by Maia Starr
A siren sounded off in the distance, and I immediately spun around, staring back at the research facility, which was some ways away now.
They told us that if the alarm ever sounded, it meant that we were to return to Renden immediately.
To my great relief, the siren quickly stopped before it even finished its full cycle and my body relaxed once more. Just a practice call, probably.
I walked to my favorite pond, the one I would always find my way back to whenever I went out wandering. It was surrounded by small, shimmering stones, like a gate around its beauty.
“Bath time,” I announced and began stripping off my already wet clothes.
I slipped into the warm, milky water and leaned back until my hair was completely submerged.
Unlike the rest of my crew, I wasn’t wild about the insta-clean pod in my stateroom. I much preferred taking a bath.
It was nice to get away and relax after everything that had happened the last few weeks. Decompress. Think. Be alone.
But as I felt something crawling up my leg, I realized I wasn’t alone at all.
“Gah!” I shouted and shook my leg, trying to get whatever fish-type creature it was off of me and grew horrified as I watched a snake-like black goop jolt away from me.
I swallowed and backed up against the rocks, still mostly submerged in the water.
“Well… hello there,” I said, and it slowly swam back over to me.
The black goop crawled up my arm gracefully and spun and twisted around me as though it were tiptoeing over to me. There was something almost cute about the creature.
A twig snapped in the distance, and the black goop prostrated itself flat against my body, shivering in fear.
“Hey,” I said through a small, comforting laugh. “It’s okay, little girl.” I had decided it was a girl, apparently.
I brushed a finger against it, and it seemed to perk up, nuzzling against me again.
Another loud crack from the forest went off, and I looked up to see a giant creature emerge on all fours, smaller than one of the dragons but large enough to send me into a full-blown panic.
It had smooth skin, burnt-orange. The creature’s face was the most startling of all. It had horns on either side of its head that curled up and around like a ram. Its eyes were a pale yellow, and it had a rocky face with no nose: just a wide-set mouth that sat gaping open.
I set my hands on the sides the garden sized rocks around the lake’s enclosure and pushed myself lower into the water, hoping not to catch the beast's attention.
“Zzzm zzzm,” murmured the black goop that was now slowly removing itself from my side.
It flattened itself to the ground and seemed to pull itself along the grass in jerky motions.
My teeth were chattering, not out of cold, but out of fear as I watched the creature move by the lake until it stopped and took a sharp turn toward me.
Spotted.
Shit.
I sprung out of the water, pulling my soaking, heavy body from the side of the river and bolting back toward the research facility.
The ground was soft but uneven, and the occasional rock pierced the bottoms of my feet and caused me to cry out.
The large creature caught full sight of me then and bared its fangs—its sharp teeth enough to let me know it was definitely a carnivore.
“You shouldn’t be out here!” cried Fenris suddenly, whipping in front of me with his massive black wings.
“You think?” I screamed back but kept running.
The rain picked up its urgency, pouring down on both of us so that the creature in the distance was barely visible, even as it galloped toward us.
Fenris winced at the shaking ground beneath us, the force of it causing me to tumble over onto the ground. I stayed on all fours, as low to the moss as I could get and watched as Fenris’ muscular body turned from half-man into a full-blown dragon.
Black wings stretched out, and his body turned into a mass of scales and muscle.
His face was terrifying: nothing left of a human in him. He had a mohawk of horns going down the top of his head and down his back: two larger horns curling forward where his ears should have been. Dotting the space under his raised temples were three beady blue eyes on each side of his face.
Without meaning to, I yelled out at the sheer sight of him.
The rain pounded harder, thunder cracking in the background as Fenris cast out a beam of hot, white light from his mouth. It was a single fire: a warning shot to the creature who was still coming at us at an alarming rate.
The creature was undeterred by the fiery bellow and kept coming at the two of us at full speed until it suddenly fell over, sputtering to the ground with amazing force.
The two of us stood as still as stones, waiting to see what the creature would do next.
It didn’t move.
“Maybe… you scared him?” I said, shielding my eyes from the rain, still crouched close to the ground.
Fenris turned his profile to me and seemed to smirk. He took several heavy steps over to the beast and inspected it for a long time before he shifted back into his human form.
“Is it dead?” I called, and he turned to me. I could barely make out his nod through the rain.
With my breath finally slowing down, I started to realize I was completely naked. Fenris must have realized it too because he walked up to me and handed me the heavy, oversized chest piece off his armor.
“Here,” he said and turned around to give me some privacy.
I took the thick fabric from him and slipped into it as best I could. It was large enough that it covered the areas I needed it to.
“Thank you,” I said nervously.
“Why… are you naked?” he said, laughing at the end, unsure of a more delicate way to ask me.
“I was taking a…” I paused and then thought better of my wording. “I was washing up in the water.”
He looked at me, drawing deep blond brows together and shaking his head dismissively. “Where are your clothes?” he asked and I pointed back toward the direction of the pond.
My teeth continued to chatter as I watched him fly back and grab my things. While he was gone, I began to circle the creature, and when he came back, he began to shadow me: my clothes still in his hands.
“Maybe it had a heart attack?” I offered, rubbing my hands along my freezing arms as I hugged myself for warmth. It sounded stupid when I said it out loud, but I couldn’t think of what could possibly have killed such a large species in that short period of time.
“This,” I said, kneeling down beside it “Oh shit,” I said, barely audible through the rain.
Fenris rolled his eyes and pulled a half-transformed wing over our heads, creating a pitter-patter sound of the water against his patagium.
“Thanks,” I said quickly and then knelt down to the beast’s mouth, now dripping with black oil. “See that?”
“Yeah?” he said, unimpressed.
I looked up at him and tried to think of the best way to finish my sentence. This was exactly what happened to Amlodesh: the black liquid, her body overcome with the dark color almost immediately after she died.
Part of me wanted to tell him, but the other part remembered Scashra’s suspicion that Fenris had been the one who murdered her.
“What is it?” Fenris asked, looking down at me with concern.
“This,” I stammered, “is what happened to Amlodesh.”
He stiffened.
“See the liquid here?” I said, fingering near the creatures’ mouth.
“Yes,” he nodded, and there was a distinct change in his demeanor.
“Sorry,” I offered through chattering teeth. “I don’t know if you ever went to see her. I didn’t mean to give you a visual like that. It’s just…”
“She turned black?” he asked, tensing his brows as he looked over the creature. “Like this?”
I nodded.
“And do you think I killed her?” he asked slowly. “Like Scashra does?”
> “I don’t know,” I gave an awkward, half-shrug. “I don’t really know you.”
“No, you don’t,” he snapped.
I thought about it for a moment: of all that Scashra had told me of his family. I had come to develop my own theories, but in truth, I never thought it was Fenris.
“No,” I finally said, shaken. “I don’t think you did it. But you want to kill Scashra. And you murdered Alecia’s team on Yazir.”
“And yet I saved you,” he said, crossing his arms and pursing beautifully pointed lips at me.
“She and I are friends,” I reasoned, pulling his armor down on my body to cover more of me. “Regardless of whether she wants to come home or not, I don’t think she’d be happy if I were dead.”
“This is her home,” he said, softer than I expected.
I looked up at him and could see what Alecia saw in him—the wild aura that surrounded a Parduss. The immediate sex appeal, strength, and loyalty: that fast, addictive love.
He was strangely handsome, in the way that a ‘pretty’ man can be. His hair was so fair against his black wings that it was almost jarring, but his features were… delicate, like he should never have been born with those harsh black scales.
I frowned.
“Why were you out here?” I asked.
“Looking for Scashra,” he said evenly.
“Oh, come on!” I lectured. “We were having such a nice moment here! Did you have to ruin it?”
He smirked. “How’s that?”
“Oh, I don’t know! You, saving me, bonding over this freak-event, seeing me naked—”
“—Was something you thought was nice?” he asked, his brow flicking up.
I wrinkled my nose, confused. “What? No! That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that you were doing something nice and now you’re turning into like… you’re just ruining it, okay?”
“Because I want to kill Scashra?” he teased, quoting me from moment earlier.
“Um,” I moved my lips to the side of my mouth and scoffed. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
“And it makes no difference to you that he would just as quickly kill me?”
I blanched. “I’d rather nobody murder each other, if poss…” I looked up at him, and then something occurred to me. That little creature in the water: it had been crawling toward the beast right before I took off.
“Holy shit,” I said and began scrambling around the monster’s body, trying hard to see through the rain. Seeing that I was on to something, Fenris followed me with his wing still raised up like a shield.
“What are you doing?” he asked curiously.
“Look! Look here!” I said, nearly cheering.
In its right leg was a narrow hole, just wide enough for something to worm its way inside of him. I tapped the side of the opening, creating vibrations with my fingers until the black creature I’d been playing with emerged.
“What is that?” Fenris said, sounding horrified.
The little sludge creature elicited a pleased, high-pitched squeal and began to wrap around my arm, nearly purring with pride.
“Did you… did you do this?” I said in the same, soothing voice I’d used on it earlier.
Fenris drew his brows together: his face severe as he took a step back from me.
The black glop formed a snake-like head, featureless, and pulled away from my arm as if to nod. So, it was… protecting me?
I swallowed, fighting the urge to shake it vigorously from my arm.
“It was protecting me,” I affirmed, looking up at Fenris. “We were in the water together, and when the creature came, it went toward it.”
“You think it burrowed in and… killed it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, just a theory. Hand me that,” I said, gesturing to my backpack that Fenris had gathered up with my clothes.
He handed it to me, and I pulled out a large tube about the size of my forearm for collecting water samples for the lab. I opened the clamp top and held my hand up to the entrance, watching as the black ooze slowly made its way over to the entrance and then climbed in.
I quickly sealed the top and set the vial back into my backpack.
A disgusted grimace fell over Fenris’ face as he looked over at me.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” he said hoarsely, bringing his hand up to his forehead.
“Was Amlodesh ever in the mainland?” I asked.
“Always.” He continued to smooth out his forehead, keeping his eyes closed as he answered, “She was the head of security for the research team.”
I looked down into the bag filled with the creature and then back up at the ice-blue eyes staring holes into me.
“You think that’s what killed her?” he asked and suddenly I was sure.
“I’ll have to run some tests against the samples we took from Amlodesh,” I said.
He cocked a brow and looked me over. “But, yes?”
I nodded. “I think so. She must have threatened it somehow. Or, maybe just something that it likes.” I shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“Alecia, she’s been coming out here,” he pinched the bridge of his nose, “ever since she heard about our women dying: this infection, she would come out here and gather up this gunk. She said she was making some sort of salve from it.”
I winced. “And you never thought to ask what for?”
“She works on a lot of things,” he snapped, getting emotional. “I tried to bring the finished salve to Amlodesh, but it was too late. I heard too late.”
We stood in silence, letting the cracks of thunder and hot flashes of lightning fill the space between us. Then I said, “Fenris?”
He stared down at the beast. “Yes?”
“Does Pash ever come here?”
“Pash?” he repeated and massaged the back of his neck. He made a curious expression and said, “Yeah, why?”
I shrugged. “Just a theory I’ve been thinking about for a while now.”
“What’s that?”
From what Scashra told me of Pash—she was a woman who always got what she wanted, and she’d made it clear over and over again that she wanted Scashra to be the next Dendren.
For the longest time, I thought it was Pash who was setting everything up. That she’d killed Amlodesh, poisoned the Dendren, and pit Scashra against his brother so that when Scashra took their ‘throne,’ she would be the one ruling by his side.
I shared my theory with Fenris and watched as his eyes went wide and dark.
“What’s this?” Scashra hissed from behind us. We both turned around and saw Scashra standing there in human form, just as drenched as we were.
“Nothing,” I said stupidly.
I took my garments from the pile Fenris had left them in and started putting my pants back on: my legs catching in the knees of them and stretching against the sopping fabric.
I raced to pull my pants up, zipping them quickly and smoothing them out. My stomach sank at how horrible this situation looked. Me, getting dressed with only a chest piece on, Fenris’ shirtless from the lack of it, out in the rain together.
Scashra ran a hand through his black curls and looked between us, Fenris’ wing covering our bodies.
Fenris took a defensive stance and snarled a lip at Scashra. “I can make her freeze, if you like,” he snapped, moving his wing out from above me.
Chapter Thirteen
Scashra
I looked at Chloe, soaking wet and looking as sexual as I’d ever seen her, then I looked at my brother and felt fury rise up inside me. I would not expose myself to another Pash. I would not be someone’s second ever again.
I was done with Fenris.
He cloaked his wing over her delicate body, and I felt my blood quicken.
“What’s this?” I called out and then both turned to look at me.
I watched as Chloe began pulling on her clothes and I began to wonder what he did to her: looking down, I could see the corpse of a Kenthian hoarding beast. Whatever happe
ned here… I couldn’t begin to guess.
“I can make her freeze, if you like,” Fenris said, taking on a battle stance and pulling his wing from Chloe.
“I’m done with this,” I hissed at Fenris, tired of this rivalry: this game we’d been playing for so many years.
“Let’s be done with it then!” Fenris said, accepting my challenge and quickly shifting into the terrifying black dragon I’d known for so long.
He was an aggressive fighter, and I knew I would have to be quick if I had any hopes of winning our final battle.
I followed his lead, shifting to my full form and immediately darted toward him, bashing into his chest and sending him careening backward.
Fenris quickly took to the sky, knowing he would have a better shot at me from there.
We flew against one another, each letting out a screeching bellow as we collided. I grabbed him with my hind claws, and we spun around, hurtling toward the ground with great speed.
I looked up and saw Zalkenarr, a fellow shifter, one of my father’s loyalists, and he quickly summed up our fight, flying above us in circles to monitor who was winning. For a moment, I wondered if he would swoop in and choose a side, but instead, he took off toward Renden—to tell my father of our battle, no doubt.
In one last attempt to gain control, I bit deep into Fenris’ neck, finally gaining the upper hand.
Fenris screamed out in pain and used the sharp horn on the end of his tail to take me down, sending it careening through my body so that the ground was painted with a deep red splatter.
I didn’t feel the force of my body hitting the ground, but the impact left me feeling broken: warmth spilling out of my body. Still in too much shock to register the pain, the only thing that alerted me to the severity of my wounds was Chloe’s screaming.
Fenris landed slowly, breathing haggard as he did.
Chloe ran toward us, throwing her bag to the ground and I watched as a glass box shattered, letting one of her collected samples slither out and take a stand next to her, watching our battle almost as intensely as she was.
Fenris walked over to me, smiling and pleased with his work. He drew his
“Fenris, don’t!” Chloe yelled as she ran in front of me.
My tail swung out in front of her, and I pushed her back. No one would interrupt me this time. Not Alecia, not Chloe, not Pash or my father. This time I would kill Fenris.
