Rohn (Dragons of Kratak Book 1)

by Ruth Anne Scott

  “You aren’t doing any of those things here.”

  “No, we agreed to keep it a secret from you, and we don’t have any young children around. That’s why we agreed to take you, because it would be easier for a small number of us to refrain from taking dragon form as long as you remained in our Keep. It would be a lot harder for Clan Prowiss to make that commitment, when they have so many more people coming and going all the time.”

  “I understand. I would be interested in studying your physiology when you do change. I would like to examine you in your dragon form and study exactly what happens to you when you change.”

  “We can do that. I can change for you right now, if you like.”

  “Aren’t you worried about one of my teammates coming along and seeing you?”

  “Then we could do it out in the forest or in one of the lower levels of the Keep that they don’t know about.”

  “You would show them to me? If you haven’t shown them to me before now, I’m guessing you planned to keep them a secret from us, too.”

  “We did, but you know the truth about us and you’ve gone much farther to keep that secret than I ever would have expected you to. I trust you. I would take you there and show you whatever you want to see. It would be easy for me.”

  She knitted her fingers together. “Just one more question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You told me the women of your people can stop themselves from getting pregnant until they are married and settled.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Do the men have the same ability? Can they control their fertility and decide which women to impregnate and which not?”

  His eyes widened. “Why do you ask that?”

  She shifted from one foot to the other. “Our people do not have that ability. If we mate with someone at the right time in our fertility cycle, we can get pregnant. We cannot decide to allow ourselves to get pregnant or not.”

  “How odd! So why are you telling me this?”

  Rose flew at him with her arms waving. “Because! I can get pregnant, and I had sex with you when I was fertile. I have an implant that causes a chemical reaction with human sperm to stop me getting pregnant, but I don’t know if it will work with you. I could get pregnant from you. What would happen to me then?”

  He stroked his chin. “I guess you would have a baby.”

  “I would have a baby that is half-human and half-dragon. I would have a baby that could shift from baby to dragon and back again whenever it didn’t get what it wanted. Can you imagine what a nightmare that would be?”

  He put his arms around her. “Not as much of a nightmare as what every father and mother on Kratak has gone through. I’ve seen it hundreds of times.”

  “Seen what—kids turning into dragons and spitting fire all over the place and snapping their jaws at anyone who comes near them?”

  “Yes. Exactly. Just like that.”

  Rose let her head drop into her hands and groaned. “I don’t think I can handle this.”

  “What is there to handle? What you’re describing is perfectly normal. Every parent has to deal with it, and they understand because they’ve been through it themselves. They have their own parents and relatives to help out. No one goes through it alone.”

  “If I got pregnant and I took that child back to the Allies, I would be going through it alone.”

  He froze, and his face went very cold and hard. “Is that what this is all about? You’re worried what would happen if you had a child of Kratak and took it back to the Allies?”

  “Wouldn’t you be worried about it, if you were in my place?”

  “You forget, Rose. If you had a child, that child would belong to me just as much as it does you, if not more so. The Ingasores would be its people, and it would grow up with much more love and understanding for its true nature here than it would among the Allies. Even you must acknowledge that.”

  “I don’t deny it, but how could I leave my child behind to be raised by Ingasores? How could I leave the planet without it?”

  “Then don’t leave the planet. Stay. We could raise the child together—if such a child was ever to be born, that is.”

  She stared at him. She could hardly conceive what he was talking about. Stay here—with him? Impossible! Yet how could she deny the truth of his words? Any child of Kratak would suffer untold tortures if she took it back to the Allies. She was a doctor. No one understood that better than she did.

  Such a child would be studied and isolated and made to feel what a freak it was. Such a child would bring down the Allies on this planet like nothing else. They would invade, not with soldiers and phase cannons, but with scientists just like herself. They would leave the Ingasores—and her child—no peace until they got all the answers they wanted.

  She closed her eyes and turned away. She couldn’t think about this. For all she knew, she was genetically incompatible with Rohn and they could never conceive a child. All of this could be wild conjecture.

  She didn’t know it when she broached the subject, but this innocent conversation opened the floodgates to a new understanding in Rose’s heart. She allowed herself to imagine all sorts of potential scenarios she never considered before.

  If the Allies found out about her hypothetical child and they would invade Kratak with scientists to find out what made these dragon people tick, what was stopping them from doing the same thing now? When you really got down to brass tacks, what was the difference between such an invasion and this team’s scientific mission?

  The Allies sent this team to Kratak to find out about the native people’s physiology, their customs, their history and family relationships. Why? What function could that information serve to the Allied Command, if not to provide them with intelligence about the population on the planet, their strengths and weaknesses, how prepared they might be to join or not join the Alliance, or to fight back if it came to that.

  Rohn’s words flooded back into her mind. What possible reason could the Allies have to send an embassy to a planet to convince a people to join the Allies when they didn’t really want to? The Allies used their economic strength, their political connections, and their advanced technology and medical service to coerce vulnerable populations to come under their sway. The Allies didn’t have to use their military might when they had other weapons at their disposal.

  Rose spoke the truth when she told Rohn the Allies didn’t invade and force people to join them. They preferred manipulation, bait and switch tactics, and subterfuge to gain control of populations and resources they wanted to control. When the Allies set their sights on a planet or people they wanted, they never let anyone get away. In the end, everyone joined.

  For the first time in her career, Rose admitted to herself the awful fact that she had played a crucial part in several of these covert conquests. Now she was doing the same thing on Kratak. She was in command of an advanced force bent on penetrating Kratak’s defenses. The Ingasores opened their doors to a scientific team, not knowing they were inviting the Allies to dinner.

  She walked away from Rohn, deep in thought. She didn’t see him following her.

  Rohn had revealed to her—to her! —their most closely guarded secret. Whatever brilliant mind came up with the strategy to hide the Ingasores’ dragon nature from the Allies, she, Rose, was the most dangerous member of their team to come into possession of it. If she revealed the secret to the Allies, Kratak was done for.

  Yet Rohn trusted her. The smart thing to do would have been to kill her as soon as she found out the secret, or to let Rahni kill her. He never should have brought her back alive from Rahni’s nest. She knew too much.

  He had brought her back, though, at great risk to himself. Why had he done that? Not because he thought she would or could bear his child. He did it because he cared for her, because he valued her, because he wanted her to live. In the final analysis, she could think of only one reason he did it. He wanted her
to share the secret. He wanted her to know the truth about him. He wanted her to know who and what he really was, not some charade his family put on for the short time she stayed in their Keep.

  Chapter 14

  Rose turned around and found Rohn standing behind her in the passage. He eyed her with that direct gaze of his that cut straight to her core. “Where are you going now?”

  She came to his side. “Come back to my room.”

  He fell in at her side, and they walked back to her room in silence. Once inside, she shut the door. “What now? Do you want to study me again? I don’t think I would fit in this room in my dragon form.”

  She picked up her notebook. “I better make another examination of you, now that I know about your dragon nature. It changes all my findings, knowing you can change. Actually, I want to make a study of your skin. I want to find out what makes those color patterns.”

  He stood still while she walked around him and inspected his skin up close. She came back around in front of him. The patterns swirled and undulated below the surface. Curlicues and waves swept into view and sank out of sight again.

  She stopped in front of him. “I wish I could look at a sample of your skin under a microscope.”

  “What’s that?”

  She froze and stared up into his face. Then she threw her notebook onto the bed. “Actually, no, I don’t.”

  She slumped onto the bed. Her own work sickened her. Here she was, talking about taking a sample of living skin from one of these people to study under a microscope. What was she thinking? What had she become, that she could treat living people like so many laboratory specimens? How many people had she dissected and turned into slaves for the Allies? How many worlds had she destroyed without even knowing it?

  She jumped off the bed and tore her duffel bag apart. She tossed her clothes and personal effects on the floor in mad desperation. Finally, she found what she wanted. She pulled out her personal diary and started ripping pages out of it.

  Rohn came over to see. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m destroying the notes I made about you being a dragon.” She wadded them up. “Do you have any kind of fire here? You must have fire to cook your meat. I’ll take these pages down to the hall and burn them. That’s the only way to make sure no one ever finds them.”

  “Rose....”

  “We can’t take any chances. If anything happened to me, first my team and then the Allied Command would go through all my things to find every note I took while I was on this planet. They would find these pages, and they would learn the truth. We can’t let that happen. There. That’s all of them. They’ll notice some pages are missing, but they won’t find out what was on them. Come on. Let’s go.”

  He stopped her. “Wait a minute, Rose.”

  She tried to break away. Her words tumbled out of her faster and faster in a rush. “We can’t wait. I must destroy them now, before anyone finds them. Any of my teammates could walk in that door at any minute. How could I explain to them I was destroying my own notes? We have no time to waste.”

  He held up his hands. “Take it easy. We’ll get there. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  She flung the crumpled-up pages on the floor with an exasperated gasp. “I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can carry this secret anymore. I’m going out of my mind. I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m supposed to be Commanding Officer of this research team, and I find myself thinking of the Allies and my own people as the enemy. I can’t live like this. I can’t stay here. I have to go back to my own home, but when I think about it, I go crazy. What am I going to do? How can I go home carrying this secret? I would have an impassable barrier separating me from every other person I ever met. I would never be able to confide in anyone, not even my own superiors. I would be a pariah. I would be locked up in a prison for the insane. There would be nowhere else in the galaxy I could find rest except here.”

  He didn’t answer. He folded his arms around her and hugged her tight against his chest.

  She struggled against his embrace. She tried to keep talking, but nothing came out but ragged gasps. Everywhere she looked, she saw enemies hemming her in on all sides. Rohn was her enemy. Her own son Ben was her enemy. Everyone was against her, and no one could help her.

  She wanted nothing more than to break away and run until her body collapsed and she died somewhere where no one could find her. She would withdraw into the forest like Rahni. She would live alone and apart for the rest of her life. That’s the only way she could find peace.

  He wouldn’t let her go though. He closed her tighter in his arms, and his great strength overpowered her uncontrollable tension. He held her still against all her efforts to struggle.

  All at once, a superhuman power erupted from the bottom of her being. She burst out of his arms and shoved him backward onto the bed with all her strength. He fell over on his back. Rose launched herself at him and jumped on top of him to pin him to the bed. She devoured his mouth and poked her tongue between his teeth.

  He lay back and submitted to her ministrations without protest. She straddled his hips and planted her knees on either side of him. She crushed his crotch with her core and felt the surge of blood into his cock.

  He closed his eyes, and his breath warmed her face and lips. She draped her body over his chest, and her flesh came alive as never before. Her own buried passion reared out of the depths of her soul. She wanted him, all of him. She wanted to possess him and own him the way he owned and possessed her in this very room.

  She tore at her shirt and dragged it up over her chest. She ripped her clothes aside and let her bare breasts fall on his chest. She shoved his buckler aside and raised his shirt to expose his chest. She ran her breasts over his bare skin and watched the tendril patterns follow them up and around and fade and reappear.

  The patterns excited her beyond comprehension. She read his growing passion in their changing colors, in the deep green brightening and turning to yellow and burning fiery orange. The patterns swooped down his chest and belly to plunge into his pants. Spikes plumed up out of his waistband to explode across his chest and surround his lips where they dallied with Rose’s mouth.

  She rocked her aching cunt along his swelling cock, and her passion flared to a driving compulsive need. She yanked his pants open and grabbed his cock. She licked it and stroked it in her palm and studied the fascinating interplay of patterns converging and evolving over every inch of him. They grew around his hips to his ass and climbed down his legs. They flowed down his arms and spurred his hands to touch her.

  She took the rock-hard tool in her mouth and sucked it to raging hot red. She cradled his balls in one hand, and bright sparks spurted from them to dance along his shaft. Waves of shimmering lights followed her lips along its length and burst at the tip.

  She sucked him raw and jumped back up on top of him. She slid her own pants off and mounted him with her wet nakedness. He moaned and sighed, but he laid still under her hands. She stroked his chest and kissed his stomach, but she couldn’t stop her rising desire. She couldn’t stand the tension.

  She angled his cock up toward her and buried it in her boiling inferno. Her flesh closed around it, and she sat down hard on it. Its thick length vanished inside her, and her madness was complete.

  She dared not stop now. She rose and fell to stroke the thing between her lips. She sat down to grind her ass against his hips. She thrust her hips back and forth to torture her tissues on the wicked monster between her legs.

  Rohn growled and groaned under her. He clasped her thighs and followed her movements with his hands. He glared up into her eyes. Rose followed the ever-changing patterns covering his skin with every permutation of organic shape she could imagine. They waved rainbow-tinted around his lips and over his eyelids. They wound around his neck. When she grabbed hold of his chest to gain a purchase for her movements, two deep purple pools under her hands bloomed into flowers and comets that
rippled to the tips of his fingers and toes.

  She succumbed to those hypnotic patterns. They grew up under his skin and leapt onto hers. They ate into her muscles and infected her blood with Kratak so she couldn’t tell the difference between herself and Rohn. Roots extended down her legs, through the bed, and anchored her to the planet so she couldn’t get away.

  Those tendrils tapped her bloodstream and devoured her from the inside. Their seeds sprouted in her guts and bubbled up through her chest to explode. They surrounded her limbs and tied her to him.

  She sat up straight with her cunt sealed against his pelvis. The vines sent a tendril into her crotch to drink the fragrant juice flowing from her font. They surrounded her vagina and stroked Rohn’s cock inside her.

  Their mysterious energy sparkled through her flesh until she couldn’t stand it. The sparks drifted on plumes of smoke to swirl around her nipples and shoot up to her lips. Her lips tingled, and stars exploded behind her eyes. A rising column of energy built up inside her skull and eventually rocketed out the top of her head.

  Her fingers closed into fists on his chest. Her hips pumped back and forth of their own free will. He bucked her up into the air and she fell down onto his shaft. Her ass quivered against his hips.

  She leaned back and closed her eyes. Nothing existed anymore but those fractal patterns. They consumed everything they touched and transformed every inch of her body into themselves. She couldn’t resist them, and the more she fought, the stronger they became.

  She opened her mouth and let her voice cry to the heavens, but she had already fallen under the power of those patterns. The vines covered her from head to foot and invaded her skin and her organs. Leaves sprouted over her eyes, and roots sapped her life blood to feed the vines.

  Rohn arched his back and kicked his hips up against her. He bared his teeth and roared in agony. His steaming potion filled her and fertilized the tendrils surrounding her cunt and clitoris. The golden stars spread through her and fizzled out into dark space.