilege. Most drakkon are like the Second Prince and me. We can only revere our mothers as drakki we never knew.”
I think abo
ut and almost understand what he’s saying. Before my fathers came back when we were five, I didn’t quite understand that they were time traveling Vikings who the history books assumed hadn’t survived the Great Serpent battle. But I knew they were heroes from the way everybody talked about them. I remember how they’d seemed more like gods than real-life people, who had actually lived and breathed.
My heart pangs with understanding, and a new realization…. “So most of you dragons were born after accidentally killing your mothers in childbirth? And that’s why you treat your mates like you do. Because you’re afraid you’ll lose her like you did your mothers?”
“Yet another clever summation, Reverence, but not quite specific enough. The mortality rate is so high, the more apt word would be assume. The best most of us could hope for was the live birth of our progeny. And toward the end of our drakkon civilization, we often did not achieve that.”
I place a hand over the baby, suddenly less disgusted by its squirming than scared for both of us. “You don’t think either of us will survive this birth?”
“We should change the subject. Your flame is becoming upset.” Damianos nods toward the carton of ice cream. “Eat your ice cream so that your flame might once again burn with content.”
I bug my eyes at him and set the carton of ice cream aside. “My brain is raining The Scream emojis right now. And there’s no way ice cream is fixing that. You need to finish telling me why you assume me and this baby are going to die in childbirth.”
Damianos lets out a cloud of steam, which I think is his version of a sigh. But he starts talking again, just like I demanded.
“If you were a drakki, I would assume I would lose at best you, and at worst both you and baby in the birth. But the Betrayer King has given me hope. He told me he had assumed the same thing before the birth of his Golden Son. And of course, he did not have high hopes when he sent Fensa back to her original time after the discovery that she was pregnant with twins. But she and his three hatchlings survived both births beautifully. And now he has a hypothesis to explain why. He believes that our mating with your species might be an evolutionary necessity of sorts.”
“An evolutionary necessity?” I repeat.
“It is a bit like the history of your anthro ancestors. For a short period of time, they were scattered all over the globe and only interacted with their own tribes and regions. They shared the same features, rituals, and ways. With the invention of boats, they encountered people from different regions. Most often this would result in war and death by sickness. But there were other results, too. Reproductive interactions—many of which produced children who were even hardier than their parents.
“Many humans went against their cultural dictates and laws to pair with others outside their region and tribes. And now thanks to advances in medicine, none of which can be attributed to one single culture, the ancestors of these mixed interregional interactions have reached the very cusp of the quantum leap. It is as if your designer programmed you to distrust other humans until you reached a certain stage of technological advancement, but then pushed certain buttons to make you seek out those with dissimilar DNA to make strong children who could survive in any part of the world.”
I’m so confused I’m barely able to process any of this, but I take a stab at summarizing what he’s just told me. “So you’re saying the huge uptick in interracial relationships and the many technological advancements of the 21st century go hand and hand? The more we mix and work together, the closer we’ll come to this quantum leap you keep talking about?”
“Yes, that is the Betrayer King’s hypothesis exactly. What you free will believers would classify as changing attitudes is actually a timed evolutionary advancement as you approach your quantum age. Early drakkon are said to have had a similar evolution regarding our outer flames. There was a very long time ago when drakkon were only Red, Blue, or Yellow.”
Okay, I’m trying to keep up. I really am. But damn. “Outer flames?” I repeat, hopelessly confused.”
“Outer flames are how we refer to how our drakkon epidermises reflect the sun. In the far-off past, it is said we only reflected three colors. But now, there are green, orange, purple, and even black drakkon, thanks to the various mixings of our flame colors. In fact, though my and my cousin’s familial line is referred to as the Blue Line, our outer flames reflect a much darker blue because we have so many of these mixed drakkon in our lineage. It is understood by all that we never would have reached the age of quantum if we had not begun to mix our flames, both privately and publicly.”
“So you think our current diversity levels means were about to level up to a quantum age,” I translate carefully. “Which is what exactly?”
“This is the age when your scientists learn to manipulate the quantum field so that your species may do simple things. Like creating fating portals and vehicles capable of intergalactic space travel. Also, folding yourselves into exoskeletons as we drakkon do.”
“Oh, yeah, all those things sound totally simple,” I say with a rueful eye roll.
He regards me with another smoky rumble. “In truth, I have only a rudimentary understanding of quantum physics myself. I would compare my use of it to a four-year-old learning how to use a smart device at the beginning of the century. Once such advancement is understood and achieved by anyone, the rest of the civilization can enjoy and use it without an explicit understanding of it. In truth, I turned my attention to more physical matters like hunting and sport. I barely paid attention during our schooling when we learned about such matters. Though, I deeply came to regret that instinct after my cousin turned on our drakkon race. Without a drakkon possessing specific technological knowledge to manipulate the fating portals, we had no choice but to reverse engineer the process. This, as I’ve already told you took a very long time. Even by drakkon standards.”
“But you think our civilization is about to get on your dragon level?” I ask.
“Yes, with every century, anthros are getting exponentially closer to our quantum capabilities,” Damianos answers. “And this is why, my cousin believes his mate survived both her first birth and her second birth of drakki twins—a feat unprecedented by drakki. He told me it is well documented that after a quantum leap, many alien civilizations have problems with severely decreased fertility. Many have even died out. His professors taught him that this declining birth rate was the inevitable cost of advancement and something to battle against with the fating portals. But now, my cousin believes it might be a higher evolutionary directive from our designer to seek out another species with whom to mate. Species from other planets. According to my cousin, Golden Son was punier than most drakkon at first, but on the cusp of adulthood, he appeared as strong as any drakkon who’d come before him. Mightier even because he can choose to walk as a true human, a drakkon, or a wolf.”
“So according to Xenon, this baby and me are going to be all right because evolution wants you to mate with somebody who isn’t a drakki?” That theory sounds wild to me and crazy. But for some reason, I feel a lot more peaceful than I did before.
As if reading my mind, Damianos says, “Yes, that is my cousin’s belief, and I am choosing to make it my belief as well. The alternative…even the thought of it is too much to bear.”
A huge wave of grief washes over our mate bond as he says this, and I suddenly feel like an insensitive asshole. He’s putting on a brave face, but obviously, nobody’s going to get over accidentally killing their mom as the very first thing they do in life. He needs to believe this. I can’t see his flame, but I can tell my many questions are upsetting it.
“Hey,” I say, grabbing onto his arm. “If you believe, I believe. Don’t start mourning me yet. We got this.”
He lowers his head, and the crazed grief abruptly fades away, like he’s made a decision to brutally suppress it.
“My cousin tells me this is the same thing his fated mate told him when he first spoke to her of the danger attendant with giving birth to a dra
kkon hatchling.”
“Yeah, not surprised to hear that at all,” I answer. “Us Greenwolf girls are some loyal-ass bitches. And when we ride, we don’t die—that’s how the Vikings and gangsters raised us.”
He winces and a bemused feeling ripples over our mate bond. “If that is your crude way of saying you are incredibly loyal and brave, I agree. I wish I had known that from the start. Before I did what I did.”
I shake my head at him, all sorts of pissed.
“Why is your flame burning with irritation.”
“Because you’re so ridiculously hot, and this tortured regret thing you’ve got going is too good a look on you,” I whine.
“Now I am the one who is confused. You do not wish me to lament the things I have done to hurt you?”
“No,” I admit. “Your regret makes it harder not to forgive you.”
Now he shakes his head. “I would never ask for your forgiveness. In truth, I do not deserve it. My only intention in any of this is to repent my transgressions and revere you for the rest of—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, the rest of our lives. Heard it. Got it. Can we fuck now? Because in truth this reformed bad boy act of yours is really turning me on.”
Damianos opens his mouth, probably to make another declaration that will make me feel like throwing my heart at him, like, “Here, take my money!”
But I kiss him before he can get it out.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I kiss him into silence a lot over the next several weeks. Because guess what. Sex Ed Class totally lied. Sex doesn’t complicate things. Sex is easy. And fun. And really fucking hot.
Talking complicates things. I thought he was dangerous before, but as it turns out, he’s way more dangerous when he opens his mouth.
The hungry way he looks at me, even though I’ve got a beach ball in my stomach complicates things.
The warm feelings that floods over my mate bond when we’re doing stupid stuff like watching television or arguing about how many squats I should do or trying to convince ourselves to get out of bed instead of fucking some more in the mornings—God that complicates things. More than I want.
Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet Book 1): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 1 Page 20
