by Lili Zander
“Please…” She holds one of Xanthox’s hands between hers, holding onto him as if her touch can anchor him to life. She’s crying openly now, and so am I. My pair-bond’s breathing is labored. I’ve seen men die; I know what death sounds like.
May your soul be judged gently in the Gardens of Caeron, I whisper to him. In that long month when Felicity wasn’t talking to us, Xanthox never once said a word of reproach to me, even though the estrangement had been my fault. Never once blamed me. Never once raised his voice in anger.
“You stupid idiots.” I hear the sound of footsteps, and then Dariux hurries up to us. “There are stairs carved into the side of the shaft. Next time, try taking them.”
He’s holding something in his hands. His med-kit. Oh, thank Caeron. A shudder of relief passes through me as the med-kit activates, glowing blue as Dariux holds it over Xanthox’s too-still body. “He broke his back in the fall,” he says softly. Turning his head to Felicity, he surveys her with concern. “Did you get hurt?”
She shakes her head. “Just jolted.”
The break is taking a long time to heal. Xanthox’s face contorts with pain as the bones knit back together. His eyes flicker open, hazy and clouded, but awareness quickly returns. “The youngling,” he rasps.
Dariux raises an eyebrow. “You’re with youngling?” he asks. His expression turns warm, and in that moment, I know with absolute certainty that Dariux has no designs on my mate. There’s no trace of envy in his eyes, no trace of sorrow. “I’m so happy for you. For all of you.”
“Dariux,” Xan says, his voice urgent. “Forget about me. Check Felicity.”
“I’m fine,” Felicity murmurs unhappily. “You’re the one who’s badly hurt.”
“Check her,” Xanthox insists.
Dariux sighs impatiently but holds the med-kit over Felicity. “She’s fine,” he says after the longest heartbeat of my life. “Your baby girl is unaffected by the fall.”
Xanthox slumps back, relief etched on his face. Dariux continues to work on him with the med-kit. This time though, I’m not watching. I’m still digesting Dariux’s words.
I’m going to have another daughter.
This isn’t just a second chance.
This is a miracle.
29
Felicity
PRESENT…
It takes Dariux a really long time to heal Xanthox. Finally, after the longest half-hour of my life, he nods at me. “Vulrux should take a look at him too, but he’s going to be okay.”
Luddux, who is totally tearing up at the thought of having a daughter, has broken his right leg in the fall, as well as his left elbow. Those are easier to fix. “You’ll be able to walk in a knur,” Dariux says to him, before turning to Xanthox with a stern expression on his face. “No exertion for a week,” he warns. “Absolutely none.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” I promise. If it means helping Xanthox get better, I’ll withhold sex without even a stab of conscience. My mate is going to be a father. He needs to be alive to watch our little dragon grow up.
If the Zorahn warships don’t destroy us first.
Now that we’re out of immediate danger, I finally register where I am. “Did I just fall into the heart of the mountain?”
“You did.” There’s a note of wild excitement in Dariux’s voice. He gets to his feet and takes a torch out of his pack and starts to walk around. Dariux would have been a Scout back on Earth. Always prepared. Thank heavens for it. If he hadn’t had his med-kit with him today… My mind shies away from that thought.
I almost lost Xan.
The same thought is going through all our minds. For a few minutes, the three of us hug each other. None of us say anything, but we don’t need to.
All my life, I’ve felt like there’s something unlovable about me. Something that made Aunt Priscilla resent me, something that made Chloe mean to me. Something that made my family treat me like a servant.
I carried that insecurity to the prison planet. I had everything, but I couldn’t quite believe it was real. Deep down inside, I kept waiting for it to be torn away. And when Herrix had played on my fears and told me that Lud and Xan were going to leave me, I’d believed him, because I was never secure in their love.
Not because of anything they did. Because of me. Because I didn’t think that I deserved to be loved.
I’ve been given not just a second chance, but a third, and damn it, I’m done letting Aunt Priscilla, Uncle Fred, and Chloe define my life. I’m done letting what happened with Calder Reese influence the way I see love. Like I told Olivia, I’m done with the past. I’m ready for a fresh start.
“I love you,” I whisper. I don’t need to lower my voice—Dariux is so clearly preoccupied with what he’s seeing down here that the three of us could start to go at it on the stone floor, and he wouldn’t notice—but the moment feels quiet and intimate, just for us.
We cling to each other for a long time. Finally, reluctantly, I pull free. As much as I want to stay ensconced in their arms, too many things are happening. Beirax is missing. The others will need to know. I’m willing to bet that Arax is going to want to search through the jungle on the chance that the man had killed himself by throwing himself off the cliff.
“What are you doing?” I call to Dariux. “I don’t want to move Xanthox, but shouldn’t we head back?”
“I’m fine,” Xanthox grumbles. “The med-kit did its thing. Dariux worries for no reason.”
Dariux hears that and shoots him a sharp look. “Don’t let him move, Felicity,” he says. “He might not listen to me, but he’ll listen to you. To answer your question, I’m looking around, obviously. And so should you.”
He lifts his torch, and I gasp, because I realize what he’s noticed from the start. This isn’t some kind of freak geological formation. I’m lying on a smooth, paved stone floor in the middle of a vast underground room. Above me, five levels of balconies ring this central room. “Somebody built this,” I breathe in shock.
He nods. “For sixty-five years,” he says softly, “I’ve wondered if I was searching for something that didn’t exist. I started to doubt my sanity. I started to question myself.” He takes a deep breath. “And here we are.”
“This is what you were looking for?” Luddux asks.
Dariux shakes his head. “No. But this is proof that I’m not crazy. What I was looking for does exist.”
God, the guy can be mysterious if he wants to be. “And what is that, Dariux?” I ask, rolling my eyes a little. I’m happy for my friend, but given that Beirax’s missing, we have other, more urgent things to worry about.
“Never mind that now,” he says. “My search can wait. Don’t you see what this is?”
I have no idea. My mates, on the other hand, catch on immediately. “A place to hide,” Xanthox says, his expression clearing. “Of course. We’re inside a mountain. The rock walls will shield us from sensors. They won’t be able to find us from the air. They’ll have to approach us on foot.”
“And on the ground, we can hold our own,” Luddux adds. He brushes a kiss across my lips and rises to his feet. “I’m going to look around with Dariux. Will you be okay here?”
I nod, my fingers crossed behind my back. Until the Zorahn find Raiht’vi, we need a place to hide.
I really hope this is it.
30
Xanthox
PRESENT…
Life is precious and fragile. I could have lost Felicity today. When I saw her fall down that shaft… my heart had stopped, and breathing became impossible.
I never want to waste another day again.
Dariux insists that I lie down. Felicity sits next to me and orders me to lay my head on her lap. Part of me thinks that the two of them are fussing over me. Then again, my body feels like a herd of argangana has just run over it, so maybe they’re right about me staying still.
Luddux and Dariux disappear down a corridor, leaving me alone with my mate. I lace my fingers in hers. “When I was eight,” I
say softly, “A servant took me to the vanderfields. There was a meadow there, surrounded by purple-tipped mountains, and it was covered with yellow wildflowers. It took my breath away.”
I brush a strand of hair away from her face. “I never experienced that feeling again. Until I saw you.”
“Xan,” she whispers. “I feel your love every day. You just dove down a shaft in the middle of a mountain to save me. You don’t have to say the words for me to know your heart.”
“I want to. Every morning, when I wake up next to you, I feel the same wonder I felt that day. The same sense of possibility.” I place my palm on her belly. If the other pregnant woman, Harper Boyd, is any indication, Felicity is going to start to show soon. I imagine her, soft and rounded with our child, and I’m almost blinded with joy. “I’m not good at saying the words. I’m much better at showing you how much I care through gifts. But I love you, Felicity. I adore you.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Damn it, I’m weeping all over you,” she murmurs. She bends down and kisses me, soft and sweet. “I think you’re a lot better at saying the words than you give yourself credit for,” she says. “And I love you too, Xan. I can’t even tell you how happy I am that we’re together.”
Luddux and Dariux return in a few knurs. “This place was definitely built,” Dariux says. “And by someone with advanced technology. There are apartments. Communal halls. Greenhouses. Hidden tunnels that take us outside. The doors have working sensors. The apartments have daylights and bathrooms and more.”
Felicity looks up at that. “Bathrooms? With flush toilets?”
Luddux nods. “Every room had a thick layer of dust,” he says. “Nobody has lived here for a really long time.”
“But there’s tech?” I ask them. “Is it Zorahn tech?”
Dariux shakes his head. “It looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Another mystery. Who built this structure, and why? What caused them to leave? But answering that question can wait, because I have a more immediate one. “Can we hide here?”
Both men nod. “Not just hide. We’re safe here from the hairus, from the dwals, from the rains that threaten to drown us. We can flourish here.”
Felicity puts her hand on her stomach. “Then we go into hiding,” she says. “Until it’s all over.” She takes a deep breath. “Let’s go tell the others.”
Epilogue
Felicity
Three weeks later…
Moving into the mountain was a complicated undertaking, but we managed it in record time.
This place is seriously amazing. We’re inside the mountain, but strangely, there’s technology here, one that’s so advanced that none of the Draekons recognize it. There are thirty housing units, each with a bedroom, a living/cooking area and a bathroom. The single Draekons happily volunteered to live in the smaller units, leaving the larger apartments to the trios.
Then there are the greenhouses, with lights that shine as bright as the sun. Viola, the resident botanist, was delighted when she first saw them. “It rained for three months, and I couldn’t even think about growing anything,” she said. “But I can’t wait to see what we can do.”
Bryce is already lobbying for us to grow the strange grain she found near Lake Ang. “Come on,” she says persuasively. “Admit it. My beer’s been getting better.”
The patrols have found the wreckage of three more ships. No survivors. Still, we can’t help thinking that we took cover just in time.
After a week and a half in a healing coma, the soldier that Thrax had found, the one that had started our search for a safe hideout, woke up. Arax was concerned that he might be uncooperative, but he didn’t need to worry. The soldier was quite happy to switch sides. “I’m Lowborn,” he said bluntly. “Blood status is not supposed to matter to the Zoraken, but when they rounded up troops for a suicide mission, guess who was chosen? Not a single Highborn.”
While cooperative, he didn’t know enough about what the Zorahn navy was planning. “I heard the High Emperor was furious,” he said. “That’s all I know.”
Almost by accident, he did tell us something exceedingly useful though. Every day at noon, there’s some kind of solar flare that disrupts their sensors. “The commander hates it,” the soldier, whose name is Gunnix, confides. “But there’s nothing he can do. The technicians have tried their best, but for about a knur every noon, we can’t get any readings.”
When Arax heard, he’d okayed the use of the communicator. “It’s as much for morale as anything,” I’d heard him say to Viola. “We were ripped away from our families. We haven’t talked to our loved ones for sixty years. I don’t have the heart to ban this.”
He’d actually personally handed it to Luddux. “Dariux told me why you needed it,” he’d said. “I really hope she’s doing better.”
Lud had been quite pale as he’d turned the communicator on. “I’m too nervous to look,” he’d said to Xan. “Can you do it for me?”
“Of course.”
I’m not going to lie—I was a nervous wreck as Xan scanned the messages. My heart was racing. I had my fingers and toes crossed for luck.
Then a smile had broken out on Xan’s face. “She’s alive,” he’d said. “Your message got to her in time. Read.”
I’d have read over Lud’s shoulder, but since I can’t read Zor, I had to wait patiently—okay, I was not patient at all—as Lud absorbed the note from his daughter, and then read it aloud.
Father,
All my life, I’ve felt alone and unwanted. I knew my mother died in childbirth, but nobody ever talked about you. I was left with the impression that you did not want me.
Now, I have family. Aunts and uncles and cousins. But even more importantly, I finally know the truth. I finally know why you never found me.
When I got your note, I cried for days. I wept for what was stolen from us. And then my sorrow changed to anger.
I refuse to live in a society where a man can be condemned to a lifetime of exile for failing the testing. I refuse to accept a system where a father can be torn from his daughter for no fault of his own.
A rebellion is brewing against these injustices. I intend to join it. I intend to fight back.
I won’t be able to talk to you again for a long time, Father, because my communications will be monitored. But it is the dearest wish of my heart that one day, we will be united.
Mar’vi und Luddux
I was bawling like a baby by the time he was done reading the note. She’d signed it with his name. She’d formally acknowledged him as her father.
The non-stop tears? I blame pregnancy hormones. Viola has decided that I’m worse than Harper. Poor Xan and Lud.
So here we are. The future is uncertain. Raiht’vi, the person responsible for all of this, is still missing. Any moment now, the Zorahn ships could find a way past the asteroid belts.
I can’t control any of that. I can’t control the future. All I can do is hold my mates tight and show them every day how much I love them.
A small group of us is sitting in one of the communal rooms one evening. Lud and Xan, Zunix, Liorax, and Olivia, Dariux, Bryce and me. “So,” Bryce says during a pause in the conversation. “Now that we’re here and settled, are you ever going to tell us what you were looking for, Dariux?” Her smile turns teasing. “You never know, we might help you find it.”
I don’t expect him to reply, but he does. “A really long time ago,” he says, “The scientists created the Draekons.”
Zunix, who has known Dariux a very long time, groans out loud. “Great,” he says. “A history lesson. Thank you for that, Bryce McFarland.”
Dariux shoots him a quelling look. “Things went badly, you already know that. Kannix, High Emperor, ordered the death of Wonacx, the head of the Council of Scientists, and he also ordered every bit of research the scientists had done to be destroyed. We lost thousands of years of knowledge as a result of Kannix’s decree.”
“And this relates to us because…
?”
“Because Wonacx didn’t want his life’s work to be destroyed. He smuggled Draekons and scientists to a secret hideaway where Kannix couldn’t get to them, and then, he destroyed all signs of his crime.” He smiles slightly. “Well, almost all signs.”
“I’m assuming Dariux will get to his point before my baby is born,” I quip.
Everyone laughs, except Zunix, who’s staring at Dariux as if he knows where the other man’s going. When the mirth dies down, Dariux picks up his story. “To the best of my knowledge,” he says, “He sent the Draekons here.”
No fucking way.
“Wonacx wasn’t a fool. He knew it would be generations before the Draekons could be looked at as anything other than creatures of terror. He would have had to send enough of them so they could form a self-sustaining community. Live, mate, reproduce. Give rise to the next generation of Draekons. Always waiting, always watching. Until it was time to emerge out in the open again.”
He looks around at us. “It is my belief,” he says, “That somewhere on the prison planet, there’s an enclave of Draekons that have stayed hidden for more than a thousand years. I’ve been searching for the lost city of the Draekons.”
Draekon Rogue, the sixth book in the Dragons in Exile series, will release in Spring 2018. Sign up to Lili Zander’s email list to receive a notification when the book goes live. (Newsletter subscribers also get a special Draekon Mate bonus scene!)
The Dragons in Exile Series
Are you all caught up with the Draekons? Don’t miss any of the books.
Draekon Mate - Viola’s story
Draekon Fire - Harper’s story
Draekon Heart - Ryanna’s story
Draekon Abduction - Olivia’s story
Draekon Destiny - Felicity’s story
Draekon Rogue - coming soon!
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The Draekons
The Fourteen Draekons of Exile Batch 5
