by Lili Zander
“Are you?”
“Caeron perish the thought,” I tell her cheerfully. She takes the food from me but doesn’t bite into it. No doubt she thinks I’ve poisoned it. “I don’t have a single altruistic bone in my body. The Rebellion sent me. They would like to find the ten humans on the Sevril V. One of them, Alice Hernandez, has already been located.” Kadir is going to be unbearably smug about that.
She blinks in confusion, but before she can point out that I’ve only answered one of her questions, Mardex jumps in, leaning forward eagerly. “Do you work for Commander Tarish?”
“What a dreadful idea. No, this is strictly a one-time job.” I turn back to the pretty human. “The Fehrat 1 crashed. There were nine human survivors, and a couple of them now work at the Rebellion. We found out about the Sevril V through them. I learned English through a hack of their translators. I found Amanda Pascale, sent her to the rebellion headquarters, discovered you had been taken by the Okaki pirates, and came after you. You know the rest.”
That leaves only one question to be answered. Who am I? The answer is long and complicated, and mostly, I try not to think about it. It’s just easier that way.
“Mandy’s alive?” She almost jumps off her seat. “Is she okay?”
Once again, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Amanda Pascale has been exposed to seven months of twisted experiments. Her body has been poked at, prodded, and broken. Physically, yes. She will probably recover from the damage. But mentally? That remains to be seen. When Lani Dennison got abducted by the Okaki, the scientists took the experiments they would run on two humans and focused it on one. She’s been through a lot.
It wasn’t Lani’s fault; she hadn’t asked for any of this. She hadn’t been in charge of her fate, any more than my brothers and I had been in charge of ours. But the fact remains that Amanda Pascale is unlikely to ever be okay.
This is why I like tech. It’s cleaner. Less messy emotions. If Lani starts to weep, I don't know what to do. I won’t know how to comfort her. Even the thought of her tears makes my insides twist with discomfort.
A non-answer then. That’s my safest option. “I assume she’s fine. I put her in stasis and sent her on a cargo transport to the rebellion. She should have got there by now.”
“You did what?” She clamps a hand over her mouth. “You mailed her? Do you know how many unmanned cargo ships the Okaki have boarded since they took me? Sixty-three.” She looks blankly at the nutrient bar in her hand and sets it down on the seat next to her. “She could be dead. She could be enslaved. She could have been carved up as sushi. Are you insane?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “I cannot believe how irresponsible you’ve been. This was your idea of helping her?”
Anger is much better than tears. Anger, I know how to handle.
“The cargo transport was protected; the odds of something happening to it were infinitesimally small. Also, not to point out the obvious, but had I personally escorted your friend back to the Rebellion, it would be you who’d either be dead, enslaved, or—” I fumble over the unfamiliar word. “Sushi.” I tilt my head to one side. “Not that I’m expecting you to throw yourself in my bed in gratitude, or anything. A simple thanks will suffice.”
I pick the food up and hand it to her again. “The Rebellion isn’t going to torture you or your friend, and they’re not going to experiment on either of you. You’ll be safe there. Please eat your food. You’ll feel better.”
To nobody’s surprise, she doesn’t fling herself into my arms. A tragedy, really. Instead, she takes the wrapper from me. For a few moments, nobody says anything. Mardex shuffles in his seat, but I ignore him. My attention is on Lani.
Her eyes narrow. She appears lost in thought, and then, she exhales in a long breath and gives the wrapper a dubious sniff. “What is the Rebellion? And what am I eating?”
Mardex answers before I can. “The Rebellion is the only reason I’m alive,” he says, his eyes shining with the fervor of the true believer. “They protect Draekons. They saved me. If it hadn’t been for the testing kits they’d distributed, I would have been exiled from the Empire.”
I have less love for the Rebellion than Mardex does—the whole injecting-toxin-into-me-to-get-me-to-cooperate doesn’t exactly engender a lot of warmth and trust. Still, I can’t exactly blame Tarish for what he did. He was desperate, and, knowing what the Zorahn scientists are capable of, he was right to be so.
“The bar is something the other humans enjoy.” I frown, trying to recall the unfamiliar word. “Chocolate.”
She tears open the wrapper and takes a bite. Her eyes widen. “Oh God, you’re not lying.” She smiles at me, and it reaches her eyes for the first time. “Thank you.”
Her entire face lights up when she smiles. Her lips tilt up, and a dimple appears in her cheek. The impact of it scrambles my senses and makes me lose my train of thought. I fumble through my pack for another bar and hand it to her.
She takes it from me. Her fingers graze mine.
For a second, I don’t understand what has changed. I just know that I should never let go of Lani. Her, my dragon whispers. I reach out and grab her hand, and it isn’t until she starts to pull away from me that I realize what it is.
When her skin touches me, the rathr disappears.
But that’s impossible.
I’m not a geneticist, but even I know that the rathr is a parasite encoded to our DNA. The scientist who created us, the Supreme Mother, used the rathr to control us. She flooded us with agony if we disobeyed, and on rare occasions, offered us temporary relief as a reward.
And, like every parasite, the rathr can’t be removed without damaging, maybe even killing us. So why is it gone now? Why do I feel no pain? Why do I only feel… her?
Lani Dennison wrenches her hand free and backs away from me, her eyes filled with mingled fear and fury. Her wrist is red where I grabbed her, and she rubs her skin as she stares up at me. “What the hell?”
The pain comes roaring back, and with it, a hot wave of shame. I’ve hurt her. Lani’s afraid of me. I open my mouth to stammer out an apology, but before the words stumble out, Blue pings my feed. We have a destination.
The techbot puts an image of the closest inhabited planet up on the display. It looms on the screen in front of me, a familiar image. Red and green, one side permanently shrouded in shadow.
The instant I see it, a sinking sensation fills my chest.
I’ve been here before.
This is Nestri, the Okaki homeworld. More than a thousand years ago, I was here. The Zorahn Empire was expanding, and I was sent to Nestri to conquer. My orders were clear. Kill the LoreLords, destroy everyone that resisted, and subjugate the population. The five other Draekons of the Crimson Force had joined me after the first week, but I hadn’t needed their help. I’d already done what I was sent to do.
A thousand years ago, they named me in Nestri. I am the Draekon Conqueror.
I killed the LoreLords, but their spawn survived. They grew up, and they remember their history. They will never allow themselves to forget what I did to them.
I’ve spent all my life looking forward. Never behind, because that way is shadowed with nightmares.
But the past always has a way of catching up.
7
Lani
I’d give my right arm for a pen and some paper, because what I need to do is make a list of everything I need to know. I have a thousand questions. No, make that a million. And I can’t seem to remember any of them, because something about Ruhan makes my brain short-circuit.
I don’t know what to make of him. On the surface, he seems sexy and flirty, someone who’s accustomed to using his charm as a weapon. So far, in the space of a couple of hours, he’s winked at me, called me Lovely Lani, and more-or-less implied that I could sleep with him as thanks. I get the sense that he takes nothing very seriously. I mean, come on. He put Mandy in stasis and mailed her to the rebellion.
Then he touched me, and my entire body spa
rked.
Not in alarm, which should be the only logical reaction. Ruhan is Zorahn. The same species that came to Earth and invited us to their planet. The same species that told us they needed our help to fight a disease that was ravaging them and promised us safe passage. The same species that broke their word and tortured us.
They forgot to mention that their scientists were going to torture us. I thought I was signing up for an adventure, but I was so, so wrong. The Zorahn never had any intention of returning us home.
But when Ruhan touches me, his fingers grazing inadvertently against my skin, my nerve endings come alive.
My throat goes dry, and my heart skitters to a stop. Ruhan stares at me, shock clouding his vividly green eyes. His grip tightens painfully, but I don’t think he realizes it. Neither do I. For a moment, all I can do is stare up at him. My entire being is balanced on the blade edge of anticipation. On either side of me lie bottomless caverns of desire and danger. One unwary step and I will fall.
Into him. Into Ruhan.
Across from me, Mardex catches sight of Ruhan’s grip on my hand, and his expression turns concerned. He opens his mouth to say something, starts to rise…
The spell shatters. I pull away from Ruhan, rubbing my wrist. “What the hell?” I demand. I know why I didn’t want to let go of him—stupid libido—but why did he cling to me?
His glance locks on my hand. Regret slaps his face, and he opens his mouth to apologize. I’m about to stop him—it’s not his fault that I bruise like a peach—but before either of us can speak, the spider-robot-thingy throws an image of a planet up on the screen.
When Ruhan sees it, it’s like a switch is thrown. His shoulders stiffen. His expression becomes carefully neutral. “Well,” he murmurs. “That’s unfortunate.”
“What’s the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost. Are we going to…?”
“Explode?” The dark moment vanishes, and his lips quirk in another smile. “No. I told you, I’m very good at what I do.”
I survey him in exasperation. He’s laughing at me again. I’d throw something at his head, but sadly, there’s nothing within reach. Besides, I’m starting to see a pattern here. Ruhan baits me whenever he doesn’t want to answer one of my questions. When I asked him if Mandy was going to be okay, he’d ducked out of giving me a straight answer, and I’d been too busy having a coronary that he’d sent my friend via a postage service that I hadn’t noticed.
Come to think of it, he did the same thing when I asked him if he was a bounty hunter. He laughed at me and accused me of being all doom and gloom, but he never did deny it.
I was a kindergarten teacher. I managed a classroom of boisterous five-year-olds. I can handle one sexy alien. I tilt my head to the side and give him a pleasant smile. “You did tell me that,” I agree. “But you forgot to tell me what it is you do. So far, I’ve seen you punch a lot of people. While that’s very impressive, it’s not exactly a useful skill when we’re stuck in space.”
Mardex snorts a laugh. Ruhan’s lips twitch, and his eyes light up. “I also fixed the escape pod,” he tells me with a grin, settling down on the dusty seat next to me. “Our nav computer is glitchy, which is why we’re going to land on the nearest planet and look for a spaceworthy craft. But we’re certainly not going to explode in mid-air or anything as dramatic as that.”
“Dramatic?” My voice rises to a pitch. “You think I’m being dramatic?”
He laughs in response. Damn it; he’s doing it again. I take a deep breath, count till ten, and when that doesn’t work, I count again until the urge to strangle the gorgeous, exasperating alien has passed. “What is that planet, Ruhan?” I ask him, proud of how even my tone is. “And why did you react to it?”
His body goes still. “That’s Nestri. The Okaki homeworld.”
I sit up. “Same Okaki that wanted to eat me?” Well, isn’t that fantastic. “So basically, a planet filled with creatures that think of me as food? That’s a great place to land.” I fix him with a glare. “Just in case the translator doesn’t get it, and it didn’t come through, I’m being sarcastic.”
I expect him to mock me again. He doesn’t. His expression turns serious. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Lani,” he says gently. “I’m a trained soldier. It’s my job to get you to the Rebellion, safe and alive.” He flashes me a warm smile. I’m positive he means for it to be reassuring, not sexual, but my panties still melt. Someone needs to come along and knock some sense into me, because I’m not just an idiot. I’m a horny, sex-starved idiot.
With great difficulty, I drag my thoughts out of the gutter. “Why are you worried about going to Nestri?” I persist.
Ruhan sighs and rakes his hands through his hair. “On Nestri, you will be revered for your stories. Mardex, on the other hand, will be in danger.” He turns to the cook. “Can you shift?”
Can you shift? It takes me a couple of seconds, and then it hits me. Oh. Gervil had talked about some Zorahns possessing a genetic mutation that allowed them to shift into dragons. Mardex had even said that he was grateful to the Rebellion because they protect Draekons. Oh wow. They’d protected him.
My mouth falls open. The cook is a dragon-shifter.
“No,” the other man replies. “I can’t shift.”
“I thought not,” Ruhan says. He rummages through his massive backpack again, pulls out a pen, and tosses it toward Mardex. “The LoreLords have sworn a life oath to kill every Draekon they run across. Paint the missing testing tattoos on your forearm. If they suspect who you are, you will die.”
Mardex’s eyes fill with fear. He takes the pen without a word.
I remember to close my mouth. “You’re Draekon?” I ask the cook. “You can actually shift into a dragon?”
“Clearly, no,” Ruhan says. His face looks like he’s sucking on a particularly sour lemon. “He can’t shift. None of the Draekons can, not unless they find their mate.”
“Their mate?”
“So the rumors say,” Mardex interjects. “The first shift happens when I see my mate. The second, when we complete our bond.” His expression turns bleak. “It doesn’t matter what the stories say. I had a bondmate on Fissu. I was forced to leave Dani behind when I tested positive and fled. I haven’t spoken to her in seven years. I haven’t seen her. I don’t know if she’s found another bondmate, but to me, she will always be my mate. There will be no other.”
“Wow.” Unexpected tears well up in my eyes. I blink them away. The longing in Mardex’s voice is palpable. What would it be like to love and be loved so thoroughly? Seven years, and from the look on the cook’s face, the pain hasn’t faded.
Ruhan gives me an are-you-kidding-me look, and I feel myself flush. I bet he thinks I’m a sentimental fool, but honestly, I rather bawl like a baby than have a heart of stone. Ruhan and other Zorahn like him are perfectly willing to exile Draekons to keep the mutation from spreading, never stopping to think about how they’re ripping families apart.
I lift my chin in the air and glare at him. “What?” I demand. “It’s a sad story. Anyone would be moved by it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Clearly, not everyone.”
Argh. Aggravating guy. “Of course, you wouldn’t understand,” I say scathingly. “You’re Zorahn. From everything I’ve seen, empathy isn’t a strong suit for your people.”
His lips twitch, and belatedly, realization hits me. He’s needling me again. What doesn’t he want to reveal? He still hasn’t told me why he doesn’t want to go to Nestri, and no, I don’t think it’s because of Mardex. “Why do the Okaki want to kill Draekons?”
Mardex laughs bitterly. “Do they need a reason? The Empire forces us into exile so that we cannot spread the mutation. Maybe the Okaki fear us for the same reason.”
Huh? That doesn’t make any sense. I look at Ruhan, and he shakes his head. “The Okaki cannot be affected by a Zorahn genetic mutation,” he says patiently. “The LoreLords of Nestri hate Draekons because a thousand years ago, they were inv
aded by one of them. Third, the Draekon Conqueror, torched their places of worship, slaughtered their storytellers, and killed anyone who mounted a resistance.”
Yikes. “Why?”
Ruhan’s expression shuts down, and he turns toward the cockpit. “Probably because he was an asshole,” he says over his shoulder. “Strap in. We’ll be arriving in Nestri in less than an hour.”
8
Ruhan
Blue sends me a message of concern through the feed. My lips twist. You’re not supposed to read my emotions, bot. Serves me right for messing with his programming.
I lie to the techbot and tell him I’m fine, load our course into the autopilot, and lean back in my chair, shutting my eyes. The dragon inside me is restless, agitated, and I don’t understand it. I can almost feel him pacing back and forth, his mouth leaking wisps of fire. His emotions spill over to me, and I’m perilously close to losing control…
None of this makes sense.
A thousand years might have passed in real-time, but I’ve been in stasis. To me, Nestri was two years ago. The memories haven’t faded; time hasn’t healed these wounds. I can still remember the pit in my stomach when the Supreme Mother had summoned me to the Zoraken War Council and given me her orders. “Destroy the LoreLords, their spawn, everyone,” she’d said coldly. “I want every trace of their disgusting culture gone.”
Nestri had deposits of cinnacar. In controlled lab tests, the substance expanded consciousness in their test subjects. Soldiers dosed with cinnacar were more aware of each other’s positions. The units performed significantly better in simulated battles than their non-drugged counterparts.
