Dragon’s Christmas Wish
Copyright 2016 by Georgette St. Clair
This book is intended for readers 18 and older only, due to adult content. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the imagination of the author. No shifters were harmed during the creation of this book.
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Chapter One
It was two weeks before Christmas on the small colony of Far North, located on a planetoid orbiting Terra 2, and everything that could possibly be going wrong, was.
Early that morning, Liza Hawthorne had discovered evidence of the black fur fungus in the last untainted stand of their Christmas tree forest.
When she’d got back home, she’d been so upset that she’d lost track of time and burned the apple pies she’d been cooking.
And to top it all off, Santa Claus had just fallen off the roof of the Hawthorne family bed and breakfast with a resounding thud. Now his robot reindeer were hauling the sleigh through the sky overhead, leaderless, circling in an endless loop.
“Want me to get that?” Her grandmother set down a tray of sugar cookies on the kitchen counter. She was short and rotund and dressed like Mrs Claus, wearing a red velvet dress that was trimmed in white fur.
Liza sighed. “Nah, you finish up the baking. I’ll deal with it.”
She threw on her red jacket, grabbed the control stick off the kitchen counter, and ran outside, her boots crunching in the crisp, white snow. She stomped over and glared at the Santabot, which lay on its side on the front lawn, smoking and sizzling.
Why did this have to happen now? Everything else looked so perfect.
The Weather Control Station had deposited a fresh layer of sparkling white snow overnight, the perfect consistency for making snowballs and snow angels and snowmen. A dozen three-foot-tall, pointy-eared Srilaa aliens, dressed as elves, were gathered by the candy-cane fence. They were waiting to usher in the customers half an hour from now, when they officially opened.
Behind the ten-bedroom bed and breakfast, the pine tree forest stretched out to the horizon. Most of the trees near the house were still untouched by the fungus, giving the appearance of a serene, happy winter wonderland.
Liza shook her head impatiently and thumbed a few buttons on the control stick. The reindeer and the sleigh glided to a graceful stop on the ground.
The Santabot’s head swiveled, and it stared up at her with its merry little button-like eyes, wreathed in wrinkles.
“Ho, ho, ho,” it rasped. “And what do you want for Christmas, little boy?”
Little boy? Great. So Liza had been genetically gifted with small boobs. She didn’t need a run-down piece of machinery to rub it in, thankyouverymuch.
Liza snorted. “I want a Santabot that works. And one that can tell what sex I am, you cheap Andromedan knock-off.”
“Well, if you’ve been good all year, and done what mommy and daddy told you— you— you—” Santa’s voice trailed off and it lay there, twitching and sparking.
Damn the timing. Even if she could get an off-world specialized bot mechanic there fast enough, she couldn’t afford it. Her family’s bed and breakfast was just about running on fumes, like all the other colonists’ businesses. After the black fur fungus had infected all their trees, the entire colony had been forced to declare bankruptcy.
But there was still a trickle of tourists coming to visit the famous Christmas Colony in its final weeks, and she and her family needed every last scrap of business they could rustle up. The Santa sleigh ride was their most popular attraction, and now it was kaput.
“Stupid second-hand bots,” she yelled, and kicked him in the head.
“Did she just kick Santa?” a horrified child’s voice cried out.
She looked up, and her heart sank. A family was standing at the gate, staring at her, mouths hanging open. They’d arrived early. The Srilaa were gathered around them, hoping for candy canes. They were a race who needed massive amounts of glucose to survive. Liza’s family paid them in sugar, the only currency they would accept, but they always wanted more.
In fact, her family did a thriving business just selling candy canes for children to feed to the Srilaa…or they had in previous years, anyway.
“Is Santa dead?” one of the other children wailed. “We’re not getting any presents this year?”
“Who will feed the reindeer? Will they starve?” another little voice piped up.
“No presents and the reindeer will starve!” the first one howled, and now they were all hysterical.
“Santa’s fine! He’s just got a…a fever! That’s why he’s sparking! Mrs Santa’s going to give him some Cure-All now. Come back tomorrow; he’ll be feeling better!” Liza called out with forced cheer. What a liar she was. There was no way Santa would be working tomorrow.
The family members gave her one last appalled look and turned and hurried back to their rented hovercraft. They scrambled in, the door sealed shut, and they shot off like they were being pursued by a Denubian Ranthar in heat. Great. Just great.
“Question,” said her younger sister Geneva’s hologram, appearing beside her. “Did you seriously just kick Santa in the head? Are you trying to tank our business on purpose?” Geneva was currently off-world. She was attending business school on the tiny mechanical moon that orbited Far North.
Liza stared at her.
“Our business?” she said. “Are you suffering from an infestation of Albronian brain-worm ? This is all dead.” She gestured around her, blinking hard to keep back the tears. “As of two weeks from now, Far North is closed. Forever. The Hawthorne Family Christmas Experience will go the way of the dinosaurs. It will go the way of Terra 1. Extinct. Defunct. Far North is being taken over by dragons – excuse me, Drakken. And they don’t do Christmas, as far as we know. So there is no business for me to kill.”
“Terra 1 is actually making kind of a comeback,” Geneva said. As she spoke, her lower half vanished. Cosmic ray interference; that was what you got when you used cheap equipment. “I’m thinking of making a pilgrimage there next year. The atmosphere’s almost breathable these days – I mean, as long as you don’t take off your lifesuit and don’t spend more than four hours on the surface.”
With what money? Liza thought but didn’t ask. None of them had enough Galactic Stan-Creds to planet-hop, much less travel to another galaxy. When she and her grandparents left their bed and breakfast, they were all in for at least a year of indentured servitude just to pay the cost to get off this dying rock.
Part of her was glad that Geneva couldn’t afford to travel to Terra 1. Space travel was dangerous, unless you were obscenely wealthy and could travel business class or above. That came with extra security. There were pirates and scavengers and slavers and the possibility of being caught and held hostage in interplanetary war.
Terra 1 was nowhere near a portal, those mysterious deep space doorways that allowed for instant transport across thousands or millions of parsecs. That meant the only way to get to Terra
1 was using the regular Faster Than Light ships, which involved weeks of space travel.
For the steerage class passengers, which Geneva would certainly be, the odds were maybe one in ten thousand of not reaching your destination. Sure, that meant there was a 9,999 in ten thousand chance that you would reach your destination…but this was her sister. She didn’t want her taking any chances at all.
“You never know,” her grandmother called out. She walked up to them, grinning. “It’s Christmas. Miracles can happen. I met your grandpappy on Christmas.”
Liza sighed. “Yes, Mawmaw, I know, and it’s a wonderful story.” It really was. Any other time, she’d love to hear Mawmaw tell it for the millionth time. Mawmaw had been a tourist on Far North, and she’d fallen for George Hawthorne, the strapping lumberjack who’d given her a tour of the Hawthorne’s Christmas tree forest.
Right now, Liza just didn’t have the heart. She was doing the best she could to give the tourists one last merry Christmas.
But she didn’t have the emotional energy to hear happy stories of the past.
“Well, we have no Santabot today, and probably the rest of the season,” she told her grandmother. “Can you go get Pawpaw to help us move it into the shed?”
“I’ll go find him. I think he’s in the workshop making wreaths.” Her grandmother turned and trudged off through the snow, her boots crunching with every step.
Liza kneeled next to the sparking Santa. “You’re the Grinch,” she informed it.
“Hey, Liza!” her friend Marjan called out.
Marjan, a saber-tooth tiger shifter from Felis 7, came strolling up to join her. Like everyone who worked at the Hawthorne Family Christmas Experience, she wore the traditional red velvet trimmed with white fur, which looked incongruous on her because she was six feet five inches tall. Her ears were pointy and tufted with white fur.
“I didn’t know you invited Satan to celebrate Christmas with you,” she said with a scowl.
“Santa, not Satan,” Liza said patiently. “I know they both wear red, but they’re completely different beings. One of them brings presents and loves milk and cookies, the other one leads people astray and damns evil souls to hell for all eternity.”
The Galactic Universal Translator looped over Marjan’s ear worked perfectly, but she still didn’t have a firm grasp of human traditions.
“No, not Santa – actual Satan,” Marjan said, pointing behind Liza. “Satan is the king of evil, right?”
Liza turned around, and her heart sank.
A group of tall humanoid aliens had just landed a hovercraft in their parking lot, and they were piling out of the craft and heading towards her.
She recognized their leader, Jaspar. She’d met him once before, a month ago, and he’d made quite the impression.
He was almost seven feet tall, and he had eyes of an inhuman, icy blue. His dark, glossy hair flowed past his shoulders and was blacker than coal. His appearance was mostly humanoid, but his skin glowed faintly silver, and there were silvery scales on his temples.
He wore tan leather boots laced up with straps, leather leggings that did nothing to hide the considerable-sized bulge at his crotch, and a leather tunic.
To see him, one could easily think he was a simple-minded barbarian striding across the snowy steppes of Earth a thousand years ago. That would be a mistake.
The Drakken, a dragon-shifting species from the outer reaches of the Milky Way, were an interesting mix of technology and tradition. They had mastered FTL travel even before the humans, but they dressed the same way they had for thousands of years, and maintained rigid traditions that guided their lives in everything from relationships, to the garb they wore, to how they waged war.
These Drakken were the Balthazar Clan, who had purchased Far North at a bargain basement price from the First Galactic Bank after the colony went bankrupt. Oddly enough, another Drakken clan – the Harbingers – had also tried to purchase their colony, and had even challenged the Balthazar clan in Galactic Court. It made no sense. Without the pine trees, apple trees, chestnut trees and maple trees, the colony was worthless.
Either way, it didn’t matter. The Drakken had no right to be here yet – it was December tenth on the Terra 1 calendar, and they weren’t due to take over the colony until January first.
Liza stalked over to Jaspar, stomping so hard that little puffs of snow swirled around her boots with each step.
Before she could launch into a stream of obscenities, a strange feeling swept over her. Damn it, this was what had happened the last time she’d met him. She felt light-headed and her heart hammered against her ribcage and she gasped for breath.
Jaspar caught her and she slumped in his arms, breathing in his scent. He smelled spicy and delicious – like cinnamon. How did an alien smell like a priceless Terran spice?
He looked down at her and his full, sensual lips curved up in a smile. His blue eyes gleamed.
“Hello, my heart,” he said to her. “Thank you for flinging yourself into my arms. Does this mean that you now acknowledge that you are meant to be mine?”
Oh, yeah. When she’d met him a month ago – and fainted in his arms that time too – he’d informed her that in addition to claiming her planetoid, he planned on claiming her as his mate.
Chapter Two
Marjan rushed over, half shifted, claws shooting from her fingertips. Her enormous fangs sliced down, curving out of her mouth.
“Quit moleshting my friend!” she hissed furiously, the fangs making her lisp. “Get your handsh off of her, you shcaly pervert!”
Two tall, handsome dragons who resembled Jaspar laughed behind their hands. His brothers, Sterran and Korl. Not that Liza had obsessively researched Jaspar and his clan and stared at pictures of him over and over again ever since she’d met him last month. No, not at all.
“Members of the Most Exalted and Glorious Balthazar Clan of the Fiery Death-Bringers do not molest,” Jaspar said indignantly. “If anything, your friend molested me.” He glanced down at her. “Not that I mind.”
Oh, swoon. The handsome bastard was flirting with her. This was so unfair.
“Ha! That’s why your handsh are all over her. As the humansh would shay, whatever,” Marjan said, grabbing Liza. Liza took a deep breath and pushed Jaspar away from her. He released her instantly Marjan helped Liza walk over to the front porch, where she took a deep breath and tried to steady herself.
“Are you all right? Why did you almost faint? Did he shoot you with a poison dart or something?” Marjan glared at the Drakken. “They’re treacherous. I can feel it; I’m fighting the urge to shift. That only happens when there is a severe threat nearby.”
“He didn’t poison me,” Liza said. “I don’t know what came over me. Maybe I just haven’t been eating enough. That and all the stress.”
She knew that wasn’t really the case. Whatever the feeling was, it had been caused by Jaspar. Some kind of weird mind control? She didn’t know what he was doing to her, but every time she laid eyes on the bastard, he made her woozy. Also, she felt a strange mixture of lust and longing such as she had never felt before.
Jaspar didn’t seem to be the least bit disturbed. He had an enormous, smug grin on his handsome face as he stood there, eyes fixed on her.
“Thank God I saved you from that creepy pervert,” Marjan huffed.
“Yeah, that’s right. Good thing you got there when you did.” But secretly, Liza was thinking that it wouldn’t have been so bad if Marjan had left her slumped in Jaspar’s arms for a few moments longer. Just another minute – or hour, or overnight – would have been okay.
She shook her head to clear those ridiculous thoughts.
Some of Jaspar’s men were actually carrying luggage, she realized, and they were moving towards the bed and breakfast. Liza hurried over to block them, and Marjan joined her, claws extended. Marjan let out a low, threatening hiss.
“What are you doing?” Liza demanded.
Two of the men who’d accomp
anied Jaspar, who were almost as tall as he was, hurried forward. “Presenting His Most Glorious Excellency, He Who Rains Death From the Skies, He Who—”
“He who can’t speak for himself?” Liza interrupted rudely. She didn’t care if the Drakken apparently had some weird power that made all her pink bits tingle. He was the jerk who’d taken advantage of her family’s misfortune and scooped up their land in a fire sale. And what the hell did he mean, he was going to claim her? As if.
“I most certainly can speak for myself,” Jaspar said coolly.
“So did you come here to gloat?” Liza fixed him with a steely glare.
“No, we came to book your bed and breakfast for the next two weeks.”
“Are you kidding me? Why would I rent out our rooms to the bastards who destroyed our entire colony?”
“I am offended,” Korl said.
“Tough titty.” Liza glared at him. “We know it was you.”
Korl snorted, and wisps of smoke curled from his nostrils. “If we had destroyed your land, there would not be a blade of grass left standing.” He gestured all around him. “All of the buildings are intact. And the trees and the flowers and the underbrush. People walk in the streets and laugh, rather than lamenting over the smoking corpses of their loved ones. We are the fiery death-bringers. How dare you say we did such a poor job of destroying this world?”
“My brother speaks the truth,” Jaspar said. “But I forgive you for misunderstanding our abilities. Soon you will know us much better. Most especially me. You will know me and my abilities.” His eyes gleamed in a way that left no doubt as to what he meant.
“Why?” Liza stared at him suspiciously.
“Because you are my—” He said a word that didn’t translate.
“Your what?”
Geneva’s voice sounded behind Liza. “Oh, I know what that means.” Liza turned around and scowled at her. Her sister had the habit of holo-calling at the most annoying and inconvenient moments.
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