by Celeste Raye
The pools of water were a deep dark blue that seemed to sing and hum: to spill over with large snapping bubbles.
This was where the girl was going to have trouble. As easy as it was to make camp here, it was also dangerous.
I watched as the sturdy woman stumbled down the cliffside on her boots. Dust spewed behind her like a storm cloud and her face twisted in awe at the dark valley before her.
Taking this as my cue, I finally approached the girl.
“Now you’ll make camp with me,” I said with a knowing smile as I perched in front of her, swiping my wings back to secure the air as I landed.
“You’re still here?” she asked snidely, brushing her hands up the back of her scalp and pushing her hair to the top of her head. She made to tie it but then let the wind-bitten honey locks fall back down to her lower back.
“If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been watching out for you,” I said slowly.
She shrugged her shoulders brashly and pushed past me.
“You know,” I said tonelessly, spinning on my heel and stomping after her. “I could have reported you to the D’Karr by now.”
Another shrug from the girl.
“They are looking for you. Do you know this?” I asked.
Finally, she stopped. Perhaps realizing that I very well had her life in my hands in several ways. With a long, exaggerated breath, she turned to me and huffed out a small, “Thank you for helping me out.” The words were stilted and hard, but they were said all the same.
“I fed you,” I argued, flying in front of her and stopping her in her tracks once more. I felt like a dragonling, chasing her around like this.
“Yeah, and I said thanks.”
With an exhausted breath I pinched the bridge of my nose and asked, “Can I at least know your name. I am Vaikrand.”
“Athena,” she said, extending her hand to me.
I stared at it for a moment and then took it into mine, kissing her cold knuckles and then releasing it.
“Alright, I’m going to say something and you’re not going to like it,” I explained.
“Well, that’s a hell of an opener!”
“We have to make camp here,” I said, grabbing her arms and watching as she jerked hard from my light grasp.
“I’m not camping with you,” she laughed indignantly. “I’m going across this field and then I’m going home.”
My eyes perked up at the sentiment. I wasn’t sure how she intended on heading back to Earth without a ship, unless…
“You have to make camp,” I said gruffly. “Nightfall is upon us and there are a host of enemies nearby who would be excited to get their next meal out of you.”
“A host, he says,” she mocked and crossed her arms.
“Just trust me,” I sighed.
“I don’t,” she said simply, and then a bubbling smile crossed her lips. “But, I don’t really like the idea of being eaten, either. So, I guess you win this one. But no hanky-panky.”
I blinked, unsure of what she meant. My mind could certainly fill in the blanks. The girl walked up to me and it was the first time she had really come close to me, without slapping me that is. I could feel desire pulse through my body as she neared me: a hot and hungry urge that raced through my arms and down my legs.
Swallowing, I grabbed her arm and began to lead her toward one of the skeleton shells.
“What are these things?” she asked in awe as her head craned skyward to get a better glimpse of the graveyard.
“A dragon,” I explained. “Likely a shifter who died in full dragon form.”
“Wow,” she gulped. “Do you get this big?”
“No,” I laughed. “Not many do, anymore. But their shells make for good camps.”
The bones stretched on forever: a small city in and of itself. Beyond the bones to the north was a green valley. One of the few left unscratched by the sun—largely due to its proximity to the spewing waters. The lake was to our right, just outside the edge of the skeleton.
Tonight, this would be our home.
We walked deeper into the dragon’s ribcage, staring up at the massive bones that towered above us. I pulled my wings close and darted up to the top of the structure, grabbing some of the thick leathery skin that draped across the bones.
It took several pulls before it ripped away from the bone and I fluttered back to the ground.
“Help me,” I said to the girl and tossed the skin her way. She grabbed hold of the ends and we both draped it over a small set of Drog bones until a makeshift tent was created. I fussed with the opening, dragging the cloth through my fingers and piercing holes through it until I created a small door with the fabric.
“Good job,” Athena said with a surprised chuckle.
“Impressed yet?” I grinned.
“Getting there.”
I nodded and motioned for her to watch me. I set up some driftwood in a pile in front of our tent and felt my throat fill with heat. With a single breath, flames erupted from behind my tongue, and like that, we had a warm fire to sit by.
The corners of my mouth curved up into a smile and I immediately took pride in the look of approval that crossed the blonde’s face.
“Very nice,” she teased and she sat cross-legged in front of the fire.
“Finally, some commendation.”
We huddled around the fire, and I warmed my palms against the radiating heat. I watched as she followed suit and I couldn’t help the trail my eyes made around her body. Starting from her deep blue eyes down her impossibly smooth neck and the round breasts that sat on her small frame. Every inch of her was intoxicating.
And then she opened her mouth and her negativity and subtle hatred seemed to spew forth unrelenting in its poison.
“What happened in The Tower?” I asked curiously. I’d heard of the transformation from the D’Karr’s palace to the prison many cycles ago now, but I hadn’t seen it myself. I was long banished by then.
She shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what did you do there?”
“Ah,” she said with a rise and fall of her perfectly arched blonde brows. “Well, it’s a prison. So, I was a prisoner. So… basically nothing.”
“Because of your sister?” I asked.
“Bingo,” she tapped her nose and narrowed her eyes at me playfully. “You sure you’re not a spy there, scaly?”
“Scaly?” I laughed and brushed my hand down my arm. “Fairly certain. I don’t have the rank for it,” I winked.
“So, what happened to you?”
“No, no,” I waved my fingers with a grin. “I asked you first. What happened to you in there? Get any interesting visitors?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and I wondered if I’d hit yet another nerve. She went to speak several times, tasting the words on her tongue before thinking better of it.
“Shifters would come in looking to claim some of the girls. When I first came into The Tower, there were dozens, but one by one they left. Assigned jobs here,” she shrugged and looked up at me with skeptical eyes. “I know that probably sounds dandy to you, but to me it was a huge betrayal.”
“Dandy?” I asked with a cocked brow.
“Forget it,” she waved me off. “The D'Karr, their King, would come in on certain days and take his choice of a woman, have his way with her, and use levels of The Tower as his own personal whore-house. It was in my great favor that the dragon-shaped pig preferred busty brunettes and not feisty blondes, like myself.”
I grinned. She was absolutely alluring. “Sounds like he saved himself a lot of trouble,” I said.
She smiled, despite herself, and looked up at me through the fire. “Maybe.”
“So, you wouldn’t be claimed?”
Her friendly demeanor once again sank to a prickly exterior and she snipped, “Why should I?”
“Self-preservation,” I suggested.
“I feel pretty preserved.”
“And arrogant, too,” I said. She was prese
rved because of me. “So,” I dragged the word out, tasting the vowel. “How did you get out?”
“A gal has her ways,” she grinned, pulling her arms up behind her head.
I cocked a brow and chuckled. “I believe that. I can picture it now. You shimmying down the side of The Tower on a rope of sheets.”
She shook her head and covered her mouth with her hands. “A little less death-defying than that, I’m afraid. More like, slipped through a door left open by mistake.”
I nodded, but I knew she was lying. Dragons assigned to The Tower were the best soldiers. They would never leave a door open. It would mean their lives. So, either she killed somebody or… she had a shifter on her side.
Either way, it seemed she was definitely a girl worth having on my side.
“I have a proposition for you,” I said carefully. “I think we should work together, for now.”
“Why’s that?” she asked quickly.
“You need protection and I need help.”
She leaned back on her palms and looked at me quizzically. “You’re a burly dragon man. I’m 120 pounds. What, exactly, can I help you with?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Yeah,” she said lowly, as though she were just uncovering a plot. “What’s your deal, anyway?” She looked me over, her eyes lingering too long on my features. “How come you never did rounds at The Tower? I never saw you when we did research in Graynar.”
“I was banished just after you were brought in,” I said crisply. “Some of the dragons didn’t see me fit to rule under the D’Karr any longer.”
“Why not?”
I looked at her beautiful face and tan skin through the fire and watched as the embers cast a beautiful warm hue across her body.
“You are too suspicious for your own good,” I chuckled. “Do you know that?”
“My fatal flaw. That, and my obvious good looks.” She smiled and I merely watched her: watched as her cheeks flushed and she pantomimed awkwardly. “That was a joke.”
I looked at her, long and hard, and wondered if it were worth sharing my story. I inhaled a long, hazy breath and took in the sight of her once more. Sexy, certainly. Furiously annoying, also. Difficult. But necessary. Surely, I had to win her trust if I expected her to stay with me and keep me company out in the wilds.
“I stole some of our food,” I began slowly.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she yelled into the fire, throwing her hands into the air. “You want me to partner up with someone who won’t even share food with me? Obviously, you know nothing about women.”
I stared at her hard for a moment and then gave her a smile and a wink. I knew much more than she believed.
“The D’Karr takes the majority for his family. There’s a hierarchy below the surface. The top tier is usually the royalty and the army. After all, the fighters need the most sustenance. I was part of the army: part of the source that brought the food. Traveled planets to find it. Yet, when I tried to take some back to my ailing family,” I showed her my palms and then clapped my hands together once, “suddenly, I was banished topside.”
“Topside,” she reasoned out the phrase but never asked what it meant. She began nodding and said, “So you tried to steal from El King-O and he bounced you for it? Because you were starving? Some King.”
I gave a slow nod. She wasn’t wrong… but, not entirely right, either.
“My family lives near the top tier of Graynar.”
“Top tier is good though, isn’t it?” Athena asked, her blue eyes flashing at mine.
“No. Top tier, as in the stations, or ‘homes,’ closest to the top of the pit. That’s lowest of the low.”
“Or highest of the high,” she said, tapping her nose as if it were supposed to mean something to me. “See what I did there?”
I frowned and she waved me off. “I was allowed rations, but my family had to petition for it. I broke the rules.”
She nodded but didn’t seem convinced such a thing was wrong enough to be discharged from the pit.
“How’d they find you out?” she asked.
I ran my teeth across my lips and my focus dimmed, eyes elsewhere. “One of the fighters found me out. We’d always had problems, both trying to be the alpha of the pack; you know how it goes.”
She grinned at me and gave another wave, “Oh, sure.”
“My hope is that… If you can help me, accompany me to try and find food, I may be allowed back to Graynar
“Right,” she said slowly. “So, your food’s depleted, right? That’s the whole point of living in caves and booting you out, because you took extra?”
“Basically,” I said.
“Let me get this straight,” she exhaled long and loud. “You tried to take a little extra grub to feed your starving family and your ruler gave you the heave-ho?”
“In less colorful terms, yes.”
“And these are the people you want to go back to?” Athena blinked and ran both of her hands through her long hair, pulling it back and brushing it through with her fingers. “Yikes! It must be rougher topside than I thought! Look, Vaikrand, you seem like a…” she struggled with the words, “nice guy and all. But, my experience with shifters has been wrought with betrayal so… forgive me if I am a little skeptical of your super-duper offer.”
“The attack,” I nodded. “On Ceylara.”
She shrugged, a choke crawling across her face before showering with defiance. It was as though showing me any emotion besides fierce might crack her resolve. And so she was a stone.
“I’m not your enemy, you know.”
“What?” She breathed with a laugh. “Is this the ole, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ as they say?”
I thought on her words and my eyes trailed over her body. “You really don’t trust me? Even after all I’ve done?”
“Been fooled before,” she said crisply. “In fact, your people made a great ruse out of tricking my people into coming to Dobromia in the first place. Then they killed us and jailed us. And I’m supposed to come running into your arms?”
“I wasn’t with them,” I argued, feeling the air starting to cool off. The ground beneath me went icy cold suddenly and I looked back up at the girl.
“What is it you want then?” she asked. “You want to rejoin them?”
“I want a line clearly drawn,” I said simply. “Something I can defend. Something that marks the end of… all this.”
“And what does that mean?”
“The famine,” I said slowly. “It’s torn us apart in more ways than one.”
“Sorry to hear it,” she said with no real empathy in her voice. “But, I’m not about to help you return to those monsters.”
“Find food with me, then. All I need is a partner.”
“Again,” she bristled, “what is it you think I can do for you?”
I raised a brow. “Looks like you can fit into tight spaces pretty well.”
She stared at me for a moment and we both began to laugh. As the laughter faded and her lips curved back down, I began to wonder why I was bothering to try and form an alliance with her.
“I do need your help,” she finally relented and I felt my spirit perk up. “But this is a hitchhike only,” she said as though it were a warning. I had no idea what she meant. “You take me to Westfall; if my friend isn’t there yet to pick me up, then I help you find food. And then I’m out of here! Got it?”
“Deal,” I said firmly.
With the wind biting against my skin and our deal done, I was finally ready for sleep. I looked up at the girl and slapped my hands against my thighs. “I’m heading in,” I offered, and she gave a nod of agreement.
I stepped into the tent and held the door open behind me, waiting for her to follow. I turned quietly when I didn’t hear her footsteps and I walked back up to the fire where she sat.
“You’re not coming?”
“To bed?” she asked in surprise.
“It’s why we built the tent, isn�
��t it?”
She laughed and shook her head. “All yours.”
Athena
I stared at the yellow shifter and nearly laughed out loud. “I’m not getting in that tent with you,” I scowled. “No.”
With an aggravated huff, Vaikrand warned, “The nights are cold, especially by the water.”
He wasn’t wrong. I had learned that my first night out of The Tower. My bones shivered and went frigid in a way that I had never experienced before. As if on cue, a gusty, icy wind traveled by us and carried moisture off the water that hit my skin and seemed to dance around the crevices in my body.
I pulled my cloak closer to my small frame and cursed under my breath. This planet just couldn’t have a happy medium, could it?
I turned my shoulder to him, my answer clear.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shake of his head and he closed the flap of the tent behind me.
The gentlemanly thing to do would be to let me have the tent, I thought. I kicked the rocks beneath my feet and took a seat next to the tent, using it as a shield to block the wind on my left side.
An hour went by and I was still wide awake and freezing cold. I stood from my stubborn spot in the dirt and I began creeping toward the edge of the lake. Trees shrouded the area and stars shone so brightly they seemed to create a path.
While here, I constantly reminded myself, nobody knew me. There was not a sense of me anywhere. Those who used to be my closest confidants were now wiped clean of me. On lonely nights when I wanted to keep fighting, I would try and tell myself they were still looking for me. For our crew who had disappeared.
But then I would remind myself not to fight. I would try to imagine my closest friends talking amongst themselves, starting sentences with: ‘Remember Athena?’
To them, I was already gone.
And that was just fine by me. In fact, there was a peace in it that I couldn’t explain.
I stepped out into the fields of endless black rock, felt the ground beneath me breathe me in. Even the creatures around the strange, endless valleys seemed to stop and stare. It was as if they knew, somehow, that I didn’t belong.
Odd, how I’d been here more than a year and still didn’t know the lay of the land.
