Azlo

by Maia Starr

  “Wow! Okay, and we’re arguing in less than ten seconds. That’s gotta be a record or something.”

  Sigisvult grew quiet, and I leaned over the bench, tilting my head forward to wring my hair out on the stone below.

  “Sorry,” he said quietly.

  “I get it,” I brushed him off. “You’re just embarrassed that a girl came in to save you.”

  I looked over at the handsome shifter and marveled at his features, the crooked bridge of his nose, his full brows and strong face. I looked at his pointed lips as they curved up into an unfamiliar smile and I eagerly smiled back.

  A comfortable silence settled between us until he corrected, “To be fair, you didn’t exactly rescue me. As I recall, it was you stranded down in the depths of the pit hanging onto a ledge for dear life, and it was me who flew you out.”

  “Uh, yeah, that is after mine and your giant orange friend tore your ungrateful ass out of the watery deep.”

  We laughed, the first real laugh shared between us and my eyes became transfixed on him once more. “We both have a cleft in our chin,” I marveled with a silly expression, reaching out to touch his chin. To my surprise, he let me.

  “So… what happened back there?”

  He sighed. “Can I not relive this for one second?”

  “I wonder if I scored any points for my dive,” I joked and leaned back into the bench behind me, wrapping my furs close to my arms.

  “It’s not that kind of tournament.”

  “No? They don’t score you by number?”

  He chuckled. “Not quite.” A long pause. “But thanks.”

  “For…? Saving your ass?”

  He shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “See!” I exclaimed and neared my lips to his in a teasing way before bragging, “What in the world would you do without me! What did I tell you? You’re going to be in love any day now.”

  “You don’t believe in all that.”

  “What?” I blanched, flushed. “Love?”

  He nodded.

  “It isn’t exactly an old wives’ tale.”

  He stared at me curiously at the expression, and I waved him off. I almost forgot I was on another planet. He had no idea what I was trying to say.

  “I just mean,” I huffed, “It’s not a legend, you know? Not a foreign concept. People have been in love. It’s not something to believe in. It’s just… a real thing.”

  “Well, that was a rant.”

  I muffled a laugh and stared at the shifter curiously. “So, you don’t believe in love?”

  “And you do.”

  I scoffed. “Why else do you think I’m here?”

  “To be pampered and spoiled. You think by being a breeder it makes you some sort of princess.”

  “Hey, buddy,” I snapped, moving farther away from him on the bench to better my view of the shifter. “You chose me, remember? So don’t get your back up with me about your insecurities.”

  He stared at me seriously for a moment and then laughed, despite himself.

  “Maybe I do have my back up about the union,” he said almost as a revelation. “Actually, there was no maybe about it. I wasn’t fond of the idea of pairing up.”

  My heart fell.

  “Then why did you?”

  “Loyalty,” he said evenly. “But I won’t be your charity case.”

  “Ah,” I nod in frustration, my lips opening to speak several times before I finally snapped them shut.

  He gave me a look that seemed to express a desire for me to continue speaking, but I just sat listening to the moisture on my quickly frizzing hair drip onto the stones below.

  “So I guess it’s safe to say you don’t like me.”

  “I’m embarrassed by you,” he clarified with a laugh.

  “That’s fine,” I said with a casual shrug. I wasn’t always proud of who I had dated in the past, but that didn’t mean I didn’t follow my heart. “But do you like me?”

  “Celeste,” he said firmly. “I know your affinity for ignoring the things I say, so if you don’t hear anything else I’m telling you, hear this: this is a business transaction to me. Clear?”

  “Crystal.” I stared numbly forward and could almost sense his surprise at my reaction. “You never answered me, by the way. And you never thanked me, either.”

  Chapter Six

  Sigisvult

  Even with the best strategists on our side, the council had yet to figure out how to combat the rebels. We narrowed down their final base, the only one left, but their defenses were incredible. They had catapults and high walls guarding their makeshift city.

  Hours sitting in the narrow council’s office with Galsthenn and his most trusted soldiers was doing nothing to help our cause.

  “Come on men,” Rosalyn suddenly cheered, standing from her seat and standing behind her chosen. She set her hands on Galsthenn shoulders and looked the room over intensely. “We’re in a room full of brilliant shifters. You’ve conquered lands and made treaties. This should be easy!”

  “We’re not taking advantage of our alliance with Earth,” came Poammenus’ groan.

  He was a red dragon and son of Meghan Klein and a deceased red shifter, Brenem. He had his claws out at all times and had curious spines that raced down his arms and back. He was definitely more dragon than the rest of us.

  “They have war machines.”

  “We are shifters,” Vordamm argued, his long forehead creasing with annoyance at the comment. “We don’t need tanks; we are beasts.”

  “Well tanks weren’t really on my mind there, champ, but thanks for the thought,” Poammenus said with a roll of his brown eyes. “Not very transport-friendly. I was thinking more like guns and soldiers?”

  “You see Earth, how they are, how they war,” Gaslthenn said regally, looking to Rosalyn with an apology in his eyes. “We don’t want those influences here. Not when it comes to fighting.”

  Rosalyn gave an approving nod and looked around the room with her head held high. “This is going to come down to battle.”

  “That I can do,” Poammenus grinned, a fang escaping his lips.

  His father, Brenem, was a renowned hot-head, a natural born fighter. He was one of the rare Weredragons with the ability to fully shift to dragon form. It was said he died on the battlefield taking down traitors within the Koth.

  Many shifters idolized him as the perfect soldier.

  Often I found myself caught up in the hype, probably only half of which was even true. Then I remind myself that he also attacked a human in her cryo-pod on the way to Udora to try and rape her.

  Some hero.

  I looked over at Poammenus and raised an unsteady brow. His mother was sister to the dragon Brenem allegedly killed. A traitor who attended a choosing without permission and stole a potential wife from some other dragon.

  A sigh escaped my lips as I stared the red dragon down, his scales positively glowing at the thought of a hand to hand fight.

  “If no other plan is made, then this is all we have to go on. A battle,” Galsthenn shrugged sadly, taking a stand from his seat and walking to the glass wall beside us.

  I thought on that sentiment all the way back to my apartment and felt a sickness rise up in my stomach that wouldn’t seem to go away. We were all well-trained fighters, but my uncertainty was that we didn’t know how many rebels there were left.

  We’d managed to wipe out a vast number of them, but how many had escaped to their final base? Weredragons lived for thousands of years. How many had escaped in lifetimes passed and holed up there waiting for the perfect opportunity to reclaim Udora?

  I sat at my desk most of the night trying to think of the right answer, my apartment surprisingly void of Celeste.

  I didn’t know where she had run off to. Streaking in some valley, probably.

  My mind kept rushing back to Rosalyn and the way she and Galsthenn had connected. I’d never seen a shifter and human couple so well in-tune with one another. A woman so respectful of
her mate.

  It made me think of Celeste. Her fiery personality would be ridiculous in the professional setting Galsthenn and Rosalyn were in. She was incapable of listening. She would make a good dictator, not a good council.

  Did I believe in love?

  Her question kept burning in my mind.

  Of course I did.

  I just couldn’t see it with her. I couldn’t see it with anyone else but a love lost.

  My apartment was cold with no pictures on the walls and all tiled floors. Unlike the rest of Udorian architecture, which took pride in windowed walls and the ability to show off their beautiful planet, this room had no windows or natural light.

  My apartment lacked any warmth. Sometimes even I felt like no one lived here. My room held only an oversized table and an abundance of tech. Through my peripheral, I could see Celeste peering in through the crack in the door.

  She stepped in quietly and I made it a point not to look up from my desk. Curiosity was the first thing to kick in as the redhead began rifling through the tablets laid out on the table across from me. This curiosity was quickly squashed as I gave her a testing look.

  I knew she did it just to bother me, and it worked.

  I could feel a full body cringe take over my features and she breathed out in a huff of disobedience and raised her brow to me. We were both participating in a war of silence.

  Celeste walked her slender body to the mirror attached to the wall just left of the doorway. She leaned into her reflection and grazed her fingertip against her dark lashes before pouting her lips and fluffing her hair. She turned back to me with a bored expression and leaned far over my desk.

  “Hi,” she finally said with a smile.

  I sighed. “You can’t possibly be looking for company after I told you I’d be working.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m just here for my business transaction,” she said tersely and fell back on the bed, spreading her legs to me. I glance over and could see up her skirt to her bare legs and felt a prick of hardness rise up in me.

  She did this whenever she was feeling pissed off, which was often. My comment was still alive in her mind, like an unspoken precipice between us.

  My hand moved through the mess of curls on my head, and I blinked with heavy eyes. Too tired to fight her this time.

  Instead, to both of our surprise, I stood from my desk and unzipped my pants, letting them fall unceremoniously to the floor. She leaned up and watched them fall before giving me a curious look.

  I threw my shirt on the ground and walked up, taking her by the hips and dragging her to my pelvis. She sat on the edge of the bed, me standing in front of her and pulling her skirt off. She watched my eyes, her lashes pressing against her brow bone as she looked up at me while I ripped her negligée off and threw it to the floor.

  “That’s romantic,” she breathed.

  “Business transactions don’t get romance,” I snapped, entering her and pumping quickly as she pressed her hands against my shoulders.

  She went to speak but I cut her off at the pass, reaching my hand down to touch her while I thrusted. It had been days now and I knew I wasn’t going to last long.

  Frustration crept over my face when I realized, for possibly the first time, she wasn’t enjoying herself. The expression on her face sent a white pain through the pit in my stomach, and I bit my lip, slowing down and trying to remember her ridiculous instructions on how to touch her the way she liked.

  She had the audacity to laugh as I attempted to please her and she threw her torso back, so she was lying flat on the mattress as I stood in front of her.

  I felt my wings retract with shreds of pain and I crawled on top of her, reaching my hand behind her back to steady myself by grabbing her backside. I went slowly now, using my free hand on her and going in to kiss her lips.

  She glared at me and turned her head to the side, so I kissed along her neck and licked the freckles I found there.

  The buttons on her shirt underneath me were digging into my skin. I opened my eyes, my lips still buried in her neck, and saw that her hands were now pressed flat against the mattress.

  Usually, they were all over me.

  Goosebumps ran along my whole body as I watched her hands rise above her head to play with her red hair in boredom, her eyes staring up at the ceiling as though she were wishing the interaction would end.

  More mind games, I thought.

  I wanted to ram her hard and make her moan, to pull her hair and tell her she didn’t know who she was messing with. I wanted to scream at her and reinforce the fact that this was why I thought she was an annoying little princess, yet…

  Even with the rage that coursed through my veins, all my body did was keep making attempts to make her happy. To make her climax. To make her taunt me. Anything that seemed like Celeste was what I suddenly craved.

  I slowed my pace to a crawl and took my hand out from behind her back, pulling her farther up the mattress and slowly taking off her blouse, caressing her flat breasts in my palms and leaning down to kiss them. I tongued one over and moved up to her mouth, reaching my hands up into her cascade of red as I went in for her lips.

  She moved her head away again, and I gave an audible sigh, my breath hitting her cheek and carved jawline.

  I stopped altogether and grabbed her chin by her perfectly thumb-sized clef and made her turn to look at me.

  “Hey, I’m trying.”

  “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart,” she said with a spiteful laugh. “I already got mine today.”

  I bit my lip, studied her features. Big, pale gray eyes looking at me with arrogance. I tightened my grip on her chin and smiled. “Is that so?”

  She shrugged and raised her brows matter-of-factly. She tried to turn her head, but I didn’t release my grip.

  “With whom?”

  She glared up at me, and a smirk seemed to crawl into the corner of her mouth and rest there. “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not.”

  With one fluid motion, she moved her face away from my grasp, and I started up again, moving faster and faster and watching her move with the rhythm of my body. I couldn’t tell if she was playing games with me or if she was serious. She wouldn’t mate with another Weredragon if she were actually committing to the process.

  Would she?

  I stopped trying to kiss her and just focused on the task at hand. I watched her small breasts move in the cycle of our bodies and closed my eyes as I laid a hand on top of one. I grunted out embarrassingly as it all came to an end and heard her moan loudly as I finished.

  Her moan only proved to frustrate me. If she was getting into it, I would have waited.

  My chest was pressed against her small mounds, and I could feel her heart beating quickly beneath me. I waited for her to reach up and grab me or make any of her usual attempts but she just lay still.

  I ran my hand through my hair and rolled next to her, both of us staring up at the ceiling at a loss for words.

  Then she began to cry.

  I didn’t turn my head, but my gaze shifted over to her as she sat up and buried her face in her hands, sobbing into them. I sat up and looked down at my legs uncomfortably, unsure whether I should talk to her or let her be.

  She shifted at my movement and stood up, walking out of the room.

  My jaw set awkwardly as I heard her cry in the next room. I wiped the tip of my nose with my fingers and grabbed my pants off the floor, slipping them on and following her into the living room.

  She sat with her legs drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them nestled in the corner of the couch.

  I took a breath and sat down beside her.

  “I see the way men look at you,” I said, my eyes trailing her still bare body and taking in the way it was showered in freckles and warm toned skin. “It must be inconceivable in your mind that somebody doesn’t like you.”

  She raised her head from her hands in a show of shock, and her eyes widened toward me.

>   “I’m pretty sure you can go now,” she managed to stammer out through tears.

  I went to say that I wished I did like her, but the truth was I didn’t want to feel anything for her. I had a chosen one, once. She was who I wanted to feel for. Not this spoiled, arrogant, impatient woman in front of me.

  “Come on, Celeste,” I nudged her with my elbow, and she jostled, looking over at me with annoyance. “This is what we do. Where’s my verbal sparring partner?”

  “You know… I may spar with you, but never once have I been mean about it.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said with a raise of my brow.

  “I don’t call you useless or tell you you’re just a job to me.”

  “No, you just go screw someone else,” I spat.

  Her tears stopped then, and she turned briskly to slap me across the face.

  Her hands were small, but the cold of them still stung my cheek, and I couldn’t help but let out a bemused laugh as I rubbed the space she had slapped.

  She didn’t think twice about it. I wanted to pick her up by the neck. It’s what I would have done with anyone else… but instead, I was charmed. She wiped her eyes gingerly with the backs of her hands. She pulled her legs up to cover her chest and reached a hand out in front of her foot, playing with the fabric of the couch and staring down sadly.

  I took a deep breath and couldn’t help but think how sad and pathetic she looked. Usually, this would fill me with satisfaction knowing I’d won, broken my enemy down.

  Then I realized… I’d made her my enemy somehow. It was easy, in fact. She was my opposite, and she expected things from me that she wasn’t entitled to. She was impulsive and unrestrained; I was a soldier under orders. She was unsure and rash; I was confident and headstrong. She was arrogant and spoke her mind even at the most inopportune times.

  Well… we were alike in some ways at least.

  “Come here,” I said slowly and reached over, picking her up and taking her whole body into my arms like a small child.

  She curled up there, pulling her legs up on my lap and resting her head on my shoulder. She looked up at me and got quiet as she studied my features methodically.