by Celeste Raye
“I think you’re being played, Marina. I don’t know how or what for, yet, but it makes me nervous. As your sister, I have top dibs on yelling at your ass. Got it?”
I faltered. “Got it.”
“Besides,” she rolled her eyes, stopping by the opening of the cave and leaned against it. “It’s not like you’re the only one. I’ve heard about five other girls who are banging the dracos.”
“Don’t,” I cringed. “Don’t phrase it like that and don’t call them that. They are shifters. At least be correct.”
Her eyes darkened. “Because that’s what I care about?”
“Look, I don’t want to fight with you. I just thought as my sister you should know what’s going on.”
Her eyes glazed over and I watched her annoyed expression soften, just a little. “So…” A curious smirk settled on her lips, and she exhaled, leaning off the wall and standing straight once more as she said, “What’s he like in the sack?”
Tredorphen
Making love had become a regular routine in my day, it seemed. In accordance with the King’s wishes, I continued to show Marina around the land, and the shifters helped her people get biological samples.
We approached the familiar ship with haste: myself, Aurlauc, Khrelan, and two other shifters my father deemed worthy to watch over us.
The Vulcana. It's purple letters scrawled across the side of the enormous vessel. I stared at it, unenthused by our mission, and I pulled carelessly at the door. They'd left it open, of course.
"Humans," Khrelan breathed with a wicked smile. "They are entirely too trusting."
"Right," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Let's just get this over with."
The lot of us walked in, but I turned to see Aurlauc waiting outside, staring off into the red abyss of Drogs and tentacles that had greeted us the last time we were on Ceylara.
"Coming?" I asked hesitantly, holding the door open for him.
I could already hear the startle of surprise from one of the human men as they caught sight of the other shifters. The soldier laughed nervously as the recognition washed over him. We’d all met before. Protected these people many cycles ago.
Then the screams came.
I pressed my eyes shut and then looked back to Aurlauc, raising my brows, still expecting an answer from him.
"No," he said, turning to regard the expansive planet. The wasteland that had failed to provide us food.
"Khrelan says there's food inside," I bribed; my tone still wavered between friendly and orderly.
"I'm not coming," Aurlauc spat. "You can tell the King what you like. Have him kill me if that's your wish, D’nebu’a."
He spat the last words out with such venom I was sure he'd been waiting to say them for cycles now.
"You're mad?" I asked with a laugh.
The dark shifter crossed his arms, the scales going down his bicep and down his bare chest shimmering against the red backdrop of the planet, a deep maroon sheen reflecting off his black scales.
He brushed his thick braids behind him and remained silent.
“So you’re not talking to me now?” I yelled to him. “You think I want to be here?”
“I think you’re the one who brought them back in the first place and you’ll be the one to kill them. Not me,” he spat, still unturned.
I nodded in frustration and slammed my hand against the side of the ship. “So be it,” I seethed, turning back into the ship and making my way through the perplexing white corridors.
How like Aurlauc, my mind bristled, to see my fault in things that were beyond my control. This was my punishment for trying to find my people food. To make for them an existence. To trust my father around pretty things.
I breathed harshly through my nose so I could feel the fire roaring through me. I shifted my wings so they spread and then brought them in tight to my back.
A deep-skinned human male caught sight of me and his eyes went wide with surprise.
"You're back," the man said happily. "Where are the girls?"
"The coordinates for your Earth," I said angrily. "Give them to me."
“I can’t do that,” he said with a deep, concerned frown. He raised his hands to me and begged, “Please, don’t hurt us.”
“I have no intentions,” I said. “But I can’t say the same for the dragons crawling through your ship right now.”
It was the truth. If I had it my way, none of these humans would shed a drop of blood, but I wasn’t so sure about my comrades. There was no point to it. The humans could do nothing to penetrate our bones; nothing to hurt us.
I picked him up by the neck and held him against the wall. The man choked and gripped his hands against my dragon's claw. The whites of my eyes flecked yellow, and the man tried to scream out in terror. I was done with these humans.
“Tell me,” I seethed a hot breath toward the man and tilted my head back.
The man stared at me and his eyes slowly glossed over to Khrelan as he entered the room behind me.
"Why? What's... what's happening?" the man asked. “Are the girl’s okay?”
“They’re ours now,” Khrelan said in a chagrined manner. “They have chosen to stay with us and abandon your cause. They will remain unharmed, with us, so long as you give us exactly what we want.”
“Tell us,” I warned. “Unless your secrets mean more than your life.”
The man looked at me, and I already knew his answer, just as he knew I was doling out an empty threat.
I heard a dull drumming of boots against the floor and a blond man emerged, his weapon aimed at Khrelan. “They would never do that,” the man spat. He narrowed his gaze at the navy shifter, and I bit my lip.
This was a thing he should not have done.
I watched the blond carefully and moved slowly until I picked the dark-skinned man up by his neck and slammed him into the wall. He grasped at his neck, striving for breath until I eased my grip. I looked to the blond with a confident tilt of my head to the side. My countenance read: ‘Just try it.’
Defiant, the blond fired his rifle and my ears shrunk back as I heard the beam sizzle against Khrelan’s skin, causing a roar that echoed like an eruption from the navy shifter.
Khrelan bared his fangs at the man, and the blond didn’t stop firing.
The shifter pulled his wings tight to his body and rushed toward him. He’d knocked the weapon from his hands with one careful flick of the tail. Khrelan grabbed the man's head in his beast-like hand, and with a tight-fisted motion, we heard the crack of bones within his grasp.
The blond went limp after that, and my body careened back in disgust. A scowl crossed my face as Khrelan met my eyes, his skin smoking and bleeding through from where the laser had pierced his flesh.
Perhaps we were not as indestructible as I once thought.
"Tell me," I warned the man in my grasp, his face twisted in shock and repulsion at what we had just witnessed. "Marina needs the coordinates," I instructed carefully, kneeling down to his level. "It is an emergency.”
"I knew this was going to happen," the soldier cried. "We all knew!"
"Get it together," I scoffed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Tell me or do not. It is your life that hangs in the balance."
The human looked up at me in a panic, and slowly his body seemed to settle into a new knowledge. He breathed in sharply and shook his head. "Marina has the coordinates," he said with some confusion as his eyes flicked back and forth from mine.
I slammed my hand on the wall behind him and threw him to the ground. He was useless to me then. I cursed as I made my leave from him. Marina had tiptoed around the subject all this time, but it never occurred to me she was purposely keeping the information.
“She said…” the man gargled out a bodily shock overtaking him as he trembled on the ground.
“Marina?” I asked. “What did she say?”
“She said…” again the man on the floor went to finish his sentence but seemed to think better of it. “Just kill
me,” he said weakly, resigned to his fate.
“What did she say?” I demanded, stomping my foot brashly against the ground so that the plates of the ship shook beneath us.
“Just kill me,” the man said, placing both of his arms over his head.
I snarled at the creature and bellowed a loud roar toward him. I heard screams from the room over: a bloody gurgle followed by rifle fire. I instinctively bent my knees, and my wings extended protectively, my senses heightened. The man on the floor looked up in terror.
Another shifter, Egeshoth, entered the room. Khrelan stared at the red shifter, and Egeshoth shook his head. No information.
I looked back down at the deep skinned soldier and raised my brow.
"Tell us your coordinates," Khrelan dared.
The man looked up at us and reached for his laser weapon. Egeshoth dove toward him but the man turned the weapon on himself, firing into his head before careening to the floor, a mess of gore surrounding his body.
I looked up at Khrelan in fury and balled my fists. This wasn’t what I wanted.
It soon became clear that the humans were not willing to share their resources: their greenery. We tried bargaining, tried threats; their lives; told them we'd kill their women. But the humans were surprisingly relentless. Khrelan had taken to bending their limbs, forcing their hand, but not one of them would give up what we most craved.
My eyes flicked up to Khrelan as he extended his claws and let out an angry cry, a furious roar that sent fire blazing from his throat down into the corridors. The crackle of the flames sizzled and bounced against the cold walls of the ship, and we heard the hallway flood with screams.
I met the navy shifters glare: a dare of sorts.
"That was extensive," I snapped.
“In case you've forgotten, we are on a mission here. It is our mission to get information.”
"Which none of them are giving!" I screamed. "Let us take our leave from here!”
"Look at me!” he demanded, pointing to the blood that leaked from him. "They are beasts! Come to take our women!"
I set my jaw. “We have taken their women.”
“You took their women, Tredorphen. I have yet to take mine. But I will.”
I raised my chin to the navy shifter, and we had a standoff. I followed limply behind as the three shifters continued to clear out the ship: clean it of any life. Empty it of life.
They torched their halls and scraped their metal, stole their foods.
My thoughts twisted and tore against my instincts. To fight. I knew the deep urge to hunt. The core of my body that screamed for me to be the great warrior. But we fought beasts: creatures after our lives. Not weak humans, begging to be spared.
I walked out to the thick and cold air that greeted me outside the spaceship and listened as they set the craft ablaze.
Aurlauc sat near a great rock formation that spun and crept around into a freestanding circle, a family of Drogs unusually silent as they lay together at the base of the structure.
I walked up next to him and sat down, both of our eyes searching the great beyond that splayed out before us.
The night was so silent; I could hear his breaths nearly masked by the flames that raged behind us.
This wasn’t an interrogation. It was a massacre.
Marina
My nights were racked with dreams of Tredorphen. I dreamt he got lost in space and I had to grow my own set of wings to find him. In the dream, I'd equipped a helmet and took to the skies with vigor. I'd woken up screaming. Not a frightened scream. More of a THIS IS AWESOME! Type of scream.
Excited.
Thrilled to go find my new favorite toy.
And that's when it occurred to me, early in the long night. He wasn't just a toy to me anymore. Not just a body to ride or a fantasy to use while touching myself. Maybe it started out that way but, I'd genuinely come to enjoy hearing his thoughts.
I loved his vision of what the Earth must be like and his endless fascination with our culture. I loved how he wanted to get to know me: every inch of me. My body, my life.
I loved him.
I was never the girl who fell in love after a month. I was always the girl who never did. The one who awkwardly shuffled the words out after my boyfriend has said it a hundred times with no response. It seemed the only times I ever said it earnestly was when the other people wouldn’t say it back.
So when I heard that the shifters were returning from their scouting mission, I couldn't help the energy that tingled in my toes and caused them to clench back and forth over and over with excitement.
I waited impatiently with a host of shifters as their ship landed. Khrelan, the beautiful bald dragon with the deep, dark skin was the first to emerge from the craft. He regarded the immense crowd and gave a single nod, causing the rest of the Weredragons to erupt into victorious cries.
My heart leaped at the sentiment, the roars of achievement and pure bliss that exuded from their calls. Their mission must have been a success. That would mean they had found food, after all.
I could barely contain my joy. I wanted to roar along with them but knew that I would look like a total idiot doing so.
Plus, the probability of them being horrifically offended by the gesture was astronomically high.
My eyes found Tredorphen's immediately as he exited the craft. I began walking toward him as though he would burst at any given moment. That the universe would still find a way to take it all away from me. Half believed that this was still a dream.
He greeted me with a half-smile that somehow made me even more endeared to his handsome face. I stood before him, tilting my head up to match his eyes. He rubbed his palm idly and looked every bit astounded as I did.
I beamed at him and wrapped my arms around him, uninterested in anyone who might have watched our embrace.
“Was it a success?” I asked excitedly.
I backed away to look at him and saw the leather straps that crossed at angles from both sides of his chest, forming an X pattern. Various weapons lined the straps, the only fabric covering his chest. This left me plenty of room to inspect his beautifully cut abs and strong physique.
His pants were something like leather: thick and sturdy. Perfect for a warrior.
A warrior.
My heart lilted at the phrase, and I couldn’t help but beam with pride as the crowd continued to cheer.
“Was it?” I repeated with a large smile.
Tredorphen stared off into the crowd and flicked his wings with annoyance, his tail drumming against the makeshift tarmac. “Not by my standards, no,” he said.
“Oh,” my face fell. “I’m sorry. I thought…” I looked off into the crowd of roaring shifters and shrugged helplessly. “Well, I bet I can think of one way to cheer you up,” I teased lightly.
The shifter walked away from me, and my eyes followed his beautiful body in surprise. Comfort returned to my being as he turned briefly to me and gave a smirk, reaching his hand back to mine.
“Coming?” he asked sweetly.
Despite having told me that he had to check in with the King, Tredorphen flew me into the depths of Graynar’s vertical caves, and within the hour we were nestled back in his room.
“I don’t want to keep you,” I giggled as the golden Weredragon began pulling my clothes from me, hungrily lapping at my breasts and moving his hand down the front of my pants. His body lurched dangerously close to mine, so I could feel the hard length of him against my stomach. I went to undo the front of my pants, but he barely moved his arm to allow me the room.
“If you just give me a second,” I said with a laugh and batted his hand away.
My movement was met with an eager breath as he watched my fingers intensely. I wasn’t moving fast enough for his tastes. I licked my lips and began pulling the creamy suit pants down, startled as he took over, pushing them hard down my legs.
He leaned in and began kissing me while I stroked him, moving his tongue in rhythm with my hand’s moveme
nts. Our lips met for only a moment before he buried his face in my hair, my breast in one hand and his other warming itself between my legs. It was as though he wanted to get every possible sensation from one single moment.
“I missed you,” I whispered into his ear.
“Mm,” was all he said, barely wrapping his arm around me to turn me around.
The rose-sheened shifter bent me over so that my hands laid flat against the wall, and he entered me, thrusting hard in unison with heavy grunts. I used one hand to balance myself and attempted to touch myself with the other, but from his sudden speed, I knew I wouldn’t be getting off this time.
I could feel the pulsing of his body against mine and grew that much more excited and needy to be touched. He grabbed my hips as he bucked against me, letting out a small cry as his body slowed to a halt.
With a breath, I turned around and gave a polite laugh. “Looks like you missed me too,” I teased and reached down for my pants.
“Come here,” he said and pulled me close to him.
There was an intensity to the embrace that made me feel warm and needed and then suddenly uneasy. I backed away from him curiously and wrinkled my nose at him, waiting for the joy to come forth, but he looked empty.
“I realized something when you were gone,” I said proudly, smiling.
He returned the smile in part and grazed the bangs that dampened to my forehead. “What's that?”
“I love you,” I said profoundly, his face dangerously close to mine as I pressed my hand against his cut chest. My eyes flicked back and forth from his, expecting some sort of reciprocation. I wasn't the best with men, but this time I was sure of it. I was sure my feelings wouldn't be left to hang.
When he didn't respond, I swallowed and began twirling my fingers around the straps and bandages that covered his muscular chest. “See, on Earth when two people are completely connected, they feel this strong pull toward one another and... well, basically it's the strongest and most sincere form of, you know, um, bonding.”
“I see,” he said in a small, calculating tone.
