Dragons of Mars Box Set

by Leslie Chase

  Even so, it didn't explain how the robot had gotten to where she found it. That just made no sense, and no amount of poring over her maps of the area around the farm could make it match up.

  Unless... maybe, if it hadn't moved itself, that would explain it. Gillian frowned at that thought. Could a dragon have lifted the robot and carried it away, dropped it where she found it? That might explain the other damage to the robot's hull. Thinking back to the tears in the hull, they seemed about right for a dragon's talons — and, heavy as the robot was, she could believe that a dragon could lift it. Maybe.

  But why? That was a question she couldn't answer. Maybe Zardan could, but she resisted the urge to ask him about it. She knew nothing about him except that he was injured and needed his rest. She could wait until he had recovered before pestering him with questions.

  And given how confusing being near Zardan was, avoiding him seemed like the safe option anyway. Gillian tried to get the memory of his perfect body out of her mind and turned back to her work.

  6

  Zardan

  Zardan rested his eyes, lying back in an uncomfortable haze of pain. He wasn't sure how long that lasted, only that he needed longer to recover from these injuries and it wasn't going to be easy.

  But as soon as I'm up and about, I'll get out of here, he promised himself. The longer I'm here the harder it'll be to go.

  A noise at the doorway interrupted his mordant thoughts, and he forced his eyes open again. His heart fell when he saw that it wasn't Gillian standing there but Harry, peering nervously around the door frame.

  I don't suppose I can avoid talking to the humans for the whole time I'm here, he admitted to himself, sitting up and wincing.

  "Do you, um, want something to eat?" the small human asked nervously, looking as though he expected to be chased from the room. But his question made Zardan aware of just how hungry he was, and he nodded.

  "Thank you," Zardan said. "I will need food to recover,"

  A smile flashed across Harry's face and he vanished again, only to return with a plate of something. Zardan supposed that it could be called food, technically. It certainly looked like it held some nutrients, but there was nothing appetizing about it. He groaned at the sight — and the smell! — but took the plate anyway. I'm sure I've eaten worse in the field, he told himself, though he couldn't remember when.

  "Sorry," Harry said worriedly. "I just reheated a ration pack, they're a lot better than they look. Gillian's the one who can actually make something nice."

  "Thank you," Zardan said, taking the plate with an effort. He hoped it tasted better than it smelled, too, but didn't hold out much hope. Still, that was no reason to be ungracious. "I mean no insult to your cooking, youngling. You're doing the best you can with what you have."

  Taking a spoonful of the mush Harry offered him, he forced himself to eat it without flinching. It wasn't good, by any means, but his body was ravenous and before he knew it he'd cleaned the plate. Harry watched in what Zardan could only describe as awe.

  "I'm only eating," Zardan growled as he finished. "It's not that impressive."

  The small human blushed and took the empty plate. "I've just never seen anyone eat that much of my cooking that fast."

  That made Zardan laugh and then wince in pain. His lungs hadn't recovered yet, and any movement hurt his wings. Quietly, trying not to set off another painful movement, he continued. "Thank you for the food, young man."

  "Not a problem," Harry said. "So, ah, what was that about you saving my sister?"

  Zardan looked at him, weighing his words.

  "Ask her about it," he said eventually. "I just stepped in to do what I could."

  "But that makes you a hero," Harry insisted. "I want to hear all about it!"

  "I'm sure you do," Zardan growled. "But I don't want to talk about it, so I won't."

  It was hard enough to think about it without verbalizing his feelings. Trying to tell Gillian's brother what had happened would be madness. Zardan tried to turn his thoughts away from Gillian, but that proved to be almost impossible. His dragon soul called out for her and filled him with joy at the thought of being near her, making all the pain he was in worth it.

  This is ridiculous. She isn't my mate. She can't be.

  But telling himself that did nothing to change the way he felt. The certainty in his dragon soul when he thought of the human female was undeniable. Try as he might to doubt it, he was fighting a losing battle.

  Zardan started as Harry touched his shoulder, and it took an effort to restrain the urge to snap the human's wrist. He realized he'd been staring into space, and he didn't know for how long.

  "Are you okay?" Harry asked, seemingly oblivious to the danger he'd put himself in.

  "No, I'm not," Zardan snapped, then grimaced at the flinch that got from the human. He's only trying to help. "My apologies. I'm in pain, and that makes my temper short. But I will recover, and then I'll be out of your hair."

  The thought of leaving stabbed at his heart. That didn't deter him, though. He had to keep moving.

  "In that case, can you answer my questions first?" Harry asked hopefully. "I've never gotten to speak to a dragon before, and I don't know if I'll get another chance."

  Zardan groaned, but at least it offered a distraction. "Very well. If you'll trade me some answers of my own."

  Harry grinned. "Sure! So, uh, what's it like being able to shapeshift? Did you fight lots of knights? Know any princesses? How come you speak English so well? Why—"

  "One at a time, one at a time," Zardan said, holding up a hand and chuckling. The young man's enthusiasm was infectious and distracting, just what he needed. "Let me see what I can tell you."

  With that, he launched into an explanation of shifting. The discussion was hampered by the lack of words for some of the concepts he needed. but Harry didn't seem to mind. The human listened in awe-struck silence apart from the occasional interruption to add more questions.

  In turn, Zardan asked about life on the ice cap and learned more than he'd expected to about the functioning of a human ice farm. The challenges were, he had to admit, interesting. Hunting for water that would be easy to purify, digging it up and selling it so that the human colonies that dotted the Martian desert had water to drink was a worthy task.

  But not, it seemed, a profitable one. Harry did his best to hide that part of it, but the longer Zardan listened to him, the clearer it was that the Willis Ice Farm was barely keeping ahead of bankruptcy. That wasn't good news, but there wasn't much that he could do about it.

  He wasn't sure how he felt about the farm, anyway. This was his land, or at least his family's — and as far as Zardan knew, he was the sole surviving heir to it. The humans mining it for ice were squatters taking from his legacy. On the other hand, the Willis's were working hard to make a place for themselves on an unforgiving planet. He had to respect that.

  Finally, of course, there was the possibility that Gillian was his mate. Did that make this land partly hers? If we were together, of course it would. But we're not, and we're not likely to be. He had to be firm with himself. The spark of hope and light her presence brought him would not last, and he had no place here. He was the Lord of Herendar, a place on another world and far in the past. A place forever out of his reach.

  Over the next few days, he recovered slowly. As soon as he was able to walk he let Harry show him to a guest room where he could rest more easily, and they kept up their conversation while Gillian avoided him. Zardan found himself looking forward to Harry's visits despite the endless barrage of questions.

  "Where are you going to go once you're better?" Harry asked eventually, his curiosity about the Dragon Empire sated at least for a little while.

  "I don't know," Zardan had to admit. "I've not thought that far ahead. I came up here to—"

  He cut himself off half-way through the sentence, unwilling to tell the truth. He knew the humans well enough by now to predict that Harry would be offended if Zardan
claimed this land as his own. Besides that, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do beyond that. The humans would, quite reasonably, want to know. Better not to start that conversation until he had somewhere to go with it.

  But he'd said enough that he had to add something.

  "I wanted to see the ice," he finished. "Before the Great Sleep, this was clear land. All this ice has formed in the centuries since then. It sounded like quite a sight."

  "I thought it took a lot longer than that," Harry said dubiously. "My science textbook says it took millions of years."

  Zardan remembered the small forest that his family had planted here, silver trees shining in the distant sunlight. His smile was bitter-sweet. "Your scientists are wrong. Not without reason, though: our technology shielded the planet and kept it habitable. Once that failed, everything would go to hell quickly and chaotically. No one on Earth could have anticipated that, so human theories are off a bit."

  He wasn't as sure about that as he sounded, but then he wasn't a scientist himself. All he knew was that it had happened, and the theories others had hashed out to explain it. Still, however the miles-thick sheet of ice had formed, it was spectacular. If it wasn't burying the only part of his family's estate that he could conceivably reach, he might even have found it beautiful.

  Instead, it was a huge weight lying across the only legacy of his house. The thought sapped his strength and he lay back. This recovery was going to take far too long, and Harry's question was preying on his mind now. What would he do once he could move freely again? He had no more places to go.

  7

  Gillian

  As the days passed, Gillian's life got back to something that almost looked like normal, if she squinted at it. She could almost forget that she had a dragon living in a spare room, and Gillian liked it like that. Zardan's presence woke strange feelings in her that she had no time for and she left him alone as much as she could. Harry could bring Zardan's meals to him, and Gillian stayed out of the way and ignored him.

  Her conscious mind did, anyway. At night, though, her subconscious had other ideas. In her sleep, Gillian couldn't escape her thoughts of the handsome giant. Every time she closed her eyes, there he was. Gorgeous. Powerful. Naked.

  She stood on a glassy plain of ice, watching the stars wheel above her. In her dream, there was no need for a helmet, and her view of the stars was unobstructed.

  Above her, Zardan hung suspended in the air, his great wings spread, and his body bare. Gillian felt her heart race, pulse deafening in her ears as she looked up at him. She'd never looked at him that closely while awake, but it seemed like her mind had stored every glimpse of him that she'd had, to pore over when she was asleep.

  And he was well worth looking at. His powerful body was thick with muscles, perfectly defined in a way she'd never seen on a human. Her eyes traced down across his abs to the vee that led her gaze between his legs.

  Even in a dream, she blushed and looked away. And when she looked up again, Zardan was swooping down at her with a blinding speed that made her shriek and duck. Not in fear, not exactly, but she couldn't name the feelings that flooded her as she turned to run. As she fled she could hear his wings catch the air, feel the heat of his breath on the back of her neck, and though she ran as fast as she could she knew she wouldn't escape him.

  And she didn't want to.

  Zardan's arms caught her around the waist and she lifted from the ice in a soaring arc that ended with the two of them tumbling into the snow. They rolled over and over, the heat of his body sending plumes of steam rising into the air. Somehow Gillian's suit came apart as they rolled, parts flying this way and that until she was naked, her body pinned between the heat of Zardan above and the cold ice below. The contrast made her gasp, and she could feel his dick harden against her as he growled above her.

  Short of breath and aching for him, she moaned and reached down to guide him into her—

  —And then the alarm buzzed.

  Gillian's eyes flicked open, the dream fading despite her effort to hold onto it. For a bleary moment she wasn't sure what was real and what was dream, and she scrambled for her suit only to tumble from her bunk, sheets wrapped around her legs. Crashing to the floor she cursed, struggling to focus.

  He's not here, she thought. The mix of relief and disappointment that woke in her was confusing and she put it aside to pull herself to her feet and slap the alarm panel. It was still an hour before she was due to wake up, she realized, glaring at the screen and wondering why the computer had decided to wake her.

  Ah. A high priority call was coming through. That was enough to override her privacy settings. Seeing who the call was from drove the last traces of sleep from her mind. An urgent call from the bank was unlikely to be good news, but they might have heard from her father.

  I can't answer it like this, she thought, looking down at herself. "Put the call through to the main console and tell them I'll be there in a minute," she told the computer. A beep of acknowledgment and the alarm died down. Hoping that the banker would wait for her, she rushed through the shower and pulled on a fresh pair of overalls. That would have to do, and if they wanted to see her dressed better they ought to call at a more civilized hour.

  Stamping her feet into her boots and tying back her hair, Gillian made her way through into the living area to the main household communicator. It was a central feature of the farm, their only real contact with the outside world, so the family had spent a lot on it when they first moved to Mars. Sometimes Gillian wondered if it wouldn't have been better to do without: when was a call from civilization worth taking?

  The screen lit up and suddenly she was face to face with an annoyed looking man in an expensive suit. He glowered into the camera, dark eyes narrowed, and his tight lips were pursed. He most emphatically didn't look pleased to see her.

  "Finally," the man growled. His voice didn't seem to fit a banker, hard and rough as it was. For that matter, he didn't look like Gillian's mental image of a banker either. He was built more like a fighter than an office worker, his suit seeming strained over his muscular arms. A few days ago, he would have looked impressively strong. Now, though, Gillian had Zardan to compare him to.

  "Maybe if you'd called during the day, I wouldn't have kept you waiting," she said, immediately regretting her tone. No matter why he was calling, making him angry wouldn't help anything. "Sorry. I'm only just waking up."

  The man's lips twitched into something approximating a smile, but there was nothing friendly about his expression. It made Gillian think of a shark scenting blood in the water, and it wasn't the cold that made her shiver. "My apologies for the inconvenient hour, then. I presume you are Gillian Willis, daughter of Gareth Willis? My name is Brooker Danforth from the Ardashev Bank, and I'm calling about your family's loan."

  Gillian gritted her teeth, trying to make herself smile back. "My father should have seen you about that, Mr. Danforth."

  "Should he?" Danforth's 'smile' widened, showing teeth. "I'm afraid that I haven't seen him. In fact, I was hoping to speak to him, since he's missed our review meeting. And I'm afraid to have to tell you that your farm is dangerously behind on its payments."

  Gillian felt her cheek twitch at that. Dad, where the fuck have you gotten to? Sorting this out was the whole point of your trip into town. "I'm sure my father will be able to sort that out when he arrives."

  "That won't be possible, I'm afraid. Mr. Willis is already overdue by three days, and the loan is due to default. If you don't have the funds to make payment now, we have no alternative but to take possession of the collateral. That is to say, the Willis Ice Farm and its equipment."

  Her heart almost stopped at that. "You can't—"

  "I can and I will," Danforth interrupted. His smile now seemed to show genuine pleasure, a sadistic glee at her distress. "I have the paperwork on my desk, duly annotated. I suppose you could appeal it to an arbitrator — and I have to offer you that option — but less than five percent of appeals are succe
ssful in cases like these."

  The video feed shrank to a quarter of the screen, and documents filled the rest. Complicated legalese scrolled past too quickly for Gillian to read, but she knew it wouldn't make any difference. She didn't know how to make sense of it anyway, and there was no money to hire a lawyer. But something was wrong here, she knew that much. There had to be a way out of this.

  It doesn't make sense, why spring this on us so suddenly? It's like they don't want our money. Gillian felt her heart sink. Unless this isn't sudden, and Dad's been hiding how badly business has been going?

  That would be only too believable, unfortunately. Gareth Willis hadn't talked much about anything since Gillian's mother had passed away.

  "Give me some time to look at the accounts," she said, trying to sound more in control than she felt. "I'm sure that we can turn this around and pay what we owe."

  "You've had too long already," Danforth replied. There wasn't even a hint of sympathy in the banker's voice. "We will be taking possession of the property in a week, you have that long to vacate it or you will be removed."

  Gillian rocked back as though he'd slapped her. A week? That's no time at all. "That's completely—"

  "Ms. Willis, be gone when we get there," Danforth said, raising his voice to talk over her. The shark-like smile had spread across his face and he leaned forward over the desk, clearly enjoying himself. "If you are not, you will regret it."

  Something in his eyes promised more than merely legal consequences, and Gillian shivered at the implication. Anyone who came out here to repossess the farm would be far from any prying eyes, and she wondered how far Danforth's thugs would go. Not that it mattered. The farm was all her family had, and she wasn't going to give that up. If she had to face down the bank's men with a shotgun, she'd do it.

  The question was, could she do anything more effective than that? Lost for words she stared into the screen, trying to keep her temper under control and think of something practical to say when all she wanted to do was shout abuse at him. Before she could think of an answer, the moment was taken out of her hands.