by Kate Rudolph
We’d barely spoken, and I’d rejected her on sight. She was only here because of my mother’s maneuvering. But I couldn’t let her go. Not yet. Not until I was sure.
Chapter Seven
Kristen
The infirmary didn’t look like any hospital I’d ever been in. Not that I’d been in many except for once when I was a kid. But there were no harried nurses running around and carrying dented medbots which made loud beeping and sputtering noises whenever they were put to work. It didn’t smell of antiseptic and bleach with faded bedsheets and curtains that had seen better days.
No, it looked a lot like the room I’d slept in the night before, except a bit bigger, with a doorway at the other end that seemed to lead into a small office where I could see shadows of a few people looming. The alpha had left me at the head healer’s urging and I’d expected the woman to tell me what was wrong, but she’d simply nodded at the tray of food on the bedside table and retreated.
The previous two times I’d eaten anything in this castle I’d ended up ill, and I scowled at the tray, which contained a steaming bowl of broth and a roll of bread which seemed similar to what I’d eaten for breakfast. My stomach rumbled and I didn’t feel a bit queasy. Maybe it would be safe to eat? The food could have just been coincidental. And how much damage could a bit of broth do?
I made a deal with myself. If I got sick a third time after eating, that was it. No more food until I made it back to the portal and found a way home.
Had I made it to the portal? I remembered walking down the path that Veyne had told me about and getting overheated. And then it was black. Had I fainted? I looked down at my clothes and my eyes widened. It looked like I’d jumped through a fire, and while my skin was fine, half of my shirt had burned away in places, leaving blackened char marks and giant holes. Luckily the fabric still covered up the good bits, but I had no idea how that could have happened without injuring my skin.
I looked around for anything else I could wear, but there were no clothes at a convenient distance. Hopefully I’d be able to make it back to my room and scavenge something else. I looked like a reject from some disaster vid and it was contributing to the panic simmering in the back of my mind. What the hell was going on? Why was I getting sick? How had my clothes gotten burned? When could I go home?
A whimper got caught in my throat but I choked it down. I didn’t cry; it never did anything except get me a slap upside the head and a warning to shut up. I needed to be strong, needed to be healthy. And I really did feel fine. Great, as a matter of fact, better than I’d felt since being abducted from Earth.
I still wasn’t clear on whether it was an abduction or not, but given the weirdness of the situation I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have agreed to come if I had known all the facts.
“It’s good to see you are up,” one of the healers said. I was pretty sure she was the one in charge. She had dark skin and brown eyes that seemed to glow from the inside, not enough to look wrong but enough for me to notice. Her long hair was pulled back in a tight braid and she wore trousers and a dark top with a white braided hem that might have meant something. Or it could have been decorative, there was no way for me to know. “I’m Lead Healer Gerin.”
“What’s going on? What happened to me?” I hadn’t even been out for long enough for my voice to get rusty. I shifted in the bed and the sheet that was covering me slipped a bit. I hastily tugged it up to hide my burned clothes, not that they were a secret from the Lead Healer.
Her face was carefully blank, like she had bad news but didn’t want me to be worried just yet. If I was at home I’d expect some sort of terminal diagnosis, or at least the loss of a limb if a doctor looked at me like that. “We’ve performed a few preliminary tests and the results are interesting.”
Oh no, interesting results were bad when it came to doctors. And despite the medieval look of the place, I was guessing they had decent scanners hidden in the back room. Nothing about this infirmary suggested they were going to apply leeches and bleed me to make me better, I just had to hope their medical practices were at least up to Earth standard.
Or they could just send me home and I could take care of my issues there.
“Interesting how?” I asked slowly, tasting every syllable.
Gerin shook her head. “I have some questions first. Where were your parents from?”
Seriously? What the hell did that have to do with anything? I tamped down on the urge to lash out and forced myself to be logical about this one. I was so far away from home that there had to be a reason for it; it wasn’t like it was a secret I was from another planet.
“No parents,” I bit out. “I was surrendered at birth and raised by the state. That was on Earth.” They all knew I wasn’t from around here, and telling them my planet of origin might help. Hopefully. At least it would tell them where to send me back.
“Earth?” Gerin’s eyebrows drew down in confusion. “You’re a long way from home. But that may explain some things.”
Things that she didn’t see fit to explain to me. She pulled out a tablet and started making notes as if I wasn’t sitting right there. After a few minutes of that I cleared my throat, hoping she might pick up where she left off.
She glanced up from her tablet like she wasn’t sure why I was still there, but when I waved my hands as if asking her to continue, she lowered the tablet and slid it into one of her pockets. “Your dragonflame is on the verge of igniting. We’ve never seen such a thing in an adult before, but if you have Drokanian ancestry and were raised away from this planet, that might have been a complicating factor. Now that you’ve been exposed to your homeland, your system is adapting to the new circumstances.”
I blinked once, then twice, then shook my head, trying to wrap my head around all of what she was telling me. “Are you saying I’m an alien? What? No. How? No. I’m from Earth. Born and raised. 100% human.” I pushed the sheet off, no longer caring about my weirdly burned clothes. I needed to get out of here. But… “What’s dragonflame? What are you even talking about?” My legs were halfway off the bed, but my curiosity was piqued.
Every abandoned kid writes some fantastical story about who their parents really are. Princesses and pirates, kings and thieves, something to explain why we had to be left behind. I knew a few kids who’d claimed one or more parents were actually aliens from a far off planet, but that had never been my story. I had never once paused to consider that my parents might not be from Earth, and I had trouble believing it now.
“I’m human,” I repeated. When people asked me that annoying where are your parents from question, they’d only implied I was from a different country. No one had ever suggested I was from another planet.
“Yes, a Drokanian human,” Gerin said, as if that made any sense. “We came to this planet thousands of years ago through our portal. And something about the planet and the species we found here combined within us to waken our dragonflames. It took dozens of generations for the first of us to find our second forms, but since then we’ve lived happily with our dual natures.”
“Drokanian?” I’d seen the dragons in the sky, and I’d even wondered if the people here were the dragons. Why? How had that occurred to me? It wasn’t like it made any sense. Could she be right?
“Our planet is called Drakus. You are in the land of the dragons. Your welcome might not have been so kind if you’d landed in wyvern territory.” Gerin waved behind her and one of her assistants, this one wearing a similar outfit with a braided blue collar, approached and handed me a tablet.
I stared down at it and couldn’t make myself turn it on.
“I don’t have time to give you a history lesson. The translation software on that device along with whatever translator you’ve had implanted should be sufficient. We don’t know how strong your dragonflame is, that is where the test results weren’t conclusive. I can’t tell you if you’ll ever fully manifest, but if you feel like your skin is about to burst, get outside. Adult secondary forms are too la
rge for indoor transformations and you could injure yourself or cause structural damage to the keep.” She held out her hand and the assistant produced a pile of clothing. “There’s no need for you to stay here all day.”
“You think I’m a dragon?” It wasn’t possible. Not at all.
Gerin simply nodded, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “I know you’re a dragon. And soon you’ll realize it too.”
***
After being kicked out of the infirmary I wandered the keep in a daze. They thought I was a dragon. Fire breathing, flying, princess-stealing dragon. Okay, maybe not princess-stealing. I didn’t suddenly feel the need to kidnap a fair maiden. Or to sit on a giant pile of gold and guard it jealously from all comers.
No, scratch that. If I had a giant pile of gold I definitely wouldn’t let anyone else near it. But that was only logical.
Were all the people in the keep dragons? Could they all take a second form and fly? Could they eat me if they didn’t like me? I remembered the glint in Veyne’s eye and shuddered. If he was a dragon I didn’t want to see it. Something about him creeped me out and I had no idea why. Healer Gerin said he was one of the people who’d found me and seen to it that I got medical attention. By all rights I should have been grateful.
But it wasn’t until she mentioned that Drikal had sat by me for the hour that I was out of it that some knot in my chest loosened. I hadn’t even spoken to that guy and yet I was happy he’d sat beside me when I was more vulnerable than I’d ever been in my entire life.
I retreated to my room and couldn’t pretend I wanted to do anything other than hide. But once I was there, I found Safa waiting for me, and from the look on her face I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. Then again, someone had told me that I was an alien dragon, so I didn’t see how it could get any worse.
“You’re being moved to different quarters,” she said abruptly. “Alpha Drikal has decided that you’ll be more comfortable in a different room.”
Except for the bouts of sickness, there’d been nothing wrong with my room. But I was still too dazed from the dragon diagnosis to do anything but follow her as she led me up two flights of stairs and past several guards to new quarters. There was no one wandering these halls, unlike where I’d been sleeping before, and judging by the ornate carvings on the door next to my new quarters I had a suspicion as to why.
“Is that Dri—the alpha’s room?” I nodded at the door. Why else would there be guards stationed at the end of the corridor?
Safa’s face was pinched as she nodded. She opened her mouth as if she had something to say, but snapped it shut. Did he rule with an iron fist or something? No negative words about the big bad alpha?
“What was wrong with my other room?” This one would clearly be harder to walk out of. I wondered if the guards would have orders to keep me here. This place was becoming more and more like a prison. Drikal and I needed to have a talk. Nothing I’d heard about him so far, except for the vibes I was getting from Safa, said he was a cruel and capricious leader. If I told him I wanted to go home, he’d take me to the portal. Right?
What happened to getting there on my own? That morning I’d been so sure I could make it, that this grand adventure would be over by lunch time. Except now I was practically the alpha’s roommate and the head healer said I was going to transform into a dragon at some point.
“The alpha was concerned that some might… not respect your boundaries in the guest corridor. Until your position is determined, you’ll be staying in the family wing.” She stood in the doorway and gestured for me to enter.
Whatever I was going to say died on my tongue as I got a good look at the room. Had I thought the quarters they’d given me before were nice? They were a hovel compared to this. The room was at least twice the size of my previous room and the walls were carved with dragons from floor to ceiling. Their eyes were as big as my fists and were made of the same firestones that I’d seen on the path outside.
The bed took up a lot of space and could comfortably fit five people, ten if it was a cuddle pile. A person could get up to all sorts of trouble in a bed like that. I had an uncomfortable flash of Drikal’s face and imagined just what kind of body he was hiding under all those clothes.
No. Bad brain. Keep it in your pants.
The bed might have been the centerpiece of the room, but the balcony was what made it special. A large door decorated with stained glass opened onto a balcony that was nearly half the size of the room. I only realized I’d stepped outside when the wind ruffled my hair. It was like I was in a fugue or something. The day, the past two days, had been so weird that I couldn’t really think through my actions. Standing out on the balcony it was easy to forget I was in a giant castle run by human-dragon hybrids. I looked out onto rolling fields and forests, land that seemed untouched by time, and felt a pang in my chest.
We didn’t have places like this at home. Not in any area I could afford. The planet was doing its damnedest to recover from centuries of deforestation and massive climate change. Many of those battles had been fought and won, but the planet would be forever scarred.
There was none of that here. I closed my eyes and tilted my head up towards the sun. It felt like a beautiful spring day, warm enough that I didn’t need a jacket but cool enough that I didn’t sweat. The air smelled sweet with promise and greenery and if I let myself forget about how I came here and all the dragon stuff I could imagine this as a home.
I’d never really had one of those before.
I shivered as a shadow crossed over me, chilling the spring warmth for just a few seconds. Cracking my eyes open, I saw two dragons overhead, one with bright red wings and the other with plumage of blue feathers or something under its head.
I retreated into the room. The healer said I would turn into something like one of them and I still couldn’t believe it. I wondered if I’d met those dragons. Was one of them Riga? Or maybe even Drikal?
I hadn’t thought that I’d been outside for long, but when I reentered the room Safa was gone and in her place Drikal sat beside a freshly laid table filled with a meal big enough to feed the same family who could all fit in the bed. The door was closed and it was just the two of us.
He hadn’t noticed me yet and I watched him adjust two of the wine glasses so they were placed just right, almost as if he were nervous that I’d judge the table placement. Yeah, ‘cause I was the kind of girl who did that. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. But that one little movement made him seem more human than anything I’d seen before. He walked around this place like he owned it, which, yeah, he kind of did, but sitting in my room he seemed to have shrugged off the mantle, at least for a few minutes.
He’d stayed by me while I was unconscious. Why? He hadn’t wanted me, didn’t want a mate. We’d never spoken, hadn’t really even been introduced. Sure he was hot, and maybe he didn’t think I was too hard to look at, but he was a busy man and surely had better things to do than wait at an unconscious stranger’s bedside in hopes that she woke up.
Had his mother asked him to? Was this part of her machinations to see us mated?
Or did he have another reason? Something I couldn’t understand?
He looked up and our eyes locked. Even from across the room I could see the fire—dragonflame?—dancing in his irises. Out of everyone in the place, he was the one I had no problem reconciling with being a dragon. He screamed predator, screamed power. And at another time it might have frightened me. After all, he was in my room, the door was closed, he ran this place, and there was no one to hear me scream.
Okay, maybe I was a little freaked out. But that little bit of fear didn’t grow into anything more, and the longer we looked at each other, the easier it was to snuff out. No matter what, I didn’t think he was going to do anything to hurt me.
“Will you join me for the afternoon meal?” he asked, waving his hand at the feast laid out before him.
What could I do to get out of that? Jump off the ba
lcony? But I didn’t really need to run away. Whatever was going on, Drikal and I had to settle it between the two of us. He was the one who could most easily get me sent home. And despite what I’d heard the night before about being handed off to one of his lordlings if things didn’t go as planned, I didn’t think that was likely.
So I gave him my brightest smile and gathered up all the courage I’d need. “I’d love to.”
Chapter Eight
Drikal
Kristen Mora didn’t need to know all the trouble I’d gone to in making sure that this lunch went smoothly. In the hours since I’d left her side I’d discussed the situation with my mother and Veyne, had her rooms moved to make sure none of the lesser alphas got any ideas, and spent far too long reviewing the menu to make sure it wouldn’t send her back to the infirmary. The healers said the food wasn’t directly responsible, but Kristen was new to this planet and so far her days had not gone well.
I wanted her to see the potential.
I wanted to see if she could be my mate.
To say the curiosity had taken me by surprise would be an understatement. It seemed that between one moment and the next I’d gone from being determined to send her home as quickly as possible to wondering what she would look like laid out in my bed. There was a dragon that lived inside of her, one that had responded to me, one that I could almost feel in a way I’d never felt another’s dragon before.
We were beings of duality. With rare exceptions, there was no crossover from our abilities in dragon form to human form or vice versa. I could produce smoke and fire as a man, an ability that marked me as an alpha, but there was no way to bring out my claws or fly when I only had two legs. Unless I was calling up my fire or the dragonflame in my eyes glowed, there was nothing to give away that my second form lay beneath my skin. No one should have been able to feel that it was there, just as I shouldn’t have been able to feel Kristen.
